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Oct 9, 2026
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Kid3 Tag Editor is a free, open-source tag editor for Windows, macOS, Linux and Android that fixes artist, album, title and cover art in MP3, FLAC, M4A and more, a whole album at once, a cross-platform alternative to Mp3tag.
Kid3 is a free, open-source tag editor that fixes the artist, album, title and cover art stored inside your music files.
It runs on Windows, macOS, Linux and Android, and it handles a whole album or a whole folder at once rather than one song at a time.
If your library shows "Unknown Artist", missing covers or tracks in the wrong order, this is the kind of tool that sorts it out.
What Kid3 Actually Does - in Plain Terms
Every MP3, FLAC or M4A file carries a small block of text called a tag. Your player reads it to show the song name, sort the album and display the cover, so when a tag is wrong or empty, the library looks wrong too.
Kid3 lets you read and rewrite those tags directly, without re-encoding or touching the audio itself.
- Edit many files at once. Select a whole album and set the artist, year or genre for every track in one go.
- Look up album data online. Pull track lists and details from MusicBrainz, Discogs and gnudb, or identify songs by their sound with AcoustID fingerprints.
- Add cover art. Import an album cover and embed it in every track, so it shows on your phone and in the car.
- Tags to filenames, and back. Rename files from their tags, such as "01 - Artist - Title", or fill empty tags from badly named files.
- Lyrics and exports. Edit synchronised lyrics and LRC files, and export a track list as CSV, HTML or a playlist.
Formats It Handles
Kid3 covers almost every audio format people actually keep: MP3, FLAC, Ogg Vorbis, Opus, MP4 and M4A (AAC), WMA, WAV, AIFF, WavPack, Monkey's Audio, Musepack, DSF and Matroska audio.
On the tag side it reads and writes ID3v1, ID3v2.3 and ID3v2.4 in MP3 files, Vorbis comments in FLAC and Ogg, MP4 tags in M4A, and APE tags. It also converts between ID3 versions, which fixes the common case where a car stereo or older player shows blank fields.
Which ID3 version to use:
Save MP3 tags as ID3v2.3 if you play music on older car stereos or players, because some of them cannot read v2.4. Everything made in the last decade handles either.
Tidy an Album in Five Steps
- Open the folder with the album and select all its tracks in the file list.
- Choose File, then Import from MusicBrainz or Discogs, search for the album and pick the right release.
- Check the matched track list lines up with your files, then accept the import.
- Add the cover under the picture section, or import it with the album data.
- Save, then use the tag-to-filename format if you want the files renamed to match.
Nothing is written to your files until you save, so you can check every change first.
Before You Install
The Windows download on the Kid3 download page is a zip, not an installer. Extract it to a folder and run kid3.exe from there, which also means it works from a USB stick.
The same page carries the macOS disk image, Android APKs for 32-bit and 64-bit phones, and a Linux source archive. Most Linux users will find Kid3 in their distribution's package manager instead.
Kid3 is free under the GPL licence, with no ads, no paid tier and no account.
Who Should Look Elsewhere
The tell is how you want to work. Kid3 shows a lot of fields at once, which suits careful album-by-album tidying, but some jobs have a better-fitting tool.
| If you want | Try this instead |
|---|---|
| The most familiar tag editor on Windows, with a simpler layout | Mp3tag |
| A whole messy library identified by sound, with little manual work | MusicBrainz Picard |
| Tag editing plus scripting and filename tricks on Windows | TagScanner |
| A music player and library manager that edits tags as well | MusicBee or MediaMonkey |
| Audiobooks with chapters and long file sets | MP3 Book Helper |
| Tag info right inside Windows File Explorer | AudioShell |
MetatOGGer is another free option with automatic identification built in, if Picard feels like too much.
Tools That Pair Well With It
If a file needs converting before you tag it, say a WAV you want as MP3 or FLAC, our free online audio converter does it in the browser. Once the tags are fixed, VLC Media Player shows them straight away so you can check the result.
The Media Managers category has the rest of the library and tagging tools.
Quick questions
Is Kid3 free?
Yes. It is open-source software under the GPL, with no paid version, no ads and no limits on how many files you edit.
Does editing tags change the sound quality?
No. Kid3 only rewrites the text and pictures stored alongside the audio, so the music itself is untouched.
Can Kid3 add album covers automatically?
It can import cover art along with album data from online sources, or you can add an image yourself and apply it to every selected track at once.
Why does my car stereo show blank song names?
Usually because the tags are ID3v2.4, which some older stereos cannot read. Convert them to ID3v2.3 in Kid3 and save, and the names normally appear.
Kid3 or Mp3tag?
Kid3 if you use more than one operating system, want online lookups from several sources, or prefer open source. Mp3tag if you are on Windows and want the simpler, more familiar layout.
Do I need to install Kid3 on Windows?
No. The Windows version comes as a zip, so you extract it and run kid3.exe, with nothing installed in the usual sense.
Download Kid3 Tag Editor and see how quickly it tidies your library, or be the first to tell us how you got on.
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