The Tag Editor is the primary tag editor in Helium which enables you to quickly edit multiple files at once using a spreadsheet user interface.

The major benefit with this tag editor is that it shows a great overview of all your files' tags at once, as opposed to the Advanced Tag Editor where instead you work with one file at a time.


The Tag Editors user interface is reused between different tools in Helium to give a similar user interface:

  • Edit subtracks
  • Split audio files
  • CD Ripper


The Tag editor works in two modes, depending on your selection of input files: Album mode or Track mode.


If you select an album and start the Tag editor and all files from the album contains the exact same album name, it will enable access to the album mode.

This allows you to display an extra pane to the right in the Tag editor which lists fields that are common for all files in the album, such as album name, album artist, release type and more.

Changing one of these fields will automatically apply the value to all files from the album, which enables a very quick way of editing album information.


The track mode does not enable this right pane and its functions.


Working with the Tag editor

The tag editor displays one file per row and its attributes as a column. You can configure which columns to use for editing by clicking the Select columns... button on the top toolbar.


Select a column and start typing to start the editing of the contents in the columns. There are cells of different types adjusted for which data type they are connected to.

Some cells are more complex than other and can contain a button at the right with an ellipsis icon (...). Click this button to open the specific editor connected to the column.


Apart from manual editing of contents there are several commands available to help you to speed up the tagging process:

  • Apply will apply the selected cell value to all cells in the selected column. This command is very useful for quickly copying a value to the entire column e.g. the album name. You can also access the Apply command by pressing CTRL+D.
  • Apply Down works in the same way as Apply, but Apply Down will only apply the current cell value to the remaining cells in the column. You can also access the Apply Down command by pressing Shift+CTRL+D.
  • Auto Track will fill the selected column with a value that starts at 1 and is incremented by one for each row. Use the auto track command to quickly generate track number series for an album. Please note that Auto Track only works in numeric cells.
  • Apply sort order to fields will generate content for all sort order fields based on the data in its respective non-sort field. If title for example is set to "The Promise", "Promise, The" will be filled in for the title sort order field.
  • The Switch menu contain several methods to switch data between cells.

  • The Extract menu contain several methods to extract multiple data from one cell to other cells.

  • Calculate will allow you to calculate different data for the selected file/files.


These commands are available from the context menu and some of them from the top toolbar.

Click the Filename to tag button to generate tag information from filenames.
Click the Settings button to quickly access settings related to the Capitalizer and word replacer, used for formatting of contents in the different cells.


The bottom toolbar contains a built-in player with the following controls:

  • Volume, click the arrow to quickly set the volume to a static value
  • Rewind
  • Play
  • Pause
  • Stop
  • Forward
  • Smart play - clicking this button jumps to a specific position for each file in three levels; start, break and outtro. You can configure the offsets from Options.

Downloading information

If you are working with the album mode in the Tag editor, it is easy to download track and album information for the album.

Click the Download button on the top toolbar and the downloading will start in the background, allowing you to continue to tag whilst downloading data.


When data is downloaded, the results will be shown in a new pane, opened to the left. The matches will be shown in different background colors, red if the data could not be downloaded, yellow if it is a partial match or green if it is a perfect match.


When you select a match from the left pane, the existing tag data will be merged with the downloaded data.


If you need to change the search parameters, simply click the Refine button above the result list.