Toggles displaying of the toolbar.

Toggles displaying of the statusbar, which displays longer actions such as opening or saving a folder.

Toggles displaying of the album cover art preview picture.

Empty tags are automatically hidden if this option is active. The File, Tag 1 and Tag 2 sections can be manually collapsed and expanded by clicking on the corresponding -/+ buttons.

Opens a dialog to assign keyboard shortcuts for most of the program functions. There are even functions without corresponding menu or button available, e.g. next file, previous file, select all.

Opens the configuration dialog, which consists of pages for tags, files, user actions, and network settings.

Tag specific options can be found on the Tags page, which is itself separated into four tabs for Tag 1, Tag 2, Tag 3, and All Tags.

If Mark truncated fields is checked, truncated ID3v1.1 fields will be marked red. The text fields of ID3v1.1 tags can only have 30 characters, the comment only 28 characters. Also the genre and track numbers are restricted, so that fields can be truncated when imported or transferred from ID3v2. Truncated fields and the file will be marked red, and the mark will be removed after the field has been edited.

With Text encoding for ID3v1 it is possible to set the character set used in ID3v1 tags. This encoding is supposed to be ISO-8859-1, so it is recommended to keep this default value. However, there are tags around with different encoding, so it can be set here and the ID3v1 tags can then be copied to ID3v2 which supports Unicode.

The check box Use track/total number of tracks format controls whether the track number field of ID3v2 tags contains simply the track number or additionally the total number of tracks in the folder.

When Genre as text instead of numeric string is checked, all ID3v2 genres will be stored as a text string even if there is a corresponding code for ID3v1 genres. If this option is not set, genres for which an ID3v1 code exists are stored as the number of the genre code (in parentheses for ID3v2.3). Thus the genre Metal is stored as "Metal" or "(9)" depending on this option. Genres which are not in the list of ID3v1 genres are always stored as a text string. The purpose of this option is improved compatibility with devices which do not correctly interpret genre codes.

When WAV files with lowercase id3 chunk is checked, the RIFF chunk used to store ID3v2 tags in WAV files will be named "id3 " instead of "ID3 ". By default, Kid3 and other applications using TagLib accept both the lowercase and the uppercase variant when reading WAV files, but they use "ID3 " when writing ID3v2 tags to WAV files. As there exist other applications which only accept "id3 " (e.g. JRiver Media Center and foobar2000), this option can be used to create tags which can be read by such applications.

When Mark standard violations is checked, ID3v2 fields which violate the standard will be marked red. Details about the violation are shown in a tooltip:

The ID3 standard documents are available online:

Text encoding defines the default encoding used for ID3v2 frames and can be set to ISO-8859-1, UTF16, or UTF8. UTF8 is not valid for ID3v2.3.0 frames; if it is set, UTF16 will be used instead. For ID3v2.4.0 frames, all three encodings are possible.

Version used for new tags determines whether new ID3v2 tags are created as version 2.3.0 or 2.4.0.

Track number digits is the number of digits in Track Number fields. Leading zeros are used to pad. For instance, with a value of 2 the track number 5 is set as "05".

The combo box Comment field name is only relevant for Ogg/Vorbis and FLAC files and sets the name of the field used for comments. Different applications seem to use different names, "COMMENT" for instance is used by XMMS, whereas Amarok uses "DESCRIPTION".

The format of pictures in Ogg/Vorbis files is determined by Picture field name, which can be "METADATA_BLOCK_PICTURE" or "COVERART". The first is the official standard and uses the same format as pictures in FLAC tags. "COVERART" is an earlier unofficial way to include pictures in Vorbis comments. It can be used for compatibility with legacy players.

If the Mark if larger than (bytes) check box is activated, files containing embedded album cover art exceeding the given size in bytes are marked red. This can be used to find files containing oversized pictures which are not accepted by some applications and players. The default value is 131072 bytes (128 KB).

Custom Genres can be used to define genres which are not available in the standard genre list, e.g. "Gothic Metal". Such custom genres will appear in the Genre combo box of Tag 2. For ID3v1.1 tags, only the predefined genres can be used.

The list of custom genres can also be used to reduce the number of genres available in the Genre combo box to those typically used. If your collection mostly contains music in the genres Metal, Gothic Metal, Ancient and Hard Rock, you can enter those genres and mark Show only custom genres. The Tag 2 Genre combo box will then only contain those four genres and you will not have to search through the complete genres list for them. In this example, only Metal and Hard Rock will be listed in the tag 1 genres list, because those two custom genres entries are standard genres. If Show only custom genres is not active, the custom genres can be found at the end of the genres list.

In Custom Frames, up to eight custom frame names can be defined, which can then be used like the unified frames, for example as quick access frames.

Quick Access Frames defines which frame types are always shown in the Tag 2 section. Such frames can then be added without first using the Add button. The order of these quick access frames can be changed by dragging and dropping items.

The combo box Track number field name is only relevant for RIFF INFO and sets the name of the field used for track numbers. Track numbers are not specified in the original RIFF standard, there are applications which use "ITRK", others use "IPRT".

Tag Format contains options for the format of the tags. When Automatically apply format is checked, the format configuration is automatically used while editing text in the line edits. Validation enables validators in the controls with track/total and date/time values. The Case conversion can be set to No changes, All lowercase, All uppercase, First letter uppercase or All first letters uppercase. To use locale-aware conversion between lowercase and uppercase characters, a locale can be selected in the combobox below. The string replacement list can be set to arbitrary string mappings. To add a new mapping, select the From cell of a row and insert the text to replace, then go to the To column and enter the replacement text. When the text to replace starts and ends with a slash ("/"), a regular expression is used. For regular expressions containing capturing groups, occurrences of \1, \2, ... in To are replaced with the string captured by the corresponding capturing group. To remove a mapping set the From cell to an empty value (e.g. by first typing space and then backspace). Inserting and deleting rows is also possible using a context menu which appears when the right mouse button is clicked. Replacement is only active, if the String replacement check box is checked.

The table in Rating contains the mapping of star ratings to the effective values stored in the tag. The frames with rating information are listed in the Rating row of the frame list. For these frames, the rating can be set by giving a number of stars out of five stars. Different tag formats and different applications use different values to map the star rating to the value stored in the tag. In order to display the correct number of stars, Kid3 will look up a map in this table. The key to look up the mapping is the frame name, for example "RATING" as used for Vorbis comments or "IRTD" for RIFF INFO. For ID3v2 tags, a combined key is used consisting of the frame ID "POPM" of the Popularimeter frame and its "Email" field, separated by a dot. Therefore, different keys for ID3v2 exist, e.g. "POPM.Windows Media Player 9 Series" for the mapping used by Windows Media Player and Explorer, and simply "POPM" for POPM frames with an empty "Email" field. As multiple entries for "POPM" can exist, their order is important. When Kid3 adds a new Popularimeter frame, it will use the first "POPM" entry to determine the value to be written into the "Email" field. This value will then specify the mapping to be used for star ratings. The first entry is also used if no key was found, it is therefore the default entry.

Besides the Name column containing the keys, the table has columns 1 to 5 for the values to be stored when the corresponding number of stars is given. The other way round, the values determine the number of stars which are displayed for the value stored in the frame. For instance, the row in the table below contains the values 1, 64, 128, 196, 255. The thresholds for the number of stars to be displayed lay between these values and are compatible with what the Windows® Explorer uses.

On the page Files the check box Load last-opened files can be marked so that Kid3 will open and select the last selected file when it is started the next time. Preserve file timestamp can be checked to preserve the file modification time stamp. Filename for cover sets the name which is suggested when an embedded image is exported to a file. With Text encoding (Export, Playlist) the encoding used when writing files can be set. The default System can be changed for example if playlists have to be used on a different device.

If Mark changes is active, changed fields are marked with a light gray label background.

The section File List determines which files are displayed in the file list. A Filter can be used to restrict the items in this list to files with supported extensions. To explicitly specify which folders to display in the file list or exclude certain folders, the options Include folders and Exclude folders can be used. They can contain wildcard expressions, for instance */Music/* to include only the Music folder, or */iTunes/* to exclude the iTunes folder from the file list. If multiple such expressions have to be used, they can be separated by spaces or semicolons.

The buttons Filename from tag and Tag from filename in section Format open dialogs to edit the formats which are available in the Format combo boxes (with arrows up and down), which can be found in the File section of the main window.

The Playlist button can be used to edit the file name formats available in the Create Playlist dialog.

Filename Format contains options for the format of the filenames. The same options as in Tag Format are available.

Additionally, the Maximum length allowed for file names can be set. Most modern file systems have a limit of 255 characters, but if you want to burn the files to CD, you should set the limit to 64. If Use for playlist and folder names is checked, the file name format is also used when creating playlists and renaming folders.

The User Actions page contains a table with the commands which are available in the context menu of the file list. For critical operations such as deleting files, it is advisable to mark Confirm to pop up a confirmation dialog before executing the command. Output can be marked to see the output written by console commands (standard output and standard error). Name is the name displayed in the context menu. Command is the command line to be executed. Arguments can be passed using the following codes:

The special code @separator can be set as a command to insert a separator into the user actions context menu. Menu items can be put into a submenu by enclosing them with @beginmenu and @endmenu commands. The name of the submenu is determined by the Name column of the @beginmenu command.

To execute QML scripts, @qml is used as a command name. The path to the QML script is passed as a parameter. The provided scripts can be found in the folder %{qmlpath}/script/ (on Linux® typically /usr/share/kid3/qml/script/, on Windows qml/script/ inside the installation folder, and on macOS® in the app folder kid3.app/Contents/Resources/qml/script/). Custom scripts can be stored in any folder. If the QML code uses GUI components, @qmlview shall be used instead of @qml. Additional parameters are passed to the QML script where they will be available via the getArguments() function. An overview of some functions and properties which are available in QML can be found in the appendix QML Interface.

The command which will be inserted with %{browser} can be defined in the Web browser line edit above. Commands starting with %{browser} can be used to fetch information about the audio files from the web, for instance

%{browser} http://lyricwiki.org/%u{artist}:%u{title}

will query the lyrics for the current song in LyricWiki. The "u" in %u{artist} and %u{title} is used to URL-encode the artist %{artist} and song %{title} information. It is easy to define your own queries in the same way, e.g. an image search with Google:

%{browser} http://images.google.com/images?q=%u{artist}%20%u{album}

To add album cover art to tag 2, you can search for images with Google or Amazon using the commands described above. The picture can be added to the tag with drag and drop. You can also add an image with Add, then select the Picture frame and import an image file or paste from the clipboard. Picture frames are supported for ID3v2, MP4, FLAC, Ogg and ASF tags.

To add and delete entries in the table, a context menu can be used.

The Network page contains only a field to insert the proxy address and optionally the port, separated by a colon. The proxy will be used when importing from an Internet server when the check box is checked.

In the Plugins page, available plugins can be enabled or disabled. The plugins are separated into two sections. The Metadata Plugins & Priority list contains plugins which support audio file formats. The order of the plugins is important because they are tried from top to bottom. Some formats are supported by multiple plugins, so files will be opened with the first plugin supporting them. The TaglibMetadata supports most formats, if it is at the top of the list, it will open most of the files. If you want to use a different plugin for a file format, make sure that it is listed before the TaglibMetadata plugin. Details about the metadata plugin and why you may want to use them instead of TagLib are listed below.

The Available Plugins section lists the remaining plugins. Their order is not important, but they can be enabled or disabled using the check boxes.

Plugins which are disabled will not be loaded. This can be used to optimize resource usage and startup time. The settings on this page take only effect after a restart of Kid3.