Folder versus Labels?

What’s the difference between folders and labels? It seems one paper can be allocated more than one folder and more than one label… are they actually different in functionality?

You’re right folders and labels are basically the same. In particular, a paper can have multiple labels but a paper can also be in multiple folders. The main difference is that folders can be nested while labels have a flat hierarchy. The other differences are mainly how they are presented in the applications and how they are used by our users.

Most use both folders and labels. Since folders can have subfolders so typical applications are a ‘Thesis’ folder with chapter subfolders or a ‘Journal club folder’ with a subfolder for each meeting.

Labels are typically used to quickly flag papers as “Important” or “To read next”. For that purpose you can style them in different colors. Also most users use labels to categorize papers in scientific topics like ‘DNA sequencing’ or ‘Political history’. Some have only a handful of high level labels others have hundreds.

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OK. I admit it. I completely missed that there were folders as well as labels. I guess I’m used to there only being one or the other. It is actually very useful for me to have both, but I have to experiment a bit to see how the two work together…

Can I choose to show the papers in a specific folder with a label?
I use labels to designate the importance and folders to designate research topics. But now it seems impossible to select the important literature in a topic (not in all papers).

Welcome to our forum, @Vicken_Lee! You can select multiple labels and/or folders simultaneously by clicking them while holding down Shift. This will show all papers with the selected labels/folders assigned.