Mp3tag for Mac provides a variety of Actions, which can be used on filenames and tags. The actions can be applied individually via Actions → Quick Actions ⌥⌘ 6 or be grouped into named and reusable Action Groups via Actions → Actions ⌘ 6. Action Groups serve as repeatable workflows in Mp3tag for Mac.
When using Quick Actions you can select one of the different available action types from the list. This action will be applied to the selected files and the changes are saved immediately.
Tip 1: Use search as you type to make the Quick Actions feature even faster.
When using Action Groups, you can create an action group and add one or many actions to the group. The actions in an action group are executed in the sequence they are listed. You can create multiple different action groups that have different purposes and use categories to combine different action groups into coherent sets.
Tip 2: Start with a simple action group for the task at hand. You can always duplicate groups and actions to create more complex groups or categories.
When you close the actions window via Apply, the selected action group or all action groups in the selected category are applied to the selected files and the changes are saved immediately.
Mp3tag for Mac currently supports these action types:
- Adjust Cover
- Case conversion
- Convert codepage
- Export Cover
- Format tag field
- Import Cover
- Import tag fields
- Import text file
- Merge duplicate fields
- Remove duplicate fields
- Remove fields
- Remove fields except
- Replace
- Replace with Regular Expression
- Set Cover Properties
- Split tag field
Many of the actions are configured with a field to operate on, e.g., ARTIST or TITLE. Some fields are special:
_TAG— All tag fields_FILENAME— The filename of the file_DIRECTORY— The parent directory of the file_ALL— Both_TAGand_FILENAME(not_DIRECTORY)
Most of the actions are also configured by a format string.
Learn more about format strings in Format Strings and Available Placeholders and scripting functions in Scripting Functions
Adjust Cover
The Adjust Cover action allows for resizing and/or changing the image format of embedded cover art.
You can choose between Original, JPEG, and PNG image formats where Original just keeps the image format of the embedded cover.
Max. size is the maximum width and height in pixels of the embedded cover image. If the cover is smaller than the size provided, the size of the cover is not changed. Resizing the image keeps the aspect ratio, except if Crop to square is enabled.
Case conversion
The Case conversion action allows for changing the upper and lower case of the selected field.
Supported conversions are:
- Mixed Case changes the first character of each word to upper case and all other characters to lower case.
- UPPER changes all characters to upper case.
- lower changes all characters to lower case.
Convert codepage
If you have problems displaying tags with characters from other charsets (like Cyrillic) in Mp3tag, the tags are probably stored in a system codepage instead of Unicode or ISO-8859-1.
To convert these tags from a specific codepage to Unicode, select the appropriate tag field(s) and choose the codepage from the drop-down list.
Export Cover
The Export Cover action saves the embedded cover art to the relative or absolute filename specified by the format string.
You can use fixed text like cover and placeholders like %artist% and %album% in the format string. The file extension is automatically appended based on the mimetype of the image.
Format tag field
The Format tag field action fills fields or renames files based on other fields content or fixed text.
This action can also be used to copy the content of one tag field to another tag field or to fill fields with fixed text serving as a kind of template.
Learn more about format strings in Format Strings and Available Placeholders and scripting functions in Scripting Functions
Import Cover
The Import Cover action imports the image specified by the absolute or relative filename and embeds it as cover art into the tag of the file.
You can use fixed text like folder.jpg and placeholders like %artist% and %album% in the format string.
Import tag fields
The Import tag fields action takes a source format string and imports tag fields using a specified pattern format string.
This action type is useful if you want to split the content of one tag field to multiple other fields. An example would be splitting the title filled with Some Artist / Some Title to the respective fields using %title% as source format and %artist% / %title% as format string.
Note, that you can use the same placeholder in both Source format and Formatstring.
Import text file
Imports the contents of the text file specified by the absolute or relative file name into the specified tag field. You can use placeholders like %artist% or %album% within the file name.
Merge duplicate fields
The Merge duplicate fields action merges duplicate tag fields (e.g., three distinct ARTIST fields) to one field.
The contents of the duplicate fields in the new field are separated by the specified separator string.
Remove duplicate fields
The Remove duplicate fields action removes duplicate tag fields (e.g., three distinct ARTIST fields) and keeps the first of the fields.
Remove fields
The Remove fields action removes the specified fields, e.g., %comment% %www%.
You can also remove embedded cover art by enabling the Remove covers checkbox.
Remove fields except
The Remove fields except action removes all fields visible to Mp3tag for Mac except for the specified fields, e.g., %title% %album% %artist% %track% %year%.
You can also preserve embedded cover art by enabling the Keep covers checkbox.
Replace
The Replace action replaces the given Original string from the selected field with the Replace string. If the replacement string is empty, the original string is removed.
If Matches word is enabled, Mp3tag for Mac replaces Original only when it is matched as whole word. Case sensitive enables case sensitive comparison of the original string.
Replace with Regular Expression
The Replace with Regular Expression action uses regular expressions when replacing strings.
Regular expressions are a formal language that is used to find strings or parts of strings that match a specific pattern. This pattern is defined via Regexp and matches are replaced by the given replacement string.
Mp3tag for Mac uses the ICU regular expression engine. A good resource to test and experiment with regular expressions is regex101.
Set Cover Properties
Allows for setting of Cover Type and Cover Description of embedded cover art.
If you set the type to < keep >, the existing cover type is preserved.
If you set the description field to an empty string, the description of embedded cover art will also be removed. If it's set to < keep >, any existing description is preserved.
You can choose to apply this action only to covers of a specific type or all covers.
Split tag field
The Split tag field action uses the given separator character to split the content of a tag field into multiple separate tag fields.