Frequently asked questions

AutomaTag, listed on Google Play as Automatic Tag Editor, is an automatic tag editor for Android 7.0 and later. It looks up your songs online and fills in title, artist, album, year, genre and cover art for you.

You can still edit every field by hand, like with any other tag editor.

AutomaTag reads and writes the tags of MP3, M4A (AAC and ALAC), FLAC, OGG, Opus, WMA, WAV, AIFF and APE files, on internal storage and SD card.

Cover images can be saved inside MP3, M4A, FLAC, OGG and Opus files. WMA, WAV, AIFF and APE files keep their text tags, but the cover is skipped.

Every time you open a song, AutomaTag searches iTunes, Deezer and MusicBrainz at the same time, using the title and artist already in the song, or the file name when they are missing. Exact matches come first and compilations are pushed down, so the best match is usually the original album.

Covers are downloaded in high resolution, up to 1200×1200. Where a catalog differs by country, the one set in Lookup Country is used.

Yes. AutomaTag writes the tags right inside your audio files, so they travel with them to a computer, another phone, a car stereo, a USB stick or a cloud backup.

AutomaTag is available in 18 languages, including English, Italian, German, Spanish, French, Portuguese and Korean. It follows the language of your phone.

Title, artist, album, album artist, genre, year, track and disc number with totals, composer, comment and lyrics. Record label, lyricist and copyright can be turned on in the editor settings.

Track and disc numbers are saved as "number/total", for example 3/12. MP3 files can use ID3v2.3 or ID3v2.4: by default AutomaTag picks the one that works best with Android.

Yes. AutomaTag finds the album your songs come from and matches each file to its track: every file gets the same album, album artist, year, genre and cover, with its own title and track number. Disc subfolders like "CD1" are included.

You check the result before anything is saved. Matching an album from the editor or the Files tab is free, up to 100 songs at a time. Tagging all your albums in a batch is a paid feature.

No, the music catalogs don't provide lyrics. You can type or paste them in the Lyrics field, and Web lookup opens a web search for the song.

Synced lyrics are supported too: time the lines while the song plays, or open an .lrc file, and players that support them scroll the lyrics with the song.

Yes. Turn on File renaming in Preferences and every song you save is renamed from its tags. Pick a pattern such as %ARTIST% - %TITLE% (the default), or write your own with %TITLE%, %ARTIST%, %ALBUM%, %ALBUM_ARTIST%, %TRACK_NUMBER%, %TRACK_TOTAL%, %DISC_NUMBER% and %DISC_TOTAL%.

Characters that file names can't contain are removed, and track numbers can get leading zeros so files sort correctly.

Yes. Right after saving, tap Undo. Later, open Preferences › Tag history: it keeps your last 20 changes from the past 30 days, including whole batches and albums, and puts back the tags and cover the files had before.

File names and deleted files can't be restored.

Editing songs one by one, with online lookup and cover search, is free with ads.

The paid features are Batch modes, for tagging hundreds of songs at once, and Audio fingerprinting, which recognizes songs by their sound and unlocks the full duplicate finder. You can buy them separately, or together as AutomaTag Pro at a better price. Each is a one-time purchase with no subscription, and any purchase removes ads.

Yes, everything is. With Google Play Pass you get Batch modes, Audio fingerprinting and the duplicate finder, with no ads. The purchase page in the app shows "Included with Play Pass".

Open Paid features from the app menu and tap Restore now. Purchases are lifetime and linked to the Google account you bought with, so check that the Play Store uses that same account.

If nothing is found, clear the cache and storage of the Google Play Store app in your device settings and try again. Still nothing? Contact support with your order number.

Semi-automatic tags songs one by one, very quickly: for each song you see the matches found online and tap the right one, or skip it.

Fully automatic works in two steps. First it finds a match for every song, even with the app in the background. Then it shows you the whole list: untick the wrong matches and apply the rest. Nothing is saved before you confirm, and every batch can be undone.

Yes, in fully automatic mode. A notification shows the progress and has a Stop button, so keep notifications on for AutomaTag. Semi-automatic mode needs you on the screen, since you choose the match for each song.

Yes. On the first page of batch modes, watch a short video to earn a credit. Each credit runs one batch, semi or fully automatic, with as many songs as you want.

AutomaTag listens to the first 35 seconds of the song on your phone and turns them into a fingerprint, a short code that describes the sound. Only this code and the song duration are sent online to identify the song, never the audio.

It finds the right tags even for files with no title, no artist and a meaningless name like "track01.mp3". By default it is used when the normal search finds nothing.

It listens to the beginning of every song and compares how they sound, so it finds the same song saved twice even with a different name, format or bitrate. Everything happens on your phone: nothing is uploaded.

In each group it marks the best copy: lossless formats first, then the higher bitrate, then the more complete tags. Nothing is removed until you confirm, and on Android 11 and later removed copies go to the system trash.

Since Android 11, apps can't change a file created by another app without asking you, so a system window asks to "Allow AutomaTag to modify" the song. In batch modes one window covers many songs.

To stop the questions, turn on Media management (Android 12 and later) from the app, or give AutomaTag access to your music folder once when it offers "Stop confirming every edit".

Android protects the SD card more than internal storage, so AutomaTag needs your permission once. When the Storage access permission window appears, tap Select, open the folder it names or any folder that contains it, then tap Use this folder and Allow. On Android 10 and older, choose the main folder of the SD card.

Android doesn't allow choosing the Download folder itself or the main storage folder: if your songs are right inside Download, move them into a subfolder or into Music first.

The file is marked as read-only, so no app can change it. This often happens to songs copied from a computer or stored in a system folder. Move the song into the Music folder with a file manager and edit it again, or edit a copy and delete the original.

The file did change. Music players read song information from Android's media library, which sometimes doesn't notice the new tags. To check what's really inside the file, open it in AutomaTag and tap Tap to manual edit.

Then restart the phone, use Rescan folder in the Files tab, or move the files to another folder. Also keep in mind that Android shows one cover per album, so songs with the same or an empty album name all show the same cover.

The Songs and Albums tabs show what Android's media library knows about. Use Scan media library in the menu, or Rescan folder in the Files tab, to add songs Android missed.

Also check your folder filters, and remember that ringtones, voice recordings, songs in hidden folders and, by default, audio shorter than 30 seconds are not listed.

The search uses the title and artist already in the song, or its file name. When they are missing, misspelled or full of extra words, nothing is found. Type the right title and artist, then tap Refresh.

Songs published in only one country may need a different Lookup Country. Audio fingerprinting can recognize songs by their sound, and some rare songs simply aren't in any catalog.

AutomaTag couldn't open or save the file. If the message says the file is corrupted or has an invalid tag header, check that it plays, then try opening and saving it once with a desktop tag editor. If the format isn't supported, see the list of formats above.

If you opened the song with "Share with…" from another app, open it from AutomaTag's Songs or Files tab instead.

No, your audio files never leave your phone. To find a match, only the song's text tags or file name are sent to the music databases. With audio fingerprinting, only the fingerprint and the duration are sent to the AutomaTag server. The duplicate finder works entirely on your phone.

The privacy policy explains every detail.

Use Contact support in the app: it adds your User ID, app version, Android version and phone model for you. Tell us what you were doing, what happened, the exact error message and the file format. You can also email support@automatag.com or join the Telegram community. Please write in English.