How to tag your music on Linux with GabTag

Are you looking for an easy, simple way to tag music files on your Linux PC? Check out GabTag! It’s a refreshingly easy-to-use program that makes tagging and fixing music file tags on Linux a breeze!

In this guide, we’ll show you how to install GabTag. We’ll also go over how to tag your favorite songs with the GabTag app!

Installing GabTag on Linux

The GabTag application is available for Linux in a few ways. Before we can go over how to use the program to tag and catalog your music files, we must demonstrate how to install the app on your Linux PC.

GabTag is primarily a Flatpak application. The developer hasn’t bothered to package the program for Ubuntu, Debian, Arch Linux, or other Linux OSes, and for a good reason. It takes a lot of time and effort to make apps work on every mainstream Linux OS under the sun. Instead, it’s released as a Flatpak, and anyone who can install the Flatpak runtime will be able to use the app. Its source code is also available for those that like to compile and install software themselves.

To start the installation of GabTag on your Linux PC, open up a terminal window by pressing Ctrl + Alt + T or Ctrl + Shift + T on the keyboard. From there, follow the command-line installation instructions below that corresponds with the installation method you prefer.

Flatpak via Flathub

To install the GabTag application on your PC from the Flathub app store, you must install the Flatpak runtime on your computer. To install the Flatpak runtime, open up a terminal window, search for the “flatpak” application, and install it the way you’d typically install programs on your Linux PC. Alternatively, follow our in-depth tutorial on how to set up the Flatpak runtime on Linux.

Once you’ve set up the Flatpak runtime on your computer, it’s time to configure the Flathub app store. To do that, use the flatpak remote-add command below.

flatpak remote-add --if-not-exists flathub https://flathub.org/repo/flathub.flatpakrepo

With the Flathub app store configured with Flatpak on your computer, the installation of GabTag can begin. Using the flatpak install command below, set up the latest release of GabTag. Alternatively, head over to the GabTag page on Flathub, and click on the “Install” button. When you click on “Install,” KDE Discover or Gnome Software will attempt to install the app.

flatpak install flathub com.github.lachhebo.Gabtag

Source code

If you’re not a fan of Flathub and would prefer to build the app yourself, you can grab the latest source code for GabTag on the developer’s GitHub page. However, please understand that though this is the source code, it does not compile down to a traditional, installable Linux binary. Instead, it compiles into Flatpak.

You should only attempt to install GabTag through the source code if the Flathub release doesn’t work. For more information, click here.

Tagging your music with Gabtag

To tag your music with GabTag, start by opening the app. To open the app, search for “GabTag” in the app menu and click on it. Alternatively, open up a terminal and use the flatpak run command below to start it up. Then, once GabTag is open, follow the step-by-step instructions below to tag your music files.

flatpak run com.github.lachhebo.Gabtag

Step 1: Locate the “Open” button at the top-left section of the app and click on it with the mouse. By clicking on “Open,” a file browser will appear. Using that file browser, locate the folder in which the music files are on your PC that you wish to tag.

Click “Select” in the file browser to open it up.

Step 2: In the left-hand sidebar, select the song you would like to tag using the GabTag app. By selecting the song, GabTag will automatically check the internet for relevant tag info and even lyrics.

Click on the “Set Tags” button with the mouse, located underneath the “MusicBrainz Tags” section of GabTag. By clicking on the “Set Tags” button, you will be assigning all information that GabTag tracked down to the song.

Step 3: Go to the information section of the song and edit anything that the GabTag app may not have added. For example, you may need to manually download an album cover and select it with “Load” under the cover section if GabTag doesn’t add a cover.

Step 4: Scroll down beneath the lyrics (if GabTag has added lyrics) and click on the “Set Lyrics” button to set the lyrics for your song. If GabTag didn’t add lyrics, you might need to do this manually.

Step 5: Locate the “Save All” button in the top-right section of the app. Then, click on it with the mouse. Selecting the “Save All” button will save all of your modifications. So, if you’ve used GabTag to edit 15 songs, it will save the edits to all of those songs.