# Tag clearing option in Picard
**URL:** https://community.metabrainz.org/t/tag-clearing-option-in-picard/664422
**Category:** MusicBrainz Picard
**Created:** [November 10, 2023, 10:53am UTC](https://community.metabrainz.org/t/tag-clearing-option-in-picard/664422 "2023-11-10T10:53:31Z")
**Posts on this page:** 11
**Page:** 1
### Author:  [@Deleted\_Editor\_2071313](https://community.metabrainz.org/u/Deleted_Editor_2071313)
#### Post date: [November 10, 2023, 10:53am UTC](https://community.metabrainz.org/t/tag-clearing-option-in-picard/664422/1 "2023-11-10T10:53:31Z")
Hi.
When should I clear tags with Picard and why?
---
### Author:  [@sound.and.vision](https://community.metabrainz.org/u/sound.and.vision)
#### Post date: [November 10, 2023, 11:10am UTC](https://community.metabrainz.org/t/tag-clearing-option-in-picard/664422/2 "2023-11-10T11:10:53Z")
I guess if you’ve got really messy ID3 tags and you want them ALL to be blanked before Picard writes its data.
An example I had was some tracks in my collection had a whole load of _guff_ in the Comments ID3 tag field, Picard naturally won’t ever overwrite this information unless I script it to do so; which means that once Picard has “prettified” things like Artist, Track Title, Album, Genre the mess that sat in Comments would remain.
Enabling this cleared that field (and every single other field) that Picard wasn’t going to overwrite.
---
### Author:  [@Deleted\_Editor\_2071313](https://community.metabrainz.org/u/Deleted_Editor_2071313)
#### Post date: [November 10, 2023, 11:15am UTC](https://community.metabrainz.org/t/tag-clearing-option-in-picard/664422/3 "2023-11-10T11:15:11Z")
@sound.and.vision
Can I clean messy tags with Mp3Tag?
---
### Author:  [@kellnerd](https://community.metabrainz.org/u/kellnerd)
#### Post date: [November 10, 2023, 11:16am UTC](https://community.metabrainz.org/t/tag-clearing-option-in-picard/664422/4 "2023-11-10T11:16:41Z")
I also have this checkbox enabled to always get the latest correct relationships from MB. Without having this enabled, there is no way for Picard to know that it should not keep for example performer tags whose corresponding relationships have since been deleted on MB.
---
### Author:  [@Deleted\_Editor\_2071313](https://community.metabrainz.org/u/Deleted_Editor_2071313)
#### Post date: [November 10, 2023, 11:18am UTC](https://community.metabrainz.org/t/tag-clearing-option-in-picard/664422/5 "2023-11-10T11:18:09Z")
@kellnerd
I want that too. 😉
---
### Author:  [@IvanDobsky](https://community.metabrainz.org/u/IvanDobsky)
#### Post date: [November 10, 2023, 11:44am UTC](https://community.metabrainz.org/t/tag-clearing-option-in-picard/664422/6 "2023-11-10T11:44:40Z")
Using this tickbox means Picard can use your old tags to help find the track, and then replace all the messy tags with clean ones.
I’ve sometimes had albums tags with bad quality tagging apps or plain corrupted. This is a good example of needing to replace tags.
Yes MP3Tag can also delete all tags, but I would not do that before using Picard. Easier to let Picard use the old tags as part of the lookup. ESPECIALLY if Picard has looked up these tracks before as those MBIDs that will then be in the tracks will make everything run so much faster. Then you a literally just updating instead of having to go through all the discovery steps again.
---
### Author:  [@sound.and.vision](https://community.metabrainz.org/u/sound.and.vision)
#### Post date: [November 10, 2023, 4:49pm UTC](https://community.metabrainz.org/t/tag-clearing-option-in-picard/664422/7 "2023-11-10T16:49:04Z")
sure, just this isn’t the MP3Tag forum so we’re just advising on Picard 🙂 - that’s over there: [https://community.mp3tag.de/](https://community.mp3tag.de/)
---
### Author:  [@IvanDobsky](https://community.metabrainz.org/u/IvanDobsky)
#### Post date: [November 10, 2023, 6:26pm UTC](https://community.metabrainz.org/t/tag-clearing-option-in-picard/664422/8 "2023-11-10T18:26:19Z")
> [@sound.and.vision](#):
>
> this isn’t the MP3Tag forum so we’re just advising on Picard
I happily talk about both as they are slightly different tools that can work well together.
Picard is great for identifying tracks, linking with the MusicBrainz database and filling in rich tag data.
MP3TAG is a lot easier to use to manually change, tweak and adjust tags singularly or in bulk.
Example: If I have a new album I want Picard to locate I will often add track numbers or basic album title and artist tags in MP3Tag before passing to Picard. Sometimes I have had an album with tags only in the file data. MP3Tag can quickly move that into the basic tag slots. Then Picard has a much easier job.
---
### Author:  [@Deleted\_Editor\_2071313](https://community.metabrainz.org/u/Deleted_Editor_2071313)
#### Post date: [November 10, 2023, 9:01pm UTC](https://community.metabrainz.org/t/tag-clearing-option-in-picard/664422/9 "2023-11-10T21:01:50Z")
@sound.and.vision do you want to insult me? 😉
I can surf the Internet. 😉
I asked you about Mp3Tag because I wanted to have a blessing and justification.
No one here will ask me “But why, why…?” 😉
---
### Author:  [@aerozol](https://community.metabrainz.org/u/aerozol)
#### Post date: [November 10, 2023, 9:43pm UTC](https://community.metabrainz.org/t/tag-clearing-option-in-picard/664422/10 "2023-11-10T21:43:09Z")
It depends where you source your music from, and how ‘clean’ you want your tags.
I would try ticking it. You will see all the tags to be changed/removed in the preview panel at the bottom of Picard, before saving:
You can then assess how much useful info your files have vs junk 🙂
---
### Author:  [@Deleted\_Editor\_2071313](https://community.metabrainz.org/u/Deleted_Editor_2071313)
#### Post date: [November 10, 2023, 9:58pm UTC](https://community.metabrainz.org/t/tag-clearing-option-in-picard/664422/11 "2023-11-10T21:58:41Z")
My MP3s are from the old days, from Napster 😉 when there was no Spotify yet.
I regret deleting them.
I’ll brag a little. 😉 The most valuable music is on CD, SACD, DVD-Audio. I don’t compress it.
And soon I will buy the Dark Side of the Moon 50th anniversary Bluray.
I can really hear the audiophile differences. 😉
And when it comes to MP3s, I would like to have the most accurate tags, but without private comments.
Edit. translator error. I don’t delete them because I feel a bit sorry.