Dolphin not listing existing tags in "Assign Tags" menu

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1

Hi,

I use the Tags functionality for managing photos. Recently, it has stopped listing existing tags when I attempt to use the Assign Tags menu pick. It shows the usual “Edit Tags” submenu, but the dialog box lists no existing tags at all. I can add the same tag, for instance “favorite”, and they show up in the file browser in the Tags column if it’s visible.

Everything else seems to work (sorting by tags, etc), I just have to recreate the same tag every time.

Is this just me, or is it bug report time?

Paul

2

Hi,

did you maybe recently disable baloo file indexing? As I understand it, dolphin can only know which tags exist if the tagged files have been indexed by baloo.

3

Maybe this isn’t true anymore. I don’t use baloo, and I’m actually using Openbox right now. I just tagged an image in a folder, closed the folder, then closed Dolphin, then reopened Dolphin and the same folder, and the tag is still there.

So, this means the bug should be unrelated to baloo, unless the user did exactly what you asked about and it somehow clears the tag(s).

That said, this requires more info from @Paul_Hands like kinfo and dolphin --version. Please type them both and send in the thread. And for a sanity check, run a full system update just in case there is some kind of package mismatch.

kinfo && dolphin --version
4

Yes, the tag is still there because it gets saved to the file’s meta data, but the question was about assigning an existing tag to a new / different file.
You’re supposed to get a list of existing tags to choose from, but this list is empty. And it’s been empty for me for years, ever since I decided baloo doesn’t work for me.

5

Hi, and thanks for replying.

My machine is fully up to date. You can see some details below.

vetinari% kinfo && dolphin --version
Operating System: Manjaro Linux
KDE Plasma Version: 6.7.4
KDE Frameworks Version: 6.29.0
Qt Version: 6.11.2
Kernel Version: 6.18.49-1-MANJARO (64-bit)
Graphics Platform: Wayland
Processors: 48 × AMD Ryzen Threadripper 7960X 24-Cores
Memory: 192 GiB of RAM (188.2 GiB usable)
Graphics Processor: AMD Radeon RX 6600
dolphin 26.08.0

File search is on, my home directory is being indexed, except for ~/.kde, as advised by the kde-builder people. I’m indexing File names and contents, including hidden files and directories.

I do see that the indexer is quite busy - lots of "indexing " messages flickering along the bottom of the window. I’m wondering if the indexer is just not finished yet, but it’s been up for 3 weeks, so I’d expect the indexer to be finished…

vetinari% uptime
13:55:32 up 21 days, 2:07, 2 users, load average: 2.10, 1.62, 1.71

My /home partition is a 8T SSD, of which only 1.2T is used.

The indexer seems to be spending a lot of time in ~/.config/vivaldi, but that might just be coincidence. Is there a way to see indexer logs? Also, dolphin is eating CPU, I now see in top. Baloo_file is using 14.9% CPU, where Dolphin is 99.4…

PID USER PR NI VIRT RES SHR S %CPU %MEM TIME+ COMMAND

923107 phands 20 0 259.9g 1.5g 1.4g R 99.4 0.8 25,32 dolphin

874978 phands 39 19 256.8g 5.4g 4.7g R 14.9 2.9 25,21 baloo_file

6

Ah, I see. Yeah. That makes sense.

7

Indexing hidden files is alright, if you actually plan on using them in some way. However, indexing a web browser’s folder is usually unnecessary for most people. You may want to add exceptions if baloo allows you to add a folder then add exceptions for that folder.

If it can’t, the alternative would be to add specific hidden folders. Either option can be tedious depending on what you want/don’t want indexed.

I’ve got about 3 TB of used space out of 4 TB, and Dolphin has never used that much memory for me, so I’m not sure why that’s happening. Only thing I can think of is that is somehow related to baloo, which I also don’t use like @amilias.

I’m sure baloo can run without tanking systems so I imagine there is some guide we should follow for best practices like:
Arch wiki: Baloo - ArchWiki
Official KDE baloo documentation: Baloo - KDE Community Wiki

8

I agree about hidden files, but some things like .config do need indexing, IMO.

I added a couple of extra directories to the Stop Indexing list (~/.cache/vivaldi and others) and Baloo is not featuring in the CPU hogs in top now, but Dolphin is still at 99.8%. And…there are still no tags in the existing tags menu.

Now I’m wondering if I need to killillall dolphin and see what’s changed.

I’m also wondering if I have hit a bug, but I hate entering bugs that aren’t well characterized , because the team is so busy - I speak as a software dev in other companies. I also can’t tell if it’s Dolphin or Baloo now…or something else.

9

I get you.

I searched for tag-related bugs, but from what I skimmed, I can’t see anything that is the same as what you’re experiencing.

My query: “dolphin tag list” sorted by date (set to recent)

You may just have to file a bug report since you’re not the only experiencing this, but on my end it may be because I’m neither using baloo or KDE. I don’t use baloo even when using KDE, to be clear.

As for Dolphin, this really shouldn’t matter, but how many tabs do you have open, how many of them have media, how many of them are remote, how many have previews turned on, and how many of them have over 10,000 files. Only the first 3 questions are real - the others are for you to check to see if closing them would make a difference.

10

Again, thanks for helping.

It’s interesting that it’s not just me…thank you.

As to the first 3, I have previews off almost everywhere. None are remote (I still remember the pain of KDE with NFS!), but I do have way more than 17000 images of Fashion Shows, including video.

I’ll do experiments!

11

empty Assign Tags list w/ baloo still “on” is pretty common when the index is half dead or dolphin is stuck on that 17k photo pile.

id try:
-killall dolphin
-balooctl6 status
-balooctl6 check
-baloosearch6 tag:favorite
-on a file you already tagged: getfattr -n user.xdg.tags – thatfile

if baloosearch finds the tag but Assign Tags is empty, dolphin isnt reading baloo right (bug territory). if baloosearch is empty too, wipe and rebuild just that tree:
-balooctl6 disable
-rm -rf ~/.local/share/baloo
-balooctl6 enable
-balooctl6 index /path/to/photos

also turn off “index file content” for a bit while it catches up. content indexing on 17k media will bog dolphin down and the tag list stays blank till baloo finishes a pass.

12

it seems the my same problem, but inn my system tags doesn’t works in NTFS filesystem and is ok in EXT4

pla@plaST-slowroll:~> kinfo && dolphin -v
Operating System: openSUSE Tumbleweed-Slowroll 20260901
KDE Plasma Version: 6.7.5
KDE Frameworks Version: 6.29.0
Qt Version: 6.11.2
Kernel Version: 7.2.7-1-default (64-bit)
Graphics Platform: Wayland
Processors: 12 × 13th Gen Intel® Core™ i5-1335U
Memory: 40 GiB of RAM (38.9 GiB usable)
Graphics Processor: Intel® Iris® Xe Graphics
dolphin 26.08.1

13

Do you by any chance tag the photos in DigiKam?

14

Generally not. Now i’m intrigued!

15

Oh well, I killed all Dolphin processes, and the 99% CPU usage has gone, but the original tag problem is still there.

I think it’s bug report time. Thanks for pitching in. KDE people are the best!

16

(sorry was answering from phone, did not intend to cause a cliffhanger)

The thing is that DigiKam has its own tagging that is stored in its own SQLite data base (file).

But if you want to sync DigiKam’s tags (in one or both directions) with Baloo(’s handlnig of tags) you enable that in DigiKam’s Settings ↦ Metadata ↦ Baloo.