Tags

Use tags for information that helps you make listening decisions but is not represented consistently by ordinary metadata. Good tag families include mood, activity, setting, source, production status, personal themes, and broad genre groupings.

Use the Tagging Quiz for repeated artist- or album-level decisions. It presents focused groups so you can apply consistent tags without manually locating every track. For one-off corrections, select tracks and use the Tags panel in Tagging Mode.

Work in passes: add broad genre or source tags first, then mood or activity tags where they add value. Filtering for missing:tags creates a manageable queue of unfinished tracks. Avoid creating a new tag unless you expect to use it again.

Tag Palette Presets let you show only the tags needed for a project or curation pass, such as keep, revisit, and reject. The manager, preset selector, and number-key tagging require Premium. Ordinary tagging and filtering remain available in Free.

1. Open Tag Preset Manager from the notebook icon in the Tags panel header, after the four quick-filter buttons.
2. In Presets, type to find or create a preset. Each row has copy and delete actions. Default always contains all tags and is read-only; duplicate it to customize.
3. In All hashtags, search or create tags. Use the toolbar to show only or hide themed tags, hide empty tags, show counts, set the minimum count, or sort by name or count.
4. Click rows to select them, Shift-click a range, or toggle all visible rows with Select all/none. Drag selected tags into the preset column or click the right arrow. Remove a member with its ×.
5. Choose Save presets, then select the preset in the Tags panel. The preset limits the visible palette without changing any track’s existing tags.

The manager is draggable and resizable. Question-mark buttons explain each column. Cancel discards preset edits; tags created in All hashtags remain in the database.

In Tag Preset Manager, select a custom preset and drag its tags into any of the ten shortcut slots: 1–9, 0. Drag assigned tags between slots to move or swap them. You can use just a few slots; alphabetic order does not assign shortcuts. Default has no assignments—duplicate it first.

Save the preset, select it in the Tags panel, and enable Number-key tagging beside the manager button. In Library/TreeView Checkbox Mode, check the tracks to edit and press an assigned number. This uses the same tag toggle as clicking: add it where missing, or remove it when all checked tracks already have it, subject to the existing removal guard.

Numbers typed into text fields, contenteditable spans or divs, and custom text editors remain text. Dialogs and menus suspend number-key tagging. Empty slots do nothing. Number-key mode starts off each session and turns off when switching databases.

Presets, the active palette, and number assignments are stored in db/<database-name>/config.json. Changes use the normal delayed save indicator and force-save controls. Backup & Restore includes this file in individual, complete-database, and automatic MCP backups; restoring it reloads the configuration immediately.

The Tags panel has two distinct modes. In Tagging Mode, clicking a tag adds or removes it from the selected tracks. In Filtering Mode, clicking a tag narrows the library. Check the mode before performing a bulk operation.

Tag-panel filters also combine with search chips even though they use different visual controls. If the list seems unexpectedly narrow, clear both the chips and the selected Tags-panel filters.

Yes. Auto Tag on Scan can convert embedded genre values into TrackRate tags. Enable it only when the source metadata is clean and consistent. Real-world files often contain vague or overly specific values such as “Unknown,” “Synth-pop,” or long catalog classifications, which can produce a noisy tag list.

For mixed-quality libraries, the Tagging Quiz gives you more control. If automatic import creates unwanted tags, disable it, clean the tag list, and establish a smaller vocabulary before scanning more folders.

Yes — TrackRate imports the musical key if another application has already embedded it in the file, but it does not calculate key itself. Key detection is inherently unreliable for general-purpose music: most tracks do not stay in a single key, and automated analysis often produces inconsistent results across different tools.

Key tagging is primarily useful for EDM, electronic music, and sample libraries where tracks tend to be harmonically simpler and DJs mix by compatible keys. For a general music player covering all genres, key detection creates more noise than value.

When TrackRate encounters an embedded key value from another app (such as Mixed In Key, Traktor, Rekordbox, or Serato), it parses and normalizes the value into a consistent format and applies it as a hashtag (for example, #key-am or #key-fm). The file will carry a hashtag with the key label so you can filter and organize harmonically compatible tracks.

TrackRate can write its hashtags to the embedded comment field, producing values such as #jazz #vinyl #live. This makes the tags visible to compatible players and DJ tools while keeping the audio stream unchanged.

The operation still modifies the file on disk. Back up irreplaceable audio and test with a few files before applying it broadly. If another application also manages the comment field, inspect the result to make sure the programs do not overwrite each other’s information.

Use the Tags panel management controls to rename a tag, combine duplicate concepts, or remove tags you no longer need. Before deleting, filter by that tag and inspect the affected tracks. A cleanup such as merging #rock-n-roll and #rock should reflect how you actually search, not only spelling.

For a large cleanup, export or back up first. Premium MCP can assist with repeated changes, but changes are immediate and should be performed in small batches with explicit mappings.