diff --git a/R/generics.R b/R/generics.R
index 77fd52ceb..3e45353e4 100644
--- a/R/generics.R
+++ b/R/generics.R
@@ -4,9 +4,15 @@
 # License GPL v3
 
 setMethod("tags", signature(x="SpatRaster"),
-	function(x) {
+	function(x, name=NULL) {
 		v <- x@cpp$getTags()
-		matrix(v, ncol=2, byrow=TRUE, dimnames = list(NULL, c("name", "value")))
+		m <- matrix(v, ncol=2, byrow=TRUE, dimnames = list(NULL, c("name", "value")))
+		if (!is.null(name)) {
+			i <- match(name, m[,1])
+			m[i,2]
+		} else {
+			m
+		}
 	}
 )
 
diff --git a/man/tags.Rd b/man/tags.Rd
index c5c257767..d008613f7 100644
--- a/man/tags.Rd
+++ b/man/tags.Rd
@@ -6,16 +6,16 @@
 \alias{set.tags,SpatRaster-method}
 
   
-\title{Set or get tags to a SpatRaster}
+\title{Set or get tags}
 
 \description{
-You can set arbitrary tags to a SpatRaster. Each tag has a name and a value.
+You can set arbitrary tags metadata to a SpatRaster. Each tag has a name and a value.
 }
 
 \usage{
 \S4method{set.tags}{SpatRaster}(x, name, value)
 
-\S4method{tags}{SpatRaster}(x)
+\S4method{tags}{SpatRaster}(x, name=NULL)
 }
 
 \arguments{
@@ -27,7 +27,7 @@ You can set arbitrary tags to a SpatRaster. Each tag has a name and a value.
 }
 
 \value{
-SpatRaster (\code{set.tags}) or matrix (\code{tags})
+SpatRaster (\code{set.tags}), matrix (\code{tags}) or character (\code{tags} and \code{name} is not NULL)
 }
 
 \examples{
@@ -38,6 +38,8 @@ tags(r)
 r <- set.tags(r, "another_tag", "another_value")
 tags(r)
 
+tags(r, "two")
+
 # remove one tag
 r <- set.tags(r, c("one"), c(""))
 tags(r)