Audio Tag Editor

What this does

This tool edits the metadata on an audio file — the title, artist, album, track number, year, genre, comment and cover art that your player shows in its library. It reads what is already there, lets you change it, and writes the file back.

The audio itself is copied through byte for byte. Nothing is decoded, nothing is re-encoded, and nothing is re-compressed. That is worth stating plainly because most online tools that touch audio cannot say it: converting a file to change its title would lose quality every time. Here the output differs from the input only in the metadata.

Everything runs in your browser. No file is uploaded, no account is needed, and no online music database is consulted — so nothing about your library leaves your machine.

Which formats are supported

The format is detected by looking inside the file, not at its extension — a renamed file still works, and a file whose extension lies will not be mangled by the wrong parser.

WAV tags, and why they are unreliable elsewhere

WAV has no single standard for metadata. There are two competing conventions, and software disagrees about which to read: RIFF INFO chunks are read by Windows Explorer and older players, while an embedded ID3v2 tag is what macOS Finder, iTunes and DJ software such as Rekordbox and Serato look for.

Most tools write one of the two, which is why a WAV so often looks tagged in one program and blank in another. This tool writes both, from the same values, so the file reads correctly in as many places as WAV allows. Cover art travels in the ID3v2 half.

WAV is also where DAWs leave the most debris. A mixdown often carries a bext chunk with originator and coding history, iXML project data, XMP packets, or ACID tempo information — none of which most players show, all of which ride along in every copy of the file. Strip all metadata removes the lot and leaves the audio untouched.

Limitations, honestly

• Nothing is looked up online. There is no MusicBrainz search and no cover-art fetch, because that would mean sending information about your files to a third party. You type the tags, or paste them from wherever you already have them.
• Cover art is embedded as supplied by default. It is not resized or re-encoded unless you choose a size, so a very large image makes a very large file. The dimensions and size are shown so you can decide. Choosing a size scales the longest edge to fit and keeps the original format — the whole image is preserved, never cropped.
• One file at a time. There is no batch mode and no renaming files from their tags.
• Tags this tool does not show are still preserved. ReplayGain values, MusicBrainz IDs and any other fields already in the file are carried through unchanged rather than silently dropped. The count is shown when there are any.
• Ogg and Opus are not supported, nor AIFF or WMA. Each is a separate metadata format, and demand for them is small next to the four above.
• MP3 tags are written as ID3v2.3 rather than 2.4. It is the older of the two current versions and the more widely readable, especially on hardware players — which matters more for tags than being current does.