In Windows i use mp3 Tag to edit mp3 tags. A Linux mp3 editor (puddletag) isn’t as good and i try to get mp3 tag working on my Aurora Linux. I installed Bottles, and installed mp3 tag exe-version. This works and i also can navigate to my mp3 files. But when selecting a directory, it cant see any mp3 files:
It should show the files in the folder. There are no visible files.
In windows, i select the folder, and it will add all the files in a folder (and sub-folder) to mp3 tag for editing.
Here selecting the folder and clicking “open” does nothing and also shows no files.
i guess that is where one would open a single file. But IRL, I always open a folder to edit all files (i.e. one folder = 1 album, so the album name will be the same for all files)
And i double-checked, the mp3 files are in the folder:
and on the right pane, it it shows where the files should be listed.
And another annoying feature of this is, in W11, mp3 tag remembers the last folder location. Under Bottles, i have to manually go all the way to the folder. This inst made easier by Linux’ non-human directory structure.
Another idea i have is to use Wine. A looooong time ago on a different distro i had tried this with bottles and Wine. and i had a similar problem with bottles, but it worked with wine. but here, the flatpack of wine isn’t a GUI. So there is nothing I can open
I hit this exact problem. Environment was a VM running Ubuntu26.04.1 Cinnamon Edition with Bottles v67.3. Host OS was Linux Mint 21 running Virtual vBox 6.1.
I had imported a PlayOnLinux Wine Prefix into Bottles. This had been using the System Version of Wine v6.0.3 with the OS set to Windows 7. It contained a number of elderly Windows Apps including MP3tag v3.17.
I found the nearest Bottles runner to Wine 6.0.3 was Lutris 6.0 so installed that. It’s close enough.
I was opening folders containing mp3 files via a Virtual Box shared folder. These folders contain purely mp3 fles with a subfolder “Artwork” containing a jpg file or files.
What I found initially was that if I navigated to a folder containing mp3 files and clicked on it then Open did nothing. However the Artwork folder appeared in the right hand pane and if I clicked on that and then on Open, no mp3 files appeared but over in the left hand Tag pane the Directory field had been filled in with the path to the Artwork folder. If I manually deleted the last element of this (ie \Artwork) and clicked Return, all the mp3 files magically appeared and could be operated on normally.
I then realised that a better workaround was available. Simply navigate to the folder one level above the folder containing the mp3 files and click. The folder’s subfolders will appear in the right hand pane. Click on the one you want and then Open and then the mp3 files appear normally. Like you I found that MP3Tag had features no native Linux App possessed. This behaviour may be a general problem with running MP3tag in a VM
I do a lot of audio file tagging and converting photos. I’ve always had issues when using these types of programs with Flatpak, much more so than any other type of software for some reason.. I would install it from your regular repo rather than Flatpak if that’s possible.
Also, I’ve tried a few of these programs now and I’ve found MusicBrainz Picard to be the best one so far so maybe give that shot.
I don’t think flatpak is causing issues. Flateseal will enable permissions to access the files.
I have been using puddle-tag for a while now and it works fine. Only bug seems to be, I sometimes have to hit “Save” twice after entering the album name. But i think this is more an issue with puddIetag and not flatpak. I haven’t really tried bottle/mp3 tag since my original post.
I use aurora, so flatpak is the regular repo. I didn’t try using a Ubuntu or Fedora container. Mainly because Puddletag works fine. And flatpak (unlike repo) usually is the latest version.
i tried that but didn’t see how i easily can do the same things as mp3tag or puddletag. Here is what I do with the songs i downloaded from YT
I put all songs from one album in one folder named after the album
all song files have the song name (YT often defaults to that, or I edit the file name while saving)
All albums of the same band in folder. That is also how i end up storing it later
In Puddletag, I copy the name of the top (bandname) folder, open that folder, select all songs, and paste that band name in the “ artist” field, select the Genre ( I made up three genres for all my music), and click the button that makes the tag-title be the same as the file name; then I save
I then go lower in each album (copy the folder name, open the folder, select all files and paste the album name int the album field)
I had to originally set up in both puddletag and mp3tag what genres I want, and the title-from-filename conversion
After i set that up, it is pretty fast (much faster than downlaoding…)
I don’t think MusicBrainz can do that or show me what exactly it will do with the title. I didn’t see a way to see all songs’ tag data at once. You only can see it for each song. I didn’t really see how to replicate the above workflow. MusicBrainz seems to be more tailored to downloading mp3 data from their database?
i did see MusicBrainz is using the Dolphin explorer, which is neat as i pinned my folders i need. Puddletag use their own explorer, and that doesn’t have pinning. So I would have to navigate to my data through the Linux folder structure if i had to. But this isn’t a big problem for me, since I only edit files i just downloaded, and i use the home-download folder for that and only move files to my actual music location once I’m done. Home directory is easier to navigate to with puddletag.
Yeh that’s what I’m saying. Even with permissions set in Flatseal I’ve still had these issues. Sometimes it’ll work, sometimes it wont so I just gave up with the Flatpak versions.
I can see and edit multiple tags for multiple files at the same time with Picard - Just select multiple files..
The main reason I posted though was just to tell you that this issue does sometimes happen with Flatpak even when it shouldn’t. It’s probably a bug. And come to think of it, it happens to me with other types of programs too so the type of program is irrelevant, it’s just a Flatpak/Flatseal issue.
File access issues even when I’ve given permission in Flatseal. That’s the issue you were having, right?
I also remembered something useful, though it doesn’t always solve that apparent bug; At the end of the directory you’ve specified in Flatseal, you can put (without quotes) ‘:rw’ or ‘:ro’ which are read/write access & read only access.
Oh, right. For some reason I thought we moved to discussing flatpaks in general.
Anyway, I just tried again and installed Bottles, and mp3 tag. I was able to edit mp3 files in my home directory. but i also was able to navigate to my mounted NTFS partition (mounted in MNT, not home) and access the files. I don’t know why it worked now. Maybe i just selected a better option in Bottles? Or they improved something? Only thing i can imagine is that this time I selected in “Runner” not the default “ Soda”, but “ Wine”. Now I don’t remember what I had selected when I started this thread.
It also still worked after re-booting my PC. Flatseal seems to have remembered my original settings from back then.
This is more a proof of concept in case I really need it. I so far started liking Puddletag, and will use that.
I noticed mp3tag didn’t scale well and all writing is a bit small on my 4K/43” screen (I use 125% scaling). And for some reason the dropdown with the genre didn’t show me the pre-set values I entered. Even after re-starting. But i didn’t look too deep into this.
All I learned is, if at all possible, I use a native Linux software
OK, i was able to edit multiple files. But does it have a function to change a song title to what the filename is? And can it do that When i select multiple files?
In mp3tag/Puddletag I see each file’s parameter values in a table . But in Brainz, it shows me “ different across x items”. So i don’t see how i bulk-rename the song titles. Like how i show above where i select all files, and click the conversion button it it renames all tiles at once (you can program other schemes)
Yeh sometimes Flatpaks are problematic but usually they’re fine as long as you know how to configure them. It’s just the file permission thing with Flatseal seems flaky at times. I’m fairly sure there’s a bug at play so hopefully that gets fixed up soon.
I’m not sure about Picard being able to do all the stuff you want to be honest. I normally just drag my files into it then edit them. It may have some auto-tagging features though. I think it’s worth a look as the MusicBrainz database is decent and used by a lot of big organisations!
The only thing else I can mention is that tagging Wave files didn’t work last time I tried it on Linux. That’ll be to do with some kind of dependency I’m sure so I don’t think it’d be difficult to correct, if it’s even still a problem that is.. I don’t have much use for Wave files anyway as FLAC is lossless but has smaller file sizes so I just use that for my HQ files.
