Meta offers the possibility to find and download high quality album covers via the Tag Finder and Cover Finder features. Data courtesy of Discogs.

Meta is translated in the following languages:

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Meta supports almost all tags defined in the ID3v2 Specification, across all metadata formats.
Here's the complete list:

• Album
• Album Artist
• Artist
• BPM
• Comments
• Compilation
• Composer
• Conductor
• Copyright
• Credits
• Description
• Disc №
• Discs
• Encoder
• Encoding Info
• Encoding Time
• File Owner
• File Type
• Genre
• Grouping
• ISRC
• Involved People
• Key
• Language
• Length
• Lyricist
• Lyrics
• Media Type
• Mood
• Movement
• Movement №
• Movements
• Original Album
• Original Artist
• Original Filename
• Original Lyricist
• Original Release Time
• Playlist Delay
• Podcast
• Podcast Desc
• Podcast ID
• Podcast URL
• Producer Notice
• Publisher
• Radio Name
• Radio Owner
• Rating
• Release Time
• Remix Artist
• Sort Album Artist
• Sort Album
• Sort Artist
• Sort Composer
• Sort Title
• Subtitle
• Subtitle for Set
• Tagging Time
• Title
• Track №
• Tracks
• Website
• Work
• Year

Meta automatically saves changes when you finish editing a field, so there’s no need for a manual Save command. If you’re not satisfied with a change, you can always use Undo to revert it.

To sort any data displayed in the main files list:

• Click a column's header once to sort
• Click it again to reverse that sort-order

A caret symbol will be displayed to the rightmost side of the header to indicate the current sort order. Pointing up when ascending, down when descending.

Note that the order in which columns are sorted, will have a last-to-first order of importance. Meaning that if you want sorting to be applied to Artist → Album → Track Number, in that order, you should start by clicking the header of Track Number, then Album, then Artist.

The Select Similar command allows you to select all files with identical metadata as the one you clicked. Here's how it works:

• Single-click any field in the list (for ex: an artwork thumbnail, an album name, a year…)
• Choose Select Similar from the menu or ⌘⇧A
• Watch the selection extend to all files with identical metadata

This is a great way to sort through artworks that may look identical but aren't, or quickly select an album by name. Combined with the Select Inverse command, it becomes a powerful data-handling tool.

Meta’s filter syntax lets you search using: Freeform text, specific fields, and term exclusion.

Freeform text
Type any text you want to appear in the file.
Remix

Specific fields
Prefix your search with a field name followed by a colon.
artist: Nile

Excluding terms
Prefix terms you want to exclude with a minus sign.
-Beatles, -Lennon

Combined filters
Separate each filter component with a comma.
artist: Nile, album: Savoir Faire, -mp4

Meta’s Find & Replace supports Patterns.

Patterns

Patterns are a way to search for text that follows a rule, not just exact words. If you’ve ever heard of regular expressions, this is the same idea — just presented in a more visual way.

A pattern can contain:

• Normal text (letters, numbers, symbols)
• Capture groups (shown as blue tokens)

Capture Groups

A capture group matches a piece of text and remembers it, so you can reuse it later when replacing text. For example, a capture group can match:

Tabs, Any character, A word, One character, Digits, White Space, etc…

To add capture groups click the plus icon right to the Find field, or click the magnifying-glass icon and choose Insert Pattern from the menu.

Reusing a capture group's matched text, in Replace

Example:
Artist: "Lennon, John (3)"
Find: Word, Word (Digits)
Replace: $2 $1
Result: "John Lennon"

One notable feature of capture groups, is that anything matched by a capture group can be reused in the "Replace" field, using the format: $ + index.

$1 refers to the first capture group
$2 refers to the second capture group

and so on…

After editing tags in Meta, you may need to tell your music player to refresh its library.
Meta provides an Add to Library action that asks compatible music apps to re-read metadata from the files.

To do so:

• Select desired files
• Press the Add to Library button
  • Alternatively select File → Add to Library or ⌥⌘L
• Wait until the operation completes

Selecting the preferred library application

Meta natively supports Music and Doppler, thanks to custom scripting, but any other audio program can be chosen. For that, head to Meta's preferences, and look for “Preferred Music Library” under the General tab.

Having issues with updating?

Metadata changes sometimes have trouble propagating.
See Refreshing metadata in music libraries & third-party apps

iTunes / Music.app do not read embedded metadata from WAV files
If you need reliable metadata support and full compatibility, the recommended solution is to convert WAV files to formats such as AIFF or ALAC, both of which fully support embedded tags in Apple’s music apps.
See: Convert WAV files to Apple Lossless.

Apple provide a proprietary audio format that deals with losless audio and integrates well with its apps and technologies, namely Apple Lossless, or ALAC.

Convert to Apple Lossless

1. In Finder, select the desired files
2. Right-click (or Control-click) the selection, and choose Encode Selected Audio Files
3. In the conversion dialog, select Apple Lossless as the encoder
4. Click Continue

Migrate Original Tags

1. In Meta, open both groups of files in the same order
2. Select the .WAV files, then Edit → Copy
3. Select the .mp4 files, then Edit → Paste

Meta.app is distributed and sold on three different platforms: SetApp (subscription), Paddle (via this website), and the Mac App Store. Please note that depending on what platform you purchased on, the licensing system will be different.

If you purchased from us via Paddle:

• Launch Meta.app
• Select “Meta” menu, then “Retrieve License”
• Follow the given instructions

If you purchased from the Mac App Store:

• Go to your Applications folder, and delete Meta.app if present
• Open the Mac App Store
• Sign-in to your account
• Look for the app under the “Mac Apps” section
• Click Install

In case Meta encounters a crash: brace yourself, grab a cup of tea, and send us the reports for inspection. Here's how:

1. Open console.app, located under Applications Utilities Console.app
2. In the sidebar, find “User Diagnostic Reports”
3. Click the disclosure triangle to expand the list
4. Select the .crash reports whose filenames begin with “Meta”
5. Send these files as email attachments, using the link below

Send Reports

macOS's Finder won't be able to read tags from .flac and .wav formats, and as a consequence, a correctly tagged file of this type will appear as displaying the default icon in macOS's Finder.

Track number, disc number, track total, and disc total tags cannot be saved with a leading zero, because they are represented internally as integers, and not as strings.

To use zero-padding when converting tags to file names or directory names, enable the “Use Numeric Padding” preference in the “Converter” section of Meta's preference pane.

Meta reads and writes the Grouping tag according to the ID3v2 standard, using the TIT1 frame.

Until version 12.5.4.42, iTunes followed the same behavior.
More recent versions now store Grouping values in a private ID3 frame called GRP1.
This change breaks compatibility, as most software and music players traditionally use TIT1.

Meta continues to follow the standard, however, you can enable an iTunes-compatible mode. if needed.
To do so, open Preferences → Metadata, and enable the corresponding checkbox, as shown below:

Third-party apps and music libraries such as iTunes and Music often have their own internal database. When you first add music files, the app copies the metadata into this database. From then on, the app usually displays information from its database—not directly from the files.

Because of this, metadata changes (especially artwork) may not always be picked up automatically.

To force a refresh, you can try one of the following:

• Close and reopen the app
• Change the currently selected folder in the app’s file browser

In rare cases, the only way to force a full refresh is to:

• Remove the files from the library / app
• Add them back again manually

This usually rebuilds entries using the updated metadata.