MusicBrainz Picard for Mac

February, 17th 2025 - 38.29 MB - Open Source

Latest Version

MusicBrainz Picard 2.13.3 LATEST
Review by

Sophia Jones
Operating System

macOS 10.14 Mojave or later
User Rating

Click to vote
Author / Product

Robert Kaye / External Link
Filename

MusicBrainz-Picard-2.13.3-macOS-10.14.dmg
MD5 Checksum

0284d3a85c2975206f1258ed670c3fc5

MusicBrainz Picard for Mac is a free powerful music tagger software for macOS written in Python. Picard supports all popular music formats, including MP3, FLAC, OGG, M4A, WMA, WAV, and more.

Picard uses AcoustID audio fingerprints, allowing files to be identified by the actual music, even if they have no metadata.

Picard for macOS can look up entire music CDs with a click. If you need a particular feature, you can choose from a selection of available plugins or write your own. Picard is licensed under GPL 2.0 or later, and is hosted on GitHub where it’s actively developed by some awesome developers.

Start with opening individual music files or directories by dragging them into the left-hand pane. Picard will read the metadata from each of the files and unless they have been tagged before, the files will be deposited into the "Unmatched files" folder.

Files that have been tagged before and contain MusicBrainz track identifiers will open up in the right-hand pane as a part of its release.

Instead of using release-oriented and metadata-dependent lookups, Picard can try and tag your files as single files (rather than a cluster) based on their audio fingerprint. If you select a set of files in the left-hand pane and click "Scan", Picard will find AcoustIDs for your files and query MusicBrainz to find a track that matches them.

If you want granular control over how your files are being tagged, or the above methods provided inaccurate results (or no results), the alternative is to manually lookup and choose the correct release(s) for your files.

Picard for Mac is very flexible and can be customized using scripts and plugins to do things such as:

Rename and reorganize your collection using the functions provided in the scripting language
Customize how Picard applies the MusicBrainz metadata to your files
Encapsulate scripting, download cover art, and add other functionality to Picard

A lot of Picard's power is in its extensive drag and drop features. Try some of these operations:

Drag a file from the file browser to an album track.
Drag a file from the file browser to an album -- this attempts to match the file to the album automatically.
Drag a directory from the file browser to an album -- this attempts to match all the files from the dir to the album.
Drag an album cluster onto an album to match the cluster to the album.
Drag one album onto another to match all the files from one to the other.
Drag an album cluster into unmatched files to move the cluster back to unmatched.
Drag unmatched files from an album onto another album or back to unmatched files.

Picard supports the following file formats:

MPEG-1 Audio (.mp3, .mp2, .m2a)
MPEG-4 Audio (.m4a, .m4b, .m4p, .m4v, .mp4)
Windows Media Audio (.wma, .wmv, .asf)
Microsoft WAVE (.wav)
The True Audio (.tta)
FLAC (.flac)
Audio Interchange File Format (.aiff, .aif, .aifc)
Musepack (.mpc, .mp+)
WavPack (.wv)
OptimFROG (.ofr, .ofs)
Monkey's Audio (.ape)
Tom's lossless Audio Kompressor (.tak)
Speex (.spx)
Ogg FLAC (.oggflac)
Ogg Theora (.ogg)
Ogg Opus (.opus)
Ogg Audio (.oga)
Ogg Video (.ogv)
Ogg Video (.ogv)
ADTS stream / AAC (.aac)
AC-3 (.ac3, .eac3)

How to Use

Launch the app and configure preferences under "Options"
Add music files via drag-and-drop or File > Add Files
Use "Lookup" or "Scan" to match files with metadata
Review and edit metadata in the bottom pane
Save changes by clicking the "Save" button
Use plugins to enhance tagging and file organization
Customize file naming patterns in Options > File Naming
Group albums using clustering for better organization
Use the sidebar to browse and tag music by album

System Requirements

macOS 10.14 (Mojave) or later

64-bit Intel or Apple Silicon (via Rosetta)

100 MB free disk space

Internet connection for metadata lookup

At least 2 GB RAM recommended

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