Tags vs Folders: Picking (or Combining) a Note System
Quick answer
Use folders — or in Carets, files and projects — for the small number of broad, stable categories that rarely change. Use tags for the cross-cutting stuff a single note might need more than one of: status, theme, priority. Most people who try to pick exactly one system end up frustrated within a few weeks. Folders and tags aren't competing solutions to the same problem — they're two tools built for different jobs. Starting from zero? A plain-text note-taking system built for capture is a good place to begin before you worry about either one.
What folders are actually good at
A folder is a one-time structural decision. You create "Work," "Client X," or "Thesis Chapter 3," and once it exists, every related note has an obvious home. That's the appeal: folders mirror physical filing, they're simple to scan, and they create clear divisions between unrelated projects without any ongoing upkeep.
The trade-off shows up the moment a note doesn't fit cleanly into one bucket. A project README is both documentation and a quick reference you'll want again later — but a folder only lets it live in one place. Research on personal information management backs up an instinct most people already have: given a free choice between the two, people default to folders over tags, and even the minority who do try tagging tend to stop at a single tag per note rather than several. Folders win by default not because they're more powerful, but because they ask less of you.
What tags are actually good at
Tags solve exactly the problem folders can't: a note that belongs in more than one category at once. A code snippet can be tagged both by language (python) and by status (todo) without you having to decide which one matters more. That kind of layered, cross-cutting retrieval is what tags are built for.
The catch is discipline, not design. Tags only work as a retrieval tool if you keep applying them the same way over time. An inconsistently used tag quietly stops surfacing the complete set of notes it was supposed to group, because half of them never got tagged in the first place. That's the real reason so many multi-tag systems get abandoned a few weeks in — not that tagging is a bad idea, but that it demands upkeep a folder never asks for.
When one note needs to live in two places
Nielsen Norman Group's research on information architecture makes this concrete with a simple example: a piano could reasonably sit under keyboard instruments, percussion, or string instruments, depending on how you think about it. One retailer listed the Nintendo Switch under both Video Games and Electronics for the same reason — different people expect to find the same item in different places, and forcing a single "correct" category makes it unreachable for whoever guessed the other one.
Notes work the same way. A meeting note about a hiring decision is both a "Q3 Hiring" note and a "Decisions" note. File it under only one, and future-you searching from the other angle won't find it. That's the case for letting a note carry more than one tag. But the same research is explicit about the limit: cross-listing everything under every conceivable category produces long, cognitively taxing lists that work against the fast retrieval you were trying to get in the first place.
A simple hybrid convention that holds up
The convention that shows up again and again, across note-taking guidance and the research above, is the same one: keep the folder or project count small, and let tags carry the detail.
Keep your top-level structure to a handful of stable buckets — the projects and areas that actually stay the same for months, not one folder per note. On the tagging side, cap it at three to five tags per note, pulled from a fixed, reused vocabulary instead of a new tag invented for every note. A consistent, limited tag vocabulary is what keeps tags fast instead of turning them into their own filing problem. Want the deeper version of that convention — naming patterns that don't fall apart as a tag list grows? There's a dedicated breakdown of tag naming here.
A worked example: a note titled "Q3 pricing decision" lives in the "Q3 Planning" project — one stable, obvious home — and carries two tags: decision and pricing. Search either tag later and the note surfaces, regardless of which project folder it's filed under.
How Carets fits in
This two-layer model — a small set of stable containers plus flexible tags on top — is exactly how Carets organizes notes: into files, projects, and tags, not a third competing system you have to learn. Your notes stay plain Markdown text underneath either way, so changing how you tag or file something never touches the underlying file format. And because Carets is native on iPhone, iPad, and Mac rather than a web wrapper, applying a tag or moving a file between projects happens instantly — no waiting on a sync spinner mid-thought.
To be fair about the limits: Carets doesn't auto-suggest tags for you. The vocabulary discipline from the section above — three to five tags, drawn from a list you actually reuse — is still on you. What Carets does is make that convention cheap to follow, since the tool itself doesn't add friction to either half of the system. For the how-to version of setting this up in your own notes, see organizing notes with files, projects, and tags.
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Frequently Asked Questions
Should I use tags or folders for my notes?
Use folders (or in Carets, files and projects) for the small number of broad, stable categories that rarely change, and use tags for the cross-cutting attributes — status, theme, priority — that a single note might need more than one of. Most people who try to pick exactly one system end up frustrated; the two solve different problems.
Why do most people default to folders instead of tags?
Research on personal information management shows people default to folders because a folder decision is made once and stays useful, while tags only work as a retrieval tool if you keep applying them consistently. Folders require less ongoing discipline, which is why they win by default even though tags are more flexible on paper.
How many tags should one note have?
A practical ceiling is three to five tags per note, drawn from a fixed, reused vocabulary rather than invented fresh each time. Past that point tags stop being a fast filter and start becoming their own clutter problem.
Can I use both tags and folders together?
Yes — combining them is the most common recommendation across note-organization guidance. Folders (or files and projects) carry the broad structure; tags layer cross-cutting themes on top, so a note about a client project can sit in one project folder while still being tagged "urgent" or "reference" alongside notes from other projects.