Disabling Recent Tags in the Finder window sidebar

Every so often, something gets added to macOS and enabled by default where I wish it was off by default. The Tags section of the Finder’s sidebar is one of those additions.

Fortunately for my preferences, I recently figured out (thanks to Bob Gendler’s method for discovering settings via the unified logs) that display of the Tags section was controlled via the following setting:

Domain: com.apple.finder
Key: ShowRecentTags
Value: Boolean

To show Recent Tags in the Finder’s sidebar, run the following command as the logged-in user:

defaults write com.apple.Finder ShowRecentTags -bool true

Here’s how the Recent Tags setting should now appear in the Finder preferences:

 

To remove Recent Tags from the Finder’s sidebar, run the following command as the logged-in user:

defaults write com.apple.Finder ShowRecentTags -bool false

 

Here’s how the Recent Tags setting should now appear in the Finder preferences:

 

The new setting will not apply until the Finder is restarted, which can be accomplished via either logging out and logging back in or running the following command as the logged-in user:

killall Finder

 

After the Finder restart, the Tags section should no longer appear in the Finder window sidebar:

 

In my case, I wanted them off permanently so I’ve also written a profile which can enforce this. It’s available via the link below:

https://github.com/rtrouton/profiles/blob/main/DisableRecentTagsinFinderSidebar

Session videos from Jamf Nation User Conference 2021 now available

Jamf has posted the session videos for from Jamf Nation User Conference 2021, including the video for my AutoPkg In The Cloud session.

For those interested, all of the the JNUC 2021 session videos are available on YouTube. For convenience, I’ve linked my session here.

Running Jamf Pro actions from outside Jamf Pro

Every so often, I need to have Jamf Pro perform actions where it’s difficult to arrange the timing and task order I want using the options available from the Jamf Pro server’s end. An example of this would be following an OS upgrade. I want the following:

• Update the computer inventory record in Jamf Pro as soon as possible that the OS upgrade has occurred.
• Don’t interfere with any other processes that Jamf Pro may be running at that time.

To address this, I want to use the following workflow:

1. Make sure the Jamf Pro agent hasn’t run anything for at least the last five minutes.
2. Enforce the Jamf Pro agent’s management framework
3. Send the Jamf Pro server an updated inventory.

To run these tasks, I’m using a self-destructing LaunchDaemon and script. For more details, please see below the jump.