Install easy-tag with Homebrew, apk, apt, dnf, MacPorts, Nix, pacman, winget, zypper

Project links

• Homepage
• Repository
• Upstream docs
• Package manager page

Commands and aliases

• easytag

Project history

EasyTAG predates its 2018 migration-era GitLab project metadata; GNOME's source archive contains 2.1 and 2.2 series tarballs, and the current repository's THANKS file records older contributors and translations. By the 2.4 series, the application had become a GTK+ 3 GNOME app with GSettings integration, a Nautilus extension, Mallard help, and broad translation coverage.

The repository README frames EasyTAG as a graphical utility for tag editing and file renaming rather than a command-line metadata library. The NEWS file shows active GNOME-era maintenance through the 2.4.3 release in December 2016, focused on crash fixes, encoding handling, file-format support, UI cleanup, and translations.

Adoption history

EasyTAG's adoption is the long tail of desktop Linux media management. It is packaged across Homebrew, Debian, Ubuntu, Fedora, Arch, Alpine, MacPorts, Nix, winget, and openSUSE in the input metadata, which fits an established GUI utility rather than a fast-moving new project.

The GNOME GitLab repository and download archive make the official source trail clear, but public project-history detail is thinner than for server-side tools. The strongest evidence supports a mature desktop utility with broad distro packaging and limited recent release activity.

How it is used

Users open directories of audio files, edit tag fields such as title, artist, album, track, genre, composer, and comments, and optionally rename files or directories from tag masks. The README also documents recursive processing, playlist generation, CDDB lookup, and external-program integration.

Although Homebrew exposes an `easytag` executable, EasyTAG is primarily a GTK graphical application. Its configuration is handled through GNOME/GSettings rather than a user-authored project config file.

Why package nerds care

EasyTAG is package-nerd-significant as a classic desktop utility that survived through distro packaging rather than a modern language package registry. It depends on a stack of audio tag libraries and GNOME components, so package managers do much of the work that end users never want to think about.

It also marks the era when local music-library maintenance meant GUI batch tag editors, CDDB lookup, filename masks, and per-format metadata quirks rather than streaming-library metadata APIs.

Timeline

• 2000s: Earlier EasyTAG contributors and translations appear in the upstream THANKS file and 2.1/2.2 source archive lineage.
• 2014-10: NEWS records EasyTAG 2.3.1 with GTK+ 3-only UI work, GSettings, and a Nautilus extension.
• 2015-08: NEWS records EasyTAG 2.4.0.
• 2016-12: NEWS and GNOME GitLab tags record EasyTAG 2.4.3, the version packaged by Homebrew.
• 2018-05: GNOME GitLab project metadata records the current hosted project creation date.

Related projects

• GNOME is the desktop project hosting EasyTAG.
• GTK and GSettings are the UI and settings technologies used by the application.
• Nautilus is related through the optional file-manager extension.
• TagLib, FLAC, Ogg/Vorbis, Opus, id3lib, libid3tag, and WavPack are related media/tagging libraries named by the README.

Sources

• https://gitlab.gnome.org/GNOME/easytag
• https://gitlab.gnome.org/GNOME/easytag/-/raw/master/README
• https://gitlab.gnome.org/GNOME/easytag/-/raw/master/NEWS
• https://download.gnome.org/sources/easytag/
• https://formulae.brew.sh/api/formula/easy-tag.json