Metadata

Which sidecar files and audio tags ABM writes, and when.

Settings > Metadata decides what ABM writes into a book’s folder and its files. How these files are used is on Sidecar files.

Metadata file creation

Setting	Default	Effect
Create on Book Add	off	Write files when a book is added as wanted
Create on Import	on	Write files when an audiobook is imported
Create on Refresh	off	Create or update files when metadata is refreshed
Overwrite Existing	off	Replace files already in the folder

Files to create: cover.jpg (on), title.opf (on, Audiobookshelf-compatible), desc.txt (on) and reader.txt (on).

Audio file tag writing

Uses ffmpeg to write tags into the audio itself.

Setting	Default
Write Audio Tags	off
Write Tags on Import	on, once tag writing is on
Write Tags on Refresh	off

Tag fields, all on by default: Title, Artist (Author), Album Artist (Author), Album (Title/Series), Genre, Year, Comment (Description), Narrator (Composer) and Cover Art.

Coming in a later release

A choice of metadata source and a local copy of the metadata library are planned for a later release. See Your metadata, your control.

Gotchas

Tag writing changes the audio files. Audiobookshelf will see them as modified.
If metadata or a cover cannot be fetched during tag writing, the call returns warnings instead of failing.