Puddletag

General

Installing Puddletag

sudo apt install puddletag

Ubuntu 20.04:

sudo add-apt-repository ppa:ubuntuhandbook1/apps
sudo apt install puddletag

Making changes

  • Changes made in the right side of the screen are automatically saved
  • Or select one or more tracks, make changes in the left box, click Save
  • You can also select a tag for multiple tracks using shift-click and paste the same value into all selected tracks

Renaming files

  1. Put this in the text box near the upper left:
    • For Track number - Title: 
      $num(%track%,2) - %title%
    • For Artist - Title: 
      %artist% - %title%
  2. Select all tracks to rename
  3. Click the F button to the right of the text box

Adding album artist column:

  1. Right-click column names > Select Columns…
  2. Click plus sign
  3. Title: Album Artist
  4. Field: albumartist
  5. In the left, check Album Artist
  6. OK

Auto numbering for tracks

  1. Select all the tracks to autonumber
  2. Tools > Autonumbering Wizard > OK

Look up tags using online sources

  1. Windows > Tag Sources
  2. Source > MusicBrainz
  3. In the search box you can type artist; album, e.g: pimsleur; french plus
  4. Click Search
  5. Select all of the tracks you want to update
  6. Select an album to preview the changes
  7. If you want to apply the updates, click Write
  8. Close the Tag Sources window if desired

Replacing text

  1. Select the tracks you want to update
  2. Actions > Functions > Replace
  3. Under Fields choose the field you want to update or __all for all fields
  4. Fill in the Replace and with fields > OK

String formatting

  1. Select the tracks you want to update
  2. Actions > Functions > Format value
  3. Under Fields choose the field you want to update or __all for all fields
  4. Under Format string, you can rename a tag based on the contents of that tag or another tag, for example
    • Lesson %title%

Tags

List all tags and versions

Windows > make sure Stored Tags is checked

Helpful tags

  • Filename without extension: __filename_no_ext
    • This can be used, for example, to append a tag to the existing filename, e.g. %__filename_no_ext% - %title%

For more tags, see https://docs.puddletag.net/source/tags.html

Album art

See if a track has album art

  1. Open the folder containing the tracks you want to update
  2. If you don’t see the Artwork pane on the right, go to Windows and check Artwork
  3. Look at the Artwork pane on the right to see if the album art is there

Add album art

  1. If you don’t see the Artwork pane on the right, go to Windows and check Artwork
  2. Select all the tracks you wish to update
  3. In the Artwork pane on the right, right-click > Add cover
  4. Browse to the cover you wish to add
  5. Click the Save button near the top left

Remove album art

  1. If you don’t see the Artwork pane on the right, go to Windows and check Artwork
  2. Select all the tracks you wish to update
  3. In the Artwork pane on the right, click the arrows until you see __
  4. Click the Save button near the top left

Change album art

ⓘ There’s a Change cover option in the Artwork window but I couldn’t get it to work to apply changes to all tracks. But this works:

  1. Follow the steps above to remove album art
  2. Follow the steps above to add album art