Imploded Software

Overview

The Advanced Tag Editor is Helium's most powerful tagging tool, designed for careful, controlled editing of one track at a time. Unlike the standard Tag Editor — which displays all selected tracks simultaneously as rows in a spreadsheet — the Advanced Tag Editor presents a full input form for a single track, letting you step through your files one by one using Previous and Next buttons. Its key strengths are field locking (carrying values forward between tracks without overwriting them), a fully customisable tabbed form layout, integrated BPM and music key detection, and an Apply to All action for writing identical tags across an entire batch in one step. Use the standard Tag Editor when you need a quick overview of many tracks at once or want to apply changes across rows simultaneously; use the Advanced Tag Editor when you need precise, per-track control or a tailored form layout.

Opening the Advanced Tag Editor

• Right-click any track or album selection in any Helium view and choose Advanced Tag Editor.
• From the main menu, select Tools → Tags → Advanced Tag Editor (Selected).
• A keyboard shortcut can be assigned in Options → Keyboard shortcuts — once set, it appears next to the menu item.
• To make the Advanced Tag Editor your default editor, go to Options → Tools → Active Tag Editor and select Advanced Tag Editor. After this, the standard Tag Editor keyboard shortcut and toolbar button will open the Advanced Tag Editor instead.

How the editor works

The Advanced Tag Editor uses a wizard-style model: the header at the top of the window always shows your position in the list as “File n/m” (for example, “File 2/5”).

• Previous (Alt+P) — moves to the previous track, saving any changes on the current form to memory first.
• Next (Alt+N) — moves to the next track. On the last track, the button becomes Finish.
• Finish — writes all changed files to disk and closes the editor. Only files whose content actually changed are written.
• Cancel — closes the editor immediately. Nothing is written to disk and all changes made during the session are permanently discarded.

Changes are held in memory as you navigate between tracks. Files are never written mid-session — only when you click Finish.

Important: There is no undo. Clicking Cancel discards every change made during the session. Clicking Finish makes all writes permanent.

Field locking

Every field in the form has a lock toggle — a padlock icon on its left edge — that controls whether the field updates as you navigate between tracks.

• Locked (padlock closed): the field value stays fixed as you move between tracks. The next track’s stored value will not overwrite it.
• Unlocked (padlock open): when you navigate to the next track, the field updates to show that track’s stored value.

Practical example: You are tagging 10 tracks from the same album. Lock the Album, Year, Genre, and Album Artist fields. Leave Title and Track No. unlocked. As you step through the tracks, Album, Year, Genre, and Album Artist remain constant across all 10 files, while Title and Track No. update for each individual track.

Lock All / Unlock All: Open the Tools drop-down button in the toolbar and choose Lock All or Unlock All to change the lock state of every field on every tab simultaneously.

Per-field shortcut: Press Ctrl+Alt+L while a field is focused to toggle its lock state.

Control types

The Advanced Tag Editor uses the following input control types. Some controls may be greyed out if the field is not supported by the current file’s audio format.

• Textual: Single-line text input for fields such as Title, Remix, and Subtitle. Supports autocomplete from previously entered values.
• Numeric: Used for Year, Track No., Disc No., and similar fields. Enter a value manually or use the up/down spinner buttons.
• Attached Pictures: Add, edit, view, and remove embedded images. Supports drag-and-drop and clipboard paste.
• Biography: Multi-line editor for artist biography text, with basic formatting support.
• Lyrics: Multi-line editor for lyrics, with Load, Save, Clear, and Download buttons.
• Multiple Comments: Manage multiple comment entries, each with a language, description, and body text.
• Artist / Multiple Artists: Text input for a single artist name, or click the ... button to open the multiple-artist editor for “feat.” strings and combined artist credits.
• Release Type, Popularity, Rating, Quality: Drop-down or picker controls for selecting from a fixed set of values.
• URL Controls: Text input for a URL; the rightmost button opens the URL in your browser.
• Musician Credits / Involved Persons: Click Edit Musician Credits to manage role-and-name pairs for producers, engineers, remixers, and other contributors.
• BPM: Numeric input with a Calculate button for automatic detection and a Manual button for tap-tempo entry.
• Genre / Label: Text input for one or more values; click ... to manage multiple entries.

Batch editing tools

Apply to All

Press Ctrl+Shift+A or click the Apply to All button in the navigation bar at the bottom of the editor. This button is only visible when two or more files are loaded.

Apply to All writes the current form’s values to every remaining track in the list, then saves all files and closes the editor. It is the fastest way to stamp identical tag data across a large batch: set all locked fields to the values you want, then click Apply to All.

Auto-increment track number

The Auto-increment track number toggle is located in the settings bar at the bottom right of the editor. When switched on, the Track No. field automatically increases by 1 each time you advance to the next track, starting from the value shown on the first track.

This is ideal when tagging a new album from scratch — enter 1 on the first track and the counter fills in the rest as you step through.

Auto-set total tracks

The Auto-set total tracks toggle is also in the settings bar. When switched on, the Total Tracks field is automatically set to the total number of files you opened in the Advanced Tag Editor session. This saves you from manually entering the same value on every track.

The player bar and settings toggles

The bar at the bottom of the editor contains a built-in player and a row of settings toggles.

Player controls

• Play / Pause / Stop — audition the current track directly from the editor without switching away.
• Smart Play — jumps to key positions in the track (start, break, outro) for quick auditioning. The offsets used can be configured in Options.

Settings toggles

These five toggles appear on the right side of the bottom bar. Each can be switched on or off independently.

• Capitalizer — when on, text fields are automatically capitalised according to per-field rules as each track loads. Click the gear icon (⚙) in the toolbar to configure the capitalisation rules for individual fields in Options → Capitalizer Settings.
• Auto Sort Order — when on, sort-order fields (Title Sort Order, Artist Sort Order, Album Sort Order, Album Artist Sort Order) are filled automatically whenever their corresponding source fields change. For example, typing “The Beatles” in the Artist field also sets Artist Sort Order to “Beatles, The”.
• Auto-increment track number — see Batch editing tools above.
• Auto-set total tracks — see Batch editing tools above.
• Auto Calc BPM — when on, BPM is calculated automatically each time a track loads with an empty BPM field.

BPM and Music Key

Both tools are integrated directly into their respective fields — no separate menu is required.

BPM

The BPM field provides two detection methods:

• Calculate — runs automatic audio analysis to detect the tempo.
• Manual — opens a tap-tempo tool so you can tap along to the track and enter the BPM by ear.

The Auto Calc BPM toggle in the settings bar runs the calculation automatically each time a track with no existing BPM value is loaded into the form. While a calculation is in progress, the Previous, Next, and Apply to All controls are disabled. Click Cancel in the status area to stop the calculation at any time. Progress is displayed as “Calculate Bpm XX%”.

Initial Key (Music Key)

The Initial Key field has a Calculate button that runs automatic key detection on the current track. Progress is shown in the status area as “Analysing music key, XX%”.

Note: Key detection requires the Boost add-on licence. The Calculate button is hidden if Boost is not available.

Filename to Tag

Click the Filename to Tag button in the toolbar to open a collapsible panel at the bottom of the editor. Close the panel at any time using the × button in its header.

Using the panel

1. Click Auto-guess first — Helium analyses the current filename and automatically suggests the best parse template.
2. If needed, edit the template manually in the Template field using %fieldname% placeholders (for example, %artist% - %title%).
3. Use the Insert Field button to pick placeholders from a drop-down menu rather than typing them.
4. Enable Use Full Path to use the complete directory path as input instead of just the filename. This lets you extract folder-level information such as the album name.
5. Enable Overwrite to replace existing non-empty field values with parsed results. When unchecked, only empty fields are filled.
6. The result preview updates in real time as you type or adjust the template, showing the parsed value for each field.

When the Filename to Tag panel is open, it automatically re-applies the current template each time you navigate to a new track, so an entire batch of files can have their filenames parsed into the form as you step through.

Common placeholders

Downloading Information

The Advanced Tag Editor can fetch tag data from online sources such as Discogs without leaving the editor.

• Click the Tools drop-down button in the toolbar and choose Download…, or press Ctrl+I.
• The Tag Downloader opens. Search for and select the correct release.
• Downloaded data is mapped into the editor’s in-memory cache for all files in the session. The values appear immediately in the form, but nothing is written to disk until you click Finish.

Templates

A template defines the complete layout of the Advanced Tag Editor — which tabs are shown, which fields appear on each tab, the number of columns per tab, and the display height of multi-line fields.

Opening the Template Editor

Click the Edit Template button in the toolbar to open the Template Editor.

What you can do in the Template Editor

• Add, rename, delete, and reorder tabs.
• Set the number of columns for each tab (1, 2, 3, or 4).
• Add fields to a tab by double-clicking them in the Available Fields list.
• Remove fields from a tab by double-clicking them to return them to the Available Fields pool.
• Reorder fields within a tab using the Up and Down buttons.
• Set a Span value for a field to make it span more than one column.
• Adjust the display height for multi-line fields such as Lyrics, Biography, Pictures, and Comments.
• Save As — export the current layout to a .json file.
• Load — import a previously saved .json template file.

Using multiple templates

Saving separate template files lets you switch layouts to match your workflow. For example, a “Classical” template could place Composer and Conductor prominently, while a “DJ” template puts BPM and Initial Key at the top of the first tab.

The File Info field

The File Info field is a special read-only panel that displays the current file’s path, duration, size, bitrate, and the name of the next file in the queue. It can be placed on any tab via the Template Editor and is useful as a quick reference while tagging.

For a detailed walkthrough of customising templates, see the Customizing the Advanced Tag Editor article.

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