{"id":191,"date":"2026-10-08T20:05:30","date_gmt":"2026-10-08T18:05:30","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/linuxundich.de\/en\/?p=191"},"modified":"2026-10-11T22:35:45","modified_gmt":"2026-10-11T20:35:45","slug":"musicbrainz-picard-3-qt6-plugin-system-setup-wizard","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/linuxundich.de\/en\/musicbrainz-picard-3-qt6-plugin-system-setup-wizard\/","title":{"rendered":"MusicBrainz Picard 3.0: Qt6, a New Plugin System and a Setup Wizard"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

If you want your music collection tagged properly, you will hardly get around Picard. The tag editor from the MusicBrainz project matches your files against the database and writes artist, album, cover art and the rest back into the tags. On October 4, the developers released Picard 3.0<\/a>. According to the announcement, it took almost three years of work, starting in late 2023 with the move to PyQt6: 687 merged pull requests, nearly 6,800 commits and contributions from more than 100 people.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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Picard 3.0 greets new users with a setup wizard.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

Qt6 and a wizard for the first start<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

The biggest change under the hood: Picard 3 uses Qt6 instead of Qt5. That brings better scaling on high-resolution displays and a dark mode on all platforms, and switching between modes no longer needs a restart. On Linux, the project lists Qt 6.6 and Python 3.10 or newer as requirements. If you are on an older system, you stay with Picard 2, which is supposed to get at least one more maintenance release.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

There is also a setup wizard on first launch. Among other things, it asks whether Picard should rename and move files when saving, and how it should handle update checks. On top of that, small tutorial hints pop up the first time you load files or cluster them. You can turn both off in the settings.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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On the Updates page you decide how Picard checks for new versions, plugins and documentation.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

The new plugin system<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

The most far-reaching change concerns extensions. Plugins now need a MANIFEST.toml<\/code>, are versioned with Git and can be installed from a central registry, from third-party Git repositories or from a local folder. There are trust levels from official to untrusted, and plugins with security problems can be blocked centrally. About 30 plugins are supposed to be ready at launch, some ported, some new.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The catch: plugins from Picard 2 no longer work. Not all of them have been ported yet, so if you miss one, you can ask for it in the forum. By the way, the plugin list in the settings is empty at first. A click on \u201cInstall Plugin\u201d gets you to the available extensions.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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The settings now include a dedicated plugin manager with search and an update button.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

Sessions, profiles and cover art<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

You can save your workspace as a session and restore it later, including file assignments and manual edits. Option profiles can be exported and imported, with credentials left out. You can also define your own columns with scripts, filter lists and copy several tags at once.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

For cover images, Picard can discard images below a minimum size, scale them automatically or convert them to a specific format. All of this goes back to a Google Summer of Code project from 2024.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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The new cover art processing: scale images, convert them or discard ones that are too small.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

More new features according to the announcement:<\/p>\n\n\n\n