Label (macOS)
feature of Mac operating systems
In Apple's Macintosh operating systems, labels are a type of seven distinct colored and named parameters of metadata that can be attributed to items (files, folders and disks) in the filesystem. Labels were introduced in Macintosh System 7, released in 1991, and they were an improvement of the ability to colorize items in earlier versions of the Finder. Labels remained a feature of the Macintosh operating system through the end of Mac OS 9 in late 2001, but they were omitted from Mac OS X versions 10.0 to 10.2, before being reintroduced in version 10.3 in 2003, though not without criticism. During the short time period when Mac OS X lacked labels, third-party software replicated the feature.
In classic Mac OS
In classic Mac OS versions 7 through 9, applying a label to an item causes the item's icon to be tinted in that color when using a color computer monitor (as opposed to the black-and-white monitors of early Macs), and labels can be used as a search and sorting criterion. There is a choice of seven colors because three bits are reserved for the label color: 001 through 111, and 000 for no label. The names of the colors can be changed to represent categories assigned to the label colors. Both label colors and names can be customized in the classic Mac OS systems; however, Mac OS 8 and 9 provided this functionality through the Labels tab in the Finder Preferences dialog, while System 7 provided a separate Labels control panel. Labels in Mac OS 9 and earlier, once customized, were specific to an individual install; booting into another install, be it on another Mac or different disk would show different colors and names unless set identically. A colorless label could be produced by changing a label's color to black or white.
Begin with the source’s own compact description: “Label (macOS)” is feature of Mac operating systems. The dossier treats that line as a proposition to test through Label, macOS and feature, not as a finished interpretation.
Why this record matters
The phrase “feature of Mac operating systems” supplies a clear boundary for inquiry. It also exposes the unanswered questions: who defined that boundary, when it became stable and which sources sit outside it.
Vocabulary and entity names are the principal evidence signals here, because they determine the precision of every later search. The source revision retrieved here is dated Dec 17, 2025. The linked authority identifier is Q3733779. None of the 0 selected statements returned an explicit reference. The first chronological checks are 1991, 2001 and 2003.
Overview language is designed for orientation and should not be treated as a substitute for the evidence cited beneath it. The source lead contains qualifying language; that uncertainty should survive quotation, summary and reuse. Authority statements aid reconciliation but still require their own references, qualifiers and ranks to be checked.
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This entry incorporates text from “Label (macOS)” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.