XnView Software

Is there a way to add a button to the toolbar that will apply a predefined keyword to the current photo, & save?

Currently the quickest way I found is:
1) Ctrl+i
2) Switch to the "Keywords" tab in the dialog
3) Add the keyword
4) Apply
5) Ctrl+S to save

That gets a bit labor intensive when tagging a large number of photos, so any way I could speed this up would be greatly appreciated

With your method you can create iptc and / or xmp keywords , depending on the settings you choosed in "Options" tab ( "mode" drop down menu)

For step (2), you can enable "open last opened tab"
For step (4) and (5), you can use "Write" button (or "Write to all" if many photos were selected)

Another way is to use "categories" pane, and choose your settings in "Tools, settings, metadata"
If you enable "create xmp data", both xmp keywords and xmp hierarchical keywords will be created, but it's not a problem.
This way is much more faster ...

If you have a large amount of keywords, you can use "categories sets" , this pane allows you to create a button for each keyword that you often use ...

I don't see either an "open last opened tab" option, nor a "write" button. Screenshot:
Note: I'm doing this from the single-photo view mode, not browser mode. (I believe categories pane would also only apply to the browser mode - I'm on a laptop with a small screen, so I always view photos in just the viewer, maximized).

Thanks again in advance

you don't want to use the browser mode?

Correct. On an already small screen, browser mode eats up lots of valuable space, which makes it much harder to see details of the pics when I'm going thru & tagging.

metal450 wrote: Fri Jan 24, 2020 2:38 pm Correct. On an already small screen, browser mode eats up lots of valuable space, which makes it much harder to see details of the pics when I'm going thru & tagging.

Currently no better way in view mode

Is there no such thing as i.e. a macro or something similar? It's really a lot of steps to be able to tag photos

metal450 wrote: Fri Jan 24, 2020 2:38 pm Correct. On an already small screen, browser mode eats up lots of valuable space, which makes it much harder to see details of the pics when I'm going thru & tagging.

I really mean no offense here, but if you are working regularly with photos, you need high quality, big screen monitors, preferably 2 or more.

It would help your work tremendously if you could see 10-20 big thumbnails at the same time and assign keywords to them in bulk.

I'm a digital nomad & I live on the road (my photos are travel photos, which I process while I travel). I cannot carry around large monitors in my backpack.