Lookup Options

Automatically scan all new files

Check this box if you want Picard to scan each music file you add and look for an AcoustID fingerprint. This takes time, but may be helpful for you and MusicBrainz. Leave it unchecked if you don’t want Picard to do this scan automatically. In any case, you can direct Picard to scan a particular music file at any time using “Tools ‣ Scan”. See also Scan Files and Understanding Acoustic Fingerprinting and AcoustIDs.

Automatically cluster all new files

Check this box if you want Picard to automatically group all loaded files into album clusters. Leave it unchecked if you don’t want Picard to do this automatically. In any case, you can direct Picard to cluster files any time using “Tools ‣ Cluster”. See also Lookup Files.

Note

You can either enable “Automatically scan all new files” or “Automatically cluster all new files”, but not both.

Ignore MBIDs when loading new files

If you enable this option Picard will not use MusicBrainz identifiers (MBIDs) stored in the files to automatically load the corresponding MusicBrainz release and match the loaded file to the correct track. Leaving this option disabled is useful when re-processing files that have been previously tagged with incorrect information.

Maximum number of entities to return per MusicBrainz query

This sets the maximum number of results returned for queries made to the MusicBrainz website. The default value is 50 results. On Picard v2.8.1 and earlier, this value was fixed at a maximum of 25 responses.

Use builtin search rather than looking in browser

If you enable this option, Picard will use its own search system rather than using the browser for searching the MusicBrainz database.

Use advanced query syntax

When this option is enabled, searches will be performed using the advanced query syntax rather than the simple query syntax.