How to Edit ID3 Tags on Mac Automatically

"Hi all, just switched to Mac and need a ID3 tag editor to edit MP3 tags on my Mac. On Windows I used the MP3tag which is absolutely great. But I can't find it on Mac platform. So is there any decent Mac MP3 tag editor recommendation?"

Can't find a Mac version of MP3tag? Even though MP3 tag is widely considered as the best yet free ID3 tag editor to add ID3 tags to MP3s on Windows platform, it still comes with no Mac version. That's really a regret for those needing to fix MP3 tags on Mac OS X. And the post will show you how to edit ID3 tags on mac automatically with ID3 taggers.

Part 1: What Is An ID3 Tag

Before we delve into the details of how to edit ID3 tags, we will first have an overview of what they are. An ID3 tag is a type of metadata container used to store information about an MP3 file within the audio file itself. An ID3 tag allows the creator of a file to embed relevant information like the name of the artist, track title, album, track number and genre in the file, allowing that information to travel with the file. This capacity is especially useful for media files, like podcast s, that have been syndicated, downloaded or exchanged over the Internet independently from the Web pages that they were originally hosted upon.

The newer versions of the ID3 standard include support for chapters and enhanced podcasts with embedded hyperlinks and images. Content producers may use ID3 tag editors to add and edit metadata for their media files. Media players like iTunes on Windows and on macOS (now known as Apple Music) also support editing of more advanced parameters, such as album art. Other media players like VLC, Audacity, Windows Media player, etc. can also do the trick. ID3 tags may be edited in a variety of ways. On some platforms, the file’s properties may be edited by viewing extended information in the file manager. Additionally, some of the audio players allow editing single or multiple files. Editing multiple files is commonly referred to as “batch tagging”. There are also dedicated applications that focus on doing this task, as well as other related tasks. Kid3 Tag Editor is an example of such software, which offers advanced features such as batch tagging, or editing based on regular expressions. The image below illustrates an example of ID3 tag editing on the macOS version of Apple Music (formerly iTunes).

Part 2: How to Edit ID3 Tags on Mac

As the best-used MP3 tag editor for Mac users, it assists you to edit ID3 tags on Mac in batch, automatically and efficiently. It's smart enough to detect your songs with incomplete tags, find missing ID3 tags like artwork, album, artist, year, genre, etc. for your songs, then apply all tags to your songs automatically. Batch fix is allowed. Besides, you can personalize your song tags with the program's editing function. Can't wait to take a try? Follow the tutorial below to master how to edit MP3 tags with this intelligent MP3 tagging software.

Leawo Tunes Cleaner for Mac 

☉ Clean up iTunes music library and other music libraries in clicks;
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☉ One click duplicate removal to remove duplicate songs in music library;
☉ Manually add and complete music tags like artist, album, cover, genre, etc.

Scan Music Library

Once install and launch the MP3tag for Mac, you can see the program interface as below. Songs in your iTunes library can be scanned after clicking "Start to clean iTunes" button. You can even click "Open music files" to scan music folders on your Mac.

Fix Tags Automatically

After scanning, this auto MP3 tagger would list all your songs with incomplete tags in specific categories like "Songs without Album Artwork", "Songs without artist", "Songs without album", etc.Now you could click "Fix All" button to fix all music files displayed, or select the music files you want for fixing. The software will find the proper tags from online data base and add them to your songs, so as to make your music library perfect.

Edit MP3 Tags Manually

If there are "Unrecognized Songs" after auto-fixing, you could click the edit icon in each song frame to invoke the internal music tag editor. You could add music tags like Name, Artist, Album, Year, Genre, etc. by hand, then click "Save" button to save the manual editing. After all, click "Apply" button. The whole MP3 tags editing finished!

After you finish the above steps, you will get MP3 tags in iTUnes or other music files on your Mac computers. And if you are Windows users, you can click here to know how to edit ID3 tags on Windows computers.

Note: The auto music tag adding feature of Leawo Tunes Cleaner has been discontinued. You could use it to add or edit music tags manually.

Part 3: How to Edit ID3 Tags on Mac via Kid3 Tag Editor

Kid3 is an easy-to-use application which is used in editing ID3v1 and ID3v2 tags for MP3 files without any effort. Though lots of MP3 players are able to edit tags, they cannot be used in an effective way as Kid3.

Kid3 aims at editing ID3 tags in files of albums in the most effective way instead of grabbing or encoding MP3 files. ID3v1 or ID3v2 tags which can be edited by other programs are able to be controlled by Kid3 with the conversion of both of them. Additionally, Kid3 can get access to all of ID3v2 tags. Kid3 can set the same value to the tags in different files, for example, artist or album or year or genre of files from an album with the same value can be set all-in-one. If the file name contains the tags information, the tags can be edited automatically according to the file name. The following instructions will guide you on how to edit ID3 tags on Mac via Kid3.

1. Supposed that a directory includes MP3 files, where the tracks are from the album named “Let’s Tag”, the album is related to the band called “One Hit Wonder”.
2. This directory is given the name in the format “artist-album”, in this case, the directory should be named “One Hit Wonder - Let’s Tag”.
3. This directory includes the tracks in the format “track title.mp3”, this is very convenient due to the short file names and the correct order sorted in alphabet. Apart from this, the information about the artist and the album has already existed in the name of directory, and you don’t need to repeat the file name anymore.

However, go back to our case, some untagged files are listed in the directory, we have to tag them with Kid3. You can refer to the steps below:

1. Choose one file from the directory by using the file menu or opening the toolbar.
2. All the files are displayed in the listbox of the files.
3. To generate tags to the files, the information from the directory can be used.
Choose the files and click on them, then click on the option “Tag 1 button in the files section”.
4. The value for the artist, the title name and the album will be set in all files.
5. To set the value of the year and genre for all files, select all files and type the specific “Year” in the date and choose “Pop” from the Genre box. These two values are set automatically.
6. All tags including the proper values can be seen after we select the first file to change the option. You also can choose the tags one by one from other files to verify.
7. Once the tags are consented by us, then we can save it by choosing the option in the file menu or the toolbar.
8. Choose the option “Create Playlist” from file menu and a file called “One Hit Wonder - Let’s Tag will be generated in the directory.

Part 4: How to Edit ID3 Tags on Mac using iTunes

To edit ID3 tags on Mac in iTunes, you can refer to the specific steps as below:

1. Launch iTunes on your Mac, then select the songs you would like to edit by single click on it. Also, multiple songs can be selected simultaneously for editing.
2. After selecting the songs for editing, choose the option “Get Info” from the File menu. Then choose the keyboard option “Command + I” on your Mac. Finally, hold down the option “Control” when you are clicking or have right-clicked on the selected songs.
3. The Get Info dialog will pop up and list all metadata of the songs for your editing.

Part 5: How to Edit ID3 Tags on Mac through VLC

VLC media player is able to edit ID3 tags in video or audio files. You can follow the tutorial below:

1. Turn on the audio or the video that you would like to edit ID3 tags via VLC.
2. Once you have turned on the target file, click “Tools” from menu bar and then choose Media information or press on “Ctrl + I” from the keyboard on Mac.

3. A dialog “Current Media Information” will pop up.

4. Choose General tab from the pop-up dialog, then the ID3 tags like title, artist, genre and album and more can be edited to your needs.
5. Once you have finished ID3 tags that you need, click on the button “Save Metadata” on the right corner bottom of the dialog.

Part 6: How to Edit ID3 Tags on Mac with Audacity

Audacity allows you to build a template for ID3 tags which are applied once MP3 files have been created. To build the template, you should run audacity and refer to the guides as below:

1. Select file and then get Metadata Editor opened. The dialog about editing ID3 tags will be turned on, then the option ID3v2 has already been chosen by default.

2. Then ID3 tags information can be filled in the different fields like title, artist, album, track number and year, etc.
3. In the drop-down menu of Genres, choose the option which is the most suitable for the podcast.
4. Finally, click on the button “Done”. When your MP3 files have been generated with Audacity, your tagged files will show you it has got ready to upload.

Part 7: Comparison of above products

Although the above-mentioned products will help you to edit ID3 tags which should help you in organizing your music library, not all of them are the same as they all have different capabilities. The table below will show you the differences between these software tools.

Leawo Tunes Cleaner is your best bet in fixing anything related to iTunes or Apple Music applications on your Windows or Mac computer. We highly recommend you to try Leawo Tunes Cleaner today.