Picard 3 alpha 4 released

Today, we’re making available another pre-release version for the upcoming MusicBrainz Picard 3. Alpha 4 focuses on fixing issues that were found in the previous releases as well as some minor improvements and updated translations.

Download links and a list of changes since Picard 3 alpha 3 are available below. For a more detailed overview of what is new in Picard 3 please see the previous blog post Picard 3 Alpha Release.

While we have all the major features implemented and with the latest bug fixes we are confident in the current code, this is still a pre-release and there might be bugs. If you use this, do so with care, backup your files and please report any issues you encounter.

Some of the changes are also backward incompatible, hence we recommend you make a backup of your Picard.ini config file before trying the alpha version. You can do so in Picard’s Options under Advanced > Maintenance.

What’s new?

Bugfixes

• PICARD-3189 – Restore defaults does not work properly when profile is enabled
• PICARD-3204 – PyQt6-Qt6 dependency breaks Linux distro environments
• PICARD-3205 – fpcalc error message in options stays red even after selecting a valid fpcalc
• PICARD-3206 – itunes_cddb_1 should map to COMM:iTunes_CDDB_1 in ID3
• PICARD-3211 – macOS: SSL CERTIFICATE_VERIFY_FAILED loading plugins registry
• PICARD-3213 – is_local_path incorrectly handles Windows drive-relative paths (C:repo)
• PICARD-3219 – Cover art not displayed
• PICARD-3220 – Image processing filters (e.g. ignore smaller images) are ignored for local files
• PICARD-3221 – Picard tries to remove a file from cluster twice, raising an exception
• PICARD-3227 – Dark theme detection for GNOME can fail
• PICARD-3229 – Guessing track number and title from filename fails with “index out of range”
• PICARD-3230 – Deleting totaldiscs also removes discnumber from ASF tags
• PICARD-3234 – Columns being added are not visible
• PICARD-3235 – Fingerprint column shows text overlapping the icon

New Features

• PICARD-2383 – Add musicbrainz_composerid tag
• PICARD-3216 – Provide option for automatically checking for available plugin updates
• PICARD-3223 – Allow plugins to add blocking album tasks

Improvements

• PICARD-3212 – Qt’s toolbar extension button (overflow arrow) uses a dark icon that is almost invisible on dark backgrounds
• PICARD-3231 – Improve plugin blacklist implementation and associated tests
• PICARD-3232 – Review and improve plugins registry redirects code and tests

Tasks

• PICARD-2859 – Update documentation for profile highlight color options
• PICARD-2860 – Update documentation for new command line options for additional debug output
• PICARD-2861 – Update documentation for new network cache size option setting
• PICARD-2862 – Update documentation for new date sanitization settings
• PICARD-2877 – Update documentation for revised Options > Advanced > Maintenance page
• PICARD-3136 – Update documentation for ReadTheDocs support options
• PICARD-3183 – Clarify documentation of option profiles in the section Configuration
• PICARD-3200 – Clarify documentation “Understanding Acoustic Fingerprinting and AcoustIDs”
• PICARD-3217 – Document automatic plugin update checking
• PICARD-3226 – Enable the Dutch translation of the documentation
• PICARD-3233 – Redirect documentation URL from GitHub Pages to ReadTheDocs

Download

As this is a pre-release and early alpha version, it is not available on all the channels where Picard’s current stable version is available.

We appreciate your interest in trying this new version. Use with care, backup your files and please use the MetaBrainz community forums and the ticket system to give feedback and report bugs.

• MusicBrainz Picard for Windows (installer)
• MusicBrainz Picard for Windows (portable)
• MusicBrainz Picard for macOS (Intel)
• MusicBrainz Picard for macOS (ARM64)
• Source code

Picard is free software and the source code is available on GitHub.

Acknowledgements

This release contains code contributions by zas, rdswift, outsidecontext, iron-prog, metaisfacil and sanskarmit. Translations were updated by mfmeulenbelt (Dutch), oleh_hishak (Ukrainian), Arhidimon (Ukrainian), marcriera (Catalan), wileyfoxyx (Russian) and theoasim (Greek). Special shout-out to mfmeulenbelt for completely translating the Picard User Guide into Dutch!