Should you organize files with folders or tags?

Should you organize files with folders or tags? Welcome to Design Decisions that don't f***ing matter. Folders have been the default since 1981. That is 40+ years of muscle memory. But a single file can belong to multiple categories. Does that proposal belong in clients, proposals, or 2026 projects? Folders make you pick one. And folders feel intuitive because of Miller's Law, which says the brain can only hold on to about 7 +/- 2 items at a given time. Nesting things inside of other things matches how we've organized physical stuff for centuries. On one hand, folders are universal: Finder, Explorer, Drive, Dropbox, Google Drive, all these systems support them. They're basically zero learning curve. But on the other hand, tags let a single file exist in multiple contexts. Gmail figured this out in 2004. That email from your boss about an upcoming deadline can be labeled urgent, and design. Linear uses labels instead of folders for issues. Slack technically has folders, but let's be honest, you just command K or search for what you're looking for. Plus, search technology has gotten really, really good. Like Raycast or Spotlight. And the stereotype says that Gen Z is right to not care about folders. It's taken me a long time to accept as a millennial, but it turns out that nested folder-based organization of files or anything actually just sucks. When you have tagging + good search, everything works much better and you no longer have to worry about the impossible task of categorizing things on one primary axis. Research from The Verge says that many of her fellow educators have reached in the past four years: the concept of file folders and directories, essential to previous generations' understanding of computers, is gibberish to many modern students. Professors have varied recollections of when they first saw the disconnect. But Gen Z grew up with Google Drive search. So I guess if your tools have good search and tagging, then use tags. If you're stuck in legacy systems or working with folder-brain people, then nest likely in search often. But Gen Z was right. Folders are just cope for bad search.