Quick answer: There are three ways to tag files: by hand, with rules, or with AI that reads each file and picks tags. For private automatic tagging, Tag Sense AI in Productivity Plus Pack runs an AI model on your own PC: select files, right-click, choose Auto-Tag, and it reads PDFs, documents and images and applies tags. Nothing is uploaded.
Why tagging is worth it — and why it rarely happens
A good tag answers the question you'll ask later: where's that invoice from the plumber? A file can only live in one folder, but it can have as many tags as it needs.
The problem is the effort. Tagging a few files is easy; tagging a few thousand never gets done. There are three ways to tackle that: by hand, with rules, or with AI.
Manual tagging
You decide every tag yourself. It's the most precise approach, and for small sets of files it's all you need — especially when tagging is quick.
With Tag+ you tag from the right-click menu, tag many selected files at once, press Ctrl+Win+Alt+T plus a number key, or drag files onto a filter folder that tags them automatically. See How to tag files in File Explorer.
Rule-based tagging
Rules tag files based on things that are easy to check: a file's name, its type, or the folder it's in. Everything in Invoices gets the tag Invoice. Every .psd file gets the tag Design.
Rules are fast and predictable, but they only know what they're told. They can't tell a tax document from a recipe if both are PDFs in the same folder, and someone has to write and maintain the rules.
Productivity Plus Pack doesn't use rules for tagging. The closest things are filter folders that tag whatever you drag onto them, and Organize Folder, which sorts files by type — or names photos by date, place and people.
AI-based tagging
AI reads what's actually in the file. It can tell that a PDF is an invoice, a contract or a manual, that a scanned page is a receipt, or what a photo is about — and tag it accordingly.
| Manual | Rule-based | AI-based | |
|---|---|---|---|
| Understands what's in the file | Yes — you do | No | Yes |
| Effort per file | High | None, once rules exist | None |
| Setup | None | Write and maintain rules | Install a local AI engine once |
| Predictability | Exactly what you chose | Exactly what the rules say | Usually right — review what matters |
| Best for | A few important files | Clear-cut, repetitive patterns | Large or mixed collections |
The approaches work well together: let AI do the bulk, and add or fix tags by hand where it matters.
Local and private: AI that runs on your PC
Most AI services run in the cloud, which means uploading the contents of your files — contracts, bank statements, family photos — to someone else's servers.
Tag Sense AI takes the other route. It runs the AI model on your own PC through Ollama, a local AI engine. Your file contents are never uploaded, and there's no telemetry.
Running AI locally takes some disk space for the model, and tagging runs faster on PCs with more memory or a capable graphics card.
The Tag Sense AI workflow
- Turn it on. Open Settings and turn on Tag Sense AI.
- One-time setup. The first time, you're guided through installing Ollama and downloading a model. (In the Microsoft Store edition, you install Ollama yourself.) You can choose the model in Settings.
- Auto-tag. Select one or more files in File Explorer, right-click and choose Auto-Tag. A progress window shows how it's going.
- Review. The tags become regular Tag+ tags. Change or remove any of them from the right-click menu.
- Find. Tags show on thumbnails and in the one-click filters of the Search filters section in Explorer's navigation pane.
Supported file types: PDF (including scanned PDFs), DOCX, TXT, MD, JSON, CSV, LOG, JPG and PNG. Scanned pages and images are read with local OCR.