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Tag files from folder and file names

Uses Filename → Tag Works on files in Artist/Album/ folders Time 2 minutes per batch Undo Cmd+Z / Ctrl+Z

The problem

Your files have empty or wrong tags, but they are well organised on disk. The folders name the artist and the album, and the file names hold the track number and title:

Music/
└── Juniper Vale/
    └── Harbour Lights (2024)/
        ├── 01 - Low Tide.mp3
        ├── 02 - Lanterns on the Water.mp3
        └── 03 - Paper Boats.mp3

You want all of that in the tags:

File ARTIST ALBUM YEAR TRACK TITLE
01 - Low Tide.mp3 Juniper Vale Harbour Lights 2024 01 Low Tide
02 - Lanterns on the Water.mp3 Juniper Vale Harbour Lights 2024 02 Lanterns on the Water

The solution

Try this on a copy of a few files first. Check the results before applying it to your library; use Edit → Undo in the same session to reverse the recorded changes. Keep the originals as a backup.

  1. Open the Music folder, or the artist's folder, and select the files. Selecting all of them (Cmd+A / Ctrl+A) is fine as long as they all follow the same layout.
  2. Choose Convert → Filename → Tag… (Alt+2; Alt is ⌥ Option on a Mac).

  3. Enter this pattern:

    %artist%\%album% (%year%)\%track% - %title%

  4. Click Preview and check the values for a few files.

  5. Click Apply. The tags are written to the files straight away; there is nothing left to save.

How it works

A Filename → Tag pattern is a picture of the name, with placeholders where the values are. OpenTag lines the pattern up against the end of each file's path:

pattern:  %artist%     \ %album%       (%year%)\ %track% - %title%
path:     Juniper Vale \ Harbour Lights (2024) \ 02      - Lanterns on the Water.mp3
  • \ stands for a folder level. The pattern has two, so OpenTag looks at the file name and the two folders above it. Everything higher up (Music) is ignored. Use \ on macOS and Linux too.
  • The text between placeholders must appear exactly, here -, ( and ).
  • The extension is left out automatically.
  • The whole name must fit for that file to change. Files that do not match are skipped. The Apply button shows the number of matching files and stays disabled when none match. Review every row; use the filter or sort by path to identify files that need a different pattern.

Gotcha: brackets inside album names

Placeholders take as little text as possible. For the folder Harbour Lights (Deluxe) (2024), %album% stops at the first (, so ALBUM becomes Harbour Lights and YEAR becomes Deluxe) (2024. Check the preview for such albums and run them separately with a pattern that matches their folder names, such as %artist%\%album% (Deluxe) (%year%)\%track% - %title%. That pattern leaves (Deluxe) out of the album name. To keep it, run %artist%\%album%\%track% - %title% and remove the year from the album afterwards with the regular expression \s*\(\d{4}\)$ (see Regular expressions).

Variations

No year in the album folder

%artist%\%album%\%track% - %title%

No track number in the file names

%artist%\%album%\%title%

Then number the tracks with Auto-numbering, after sorting the file list by file name.

Disc folders (CD1, CD2) inside the album

%artist%\%album%\CD%discnumber%\%track% - %title%

Skip a part you don't need

%dummy% matches text without storing it. For files named Juniper Vale - 02 - Lanterns on the Water.mp3, where the artist is already in the folder:

%artist%\%album%\%dummy% - %track% - %title%

Two artists in the file name

The same placeholder twice gives a field two values. For Juniper Vale & Mira Solberg - Paper Boats.mp3:

%artist% & %artist% - %title%