Tag browser and Tags

Rellwood · 11-28-2025, 04:30 PM

Im trying to wrap my head around a bit of a dilema here.

Heirarchal tags only look good in one place - the Calibre tag browser. When you have thousands of books heirarchal tags are often a necessity. I have heirarchal tags that generally go three deep. the middle tag is usually a descriptor. Sci-Fi.Genre.Dystopia because I put character, themes, tropes and other info under genres and other types of tags and I like grouping them together.

All plugins and metadata sources use the "tags" column by default and sometimes (tag mapper, metadata downloads) you cannot change that. I know there must be some reason for this because not having the option to change where tags are mapped or downloaded to really limits things. The copying and moving from one column into tags just to get "tags" to upload or map or whatever is a real time consumer.

Anyhow, I am trying to figure out exactly what it is that I am looking for - for example I am using book fusion plugin (and I posted on there too) and they use the tags column as a default "tags" in their library, so now all my tags in Bookfusion are annoyingly long.

I know you can change a tag virtually in the tag browser because you can do that with a click on that particular tag - but is there a possibility of doing a map between them - for example

I use "Speculative.Genre.Dystopian" because it looks good in the browser - but I would much rather see "Dystopian" in the actual column or wherever else a tag would show. So, I am we are not expected to manually click on a tag in the browser and hand edit it from there so that it's changed virtually?

If there was a way of having downloads somehow filter between the tag in the browser and the tag used for "tag" purposes outside Calibre - like Book Jackets (yes I know I can "change" them but I never really figured that one out), tag mapping rules, metadata downloads (I suppose I need to go to the sources for that), however, if somehow CALIBRE can make it so that no matter from where a tag shows up - it maps so that the heirarchal or however i want to see it in the browser shows up there, but in "reality" it has a different mapped tag?

Does this make sense?

Clem2605 · 12-07-2025, 11:49 AM

Have you tried the Action Chain pluging?

It's a pluging that allow you to automatically do some tasks.

From what I understand, You would like to create new columns to separate the information you have in your tag column.

You would create your new columns, and, when a pluging allows it, they can add the information you want in those columns, and when it can't, you would just have to run a chain that would look like that:

Select books that have the tag 'Sci-Fi.Genre.Dystopia'
Add 'Dystopia' to your new 'Genre' column
Delete the tag 'Sci-Fi.Genre.Dystopia'
Select books that have the tag 'Speculative.Genre.Dystopia'
Add 'Dystopia' to your new 'Genre' column
Delete the tag 'Speculative.Genre.Dystopia'
ect...

You could also select all the books that have a tag with 'Genre.Dystopia' in it, this step really depends on what you want to do and how your tags are displayed in your tag column.

If you have a lot of different tags to 'move' it could take some time to set up, but once it is, once new tags have been added to your tag column, you would just have to run the chain, and it would all be done automatically.

11-28-2025, 04:30 PM	#1
Rellwood Library Breeder (She/Her) Posts: 1,306 Karma: 1937893 Join Date: Apr 2015 Location: Fullerton, California Device: Paperwhite 2015 (2), PW 2024 (12 GEN), PW 2023 (11 GEN), Scribe (1st)	Tag browser and Tags Im trying to wrap my head around a bit of a dilema here. Heirarchal tags only look good in one place - the Calibre tag browser. When you have thousands of books heirarchal tags are often a necessity. I have heirarchal tags that generally go three deep. the middle tag is usually a descriptor. Sci-Fi.Genre.Dystopia because I put character, themes, tropes and other info under genres and other types of tags and I like grouping them together. All plugins and metadata sources use the "tags" column by default and sometimes (tag mapper, metadata downloads) you cannot change that. I know there must be some reason for this because not having the option to change where tags are mapped or downloaded to really limits things. The copying and moving from one column into tags just to get "tags" to upload or map or whatever is a real time consumer. Anyhow, I am trying to figure out exactly what it is that I am looking for - for example I am using book fusion plugin (and I posted on there too) and they use the tags column as a default "tags" in their library, so now all my tags in Bookfusion are annoyingly long. I know you can change a tag virtually in the tag browser because you can do that with a click on that particular tag - but is there a possibility of doing a map between them - for example I use "Speculative.Genre.Dystopian" because it looks good in the browser - but I would much rather see "Dystopian" in the actual column or wherever else a tag would show. So, I am we are not expected to manually click on a tag in the browser and hand edit it from there so that it's changed virtually? If there was a way of having downloads somehow filter between the tag in the browser and the tag used for "tag" purposes outside Calibre - like Book Jackets (yes I know I can "change" them but I never really figured that one out), tag mapping rules, metadata downloads (I suppose I need to go to the sources for that), however, if somehow CALIBRE can make it so that no matter from where a tag shows up - it maps so that the heirarchal or however i want to see it in the browser shows up there, but in "reality" it has a different mapped tag? Does this make sense? Last edited by Rellwood; 11-28-2025 at 04:33 PM.

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12-07-2025, 11:49 AM	#2
Clem2605 Connoisseur Posts: 60 Karma: 10 Join Date: May 2020 Device: Kobo H2O, Kobo Libra H2O, Boox Tab Ultra C	Have you tried the Action Chain pluging? It's a pluging that allow you to automatically do some tasks. From what I understand, You would like to create new columns to separate the information you have in your tag column. You would create your new columns, and, when a pluging allows it, they can add the information you want in those columns, and when it can't, you would just have to run a chain that would look like that: Select books that have the tag 'Sci-Fi.Genre.Dystopia' Add 'Dystopia' to your new 'Genre' column Delete the tag 'Sci-Fi.Genre.Dystopia' Select books that have the tag 'Speculative.Genre.Dystopia' Add 'Dystopia' to your new 'Genre' column Delete the tag 'Speculative.Genre.Dystopia' ect... You could also select all the books that have a tag with 'Genre.Dystopia' in it, this step really depends on what you want to do and how your tags are displayed in your tag column. If you have a lot of different tags to 'move' it could take some time to set up, but once it is, once new tags have been added to your tag column, you would just have to run the chain, and it would all be done automatically.