mirror of
https://github.com/actualbudget/actual.git
synced 2026-07-15 22:54:03 -05:00
[GH-ISSUE #7475] [Bug]: Tags end on whitespace #117471
No Assignees
Notifications
Due Date
No due date set.
Dependencies
No dependencies set.
Reference: github-starred/actual#117471
Reference in New Issue
Block a user
Delete Branch "%!s()"
Deleting a branch is permanent. Although the deleted branch may continue to exist for a short time before it actually gets removed, it CANNOT be undone in most cases. Continue?
Originally created by @rmsppu on GitHub (Apr 11, 2026).
Original GitHub issue: https://github.com/actualbudget/actual/issues/7475
What happened?
The documentation regarding tags (https://actualbudget.org/docs/transactions/tags) states:
An arbitrary string may be entered as a "tag", but only the first non-whitespace series of characters are used in tag operations.
How can we reproduce the issue?
#Tag one(with an inital space before "#").The expected behavior is that only the transaction modified in step one, to have the Notes content "#Tag one" would be matched by this filter.
The actual behavior is that all transactions with the notes content "#Tag" are matched, regardless of any string after the whitespace (ie., "#Tag one", "#Tag two", and "#Tag this is some arbitrary text" are all treated as only having "#Tag").
Preferred resolution:
Correct the handling of strings that are considered tags to allow whitespace within a tag.
Alternative resolution:
Update the documentation to match the existing behavior, by stating:
Where are you hosting Actual?
Docker
What browsers are you seeing the problem on?
Firefox, Chrome
Operating System
Linux
@Juulz commented on GitHub (Apr 11, 2026):
Although the screenshot in the doc makes it clear that the tag ends with a space or another tag, it's not specifically stated in the text. When you look at the note or at the tag management page, only the actual tag is in the pill.
@rmsppu commented on GitHub (Apr 11, 2026):
It depends on how you define "the actual tag". According to the written documentation, the tag should allow embedded whitespace. This behavior is consistent with other parts of Actual Budget, such as the fact that appending text to a note does not separate the new text from the old text with whitespace (ie., that whitespace is not treated as special characters, and that only the # has semantic value for separating tags).
I've created ~50+ tags with whitespace that are compliant with the documentation, and these are applied to ~2K transactions. The inconsistent tag handling makes it difficult to use these tags, since tags like "#Family gift (parents)", "#Family gift (siblings)", and "#Family visit travel expense" are all treated as the string "#Family".
@Juulz commented on GitHub (Apr 11, 2026):
What is in the pill is the actual tag, the rest of the stuff in the notes are just notes.
How many tags are in your tag management page? Do any of them have embedded spaces?
@rmsppu commented on GitHub (Apr 11, 2026):
I've got ~250 tags now, down from ~4K (yes, you read that correctly). I imported several years of bank transactions, many of which contain info like "Withdrawal at ATM #123" or "Withdrawal POS at Grocery #456" or "Deposit Check #789", resulting in a tremendous number of useless tags (and a similar number of almost-useless Payees).
Looking at the tag management page, none of them have embedded spaces. Urgh. Now to try to write regular expressions to turn spaces between tags into underscores, change rules that create tags to use underscores, change rules to use underscores when matching tag names, and change my Report filters that tried to match on tags with embedded spaces.