Product Reviews

Anybody upgrading to Mac OS X tends to miss a few features of Mac OS 9, for example, the ability to label files. Unsanity's Labels X 1.1 brings this to OS X and even shares file label information with OS 9.

Once you've installed Labels X, you need to log out and back in again for it to take effect. You'll then find Labels X sitting within the Others section of System Preferences, and you configure various settings from here. You can edit the colour and name of the seven label types - by default these take on the identities of their OS 9 counterparts. The other option is to add a labels

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column to the Finder, thereby providing another sort option in list view.

Adding a label to any item on your Mac is simple. Bring up the Finder's contextual menu via control or right-clicking on a file and you'll see a Label submenu. You then assign a label by selecting it. This worked flawlessly in our tests, although label changes on the Desktop sometimes don't take effect until you click on the label. Sorting in the Finder also worked well, although Unsanity warns that the Finder's Label column can't be remembered as the sort criterion across log outs.

This update fixes a slew of bugs from 1.0. The most important is that file labels are now shown in Dock pop-up menus - a boon if you use the Dock for navigating. Colouring issues in Finder toolbars and search results have been banished, while non-English label names now display properly in the contextual menu.

For $7, Labels X 1.1 is excellent value for those who miss the functionality of labels. While anyone who has only used OS X will wonder what the fuss is about, the rest of us, who have used labels to track the status of projects or sort huge lists of files, will think this addition is a bargain.