Audio files often carry useful information right in their names — artist, album, title, track number. The Filenames sub-tab can extract that information and write it into your library, saving you from typing it all in by hand.
This works best when your files follow a consistent naming pattern. If every file looks like The Beatles - Abbey Road - Come Together.mp3, you can describe that pattern once and process the whole batch in seconds. If your filenames are a mixed bag, the Edit Attributes sub-tab or the Embedded Info sub-tab may be more practical.
The Filenames tool works on whichever songs are selected in the middle pane. Before switching to this sub-tab, select the songs you want to process — you can use ⌘A to select everything currently visible, or filter the list first and then select all, or pick individual songs with ⌘-click.
The Pattern field is where you describe the structure of your filenames. Use the field names in capital letters as placeholders — ARTIST, ALBUM, TITLE — and fill in the separators exactly as they appear in your filenames.
For example:
| Filename looks like… | Pattern to use |
|---|---|
Beatles - Come Together.mp3 | ARTIST - TITLE |
Beatles - Abbey Road - Come Together.mp3 | ARTIST - ALBUM - TITLE |
Come Together_Beatles.mp3 | TITLE_ARTIST |
01 Come Together.mp3 | TITLE (with the track number in an Omit field) |
The pattern matching is flexible about spacing around separators, so ARTIST - TITLE will match both Beatles - Come Together and Beatles-Come Together.
Sometimes filenames contain bits you want to skip over — a track number at the beginning, a catalog number, a disc identifier. Up to three Omit fields let you define separators that mark sections to ignore.
For example, if your files look like 01 - Beatles - Come Together.mp3 and you don't want the track number, set the first Omit field to the separator that follows it ( - ) and Librarian will discard everything before it.
Before processing anything, click a song in the middle pane and watch the preview box. It shows exactly what Librarian would extract from that filename using your current pattern. If the artist and title are showing up correctly in the preview, you're good to go. If something looks off — fields are swapped, or there's extra junk in a field — adjust the pattern and check the preview again.
Always check the preview on a few different songs before processing the whole batch. Filenames that seem consistent sometimes have a few oddballs hiding in them — a song with an extra dash in the title, or an artist name that contains the separator character.
When the preview looks right and your songs are selected, click Process Selected Songs. Librarian extracts the metadata from each filename and writes it to the corresponding library entries. The status bar shows progress and a summary when it's done.
This operation updates your library file immediately. If something went wrong, you can restore from one of the five automatic backups at {StationFolder}/Logs/Database/library_backup_1.tsv through library_backup_5.tsv.
The Filenames tool replaces whatever is currently in the affected fields — it doesn't fill in blanks only. If a song already has an artist name and you run the Filenames tool, the artist name will be overwritten with whatever the filename says. Use the preview to make sure you're comfortable with that before proceeding.