changelog – MetaBrainz Blog

Picard 3.0.2 released

Picard 3.0.2 is a maintenance release for the recently released Picard 3.0 with fixes for reported issues and updated translations. This releases fixes a crash in the Setup Wizard if Picard was packaged with the automatic update check disabled and several color theme related fixes.

The latest release is available for download on the Picard download page.

The detailed changes for this maintenance release are below. For an overview of the new features since Picard 2.13 please see our detailed release announcement for Picard 3.0.

Thanks a lot to everyone who gave feedback and reported issues.

Picard 3.0.1 released

Picard 3.0.1 is a maintenance release for the recently released Picard 3.0 with fixes for reported issues and updated translations. In particular this release fixes issues on newer macOS Tahoe and Golden Gate, a possible crash when updating from Picard 2.x and the picard-cli utility in the Windows package.

The latest release is available for download on the Picard download page.

The detailed changes for this maintenance release are below. For an overview of the new features since Picard 2.13 please see our detailed release announcement for Picard 3.0.

Thanks a lot to everyone who gave feedback and reported issues.

Picard 3.0 released

The Picard team is happy to announce the new major version 3.0 of MusicBrainz Picard, now available to download. MusicBrainz Picard is the official tag editor for the MusicBrainz database and helps you get your music collection sorted and cleaned up with data from MusicBrainz.

An image of a mock software cardboard box, showing "MusicBrainz Picard" as the title. There are two worn-out looking stickers visible on the box, one saying "Complete Tagging Solution", one "Community Support".

Beside the box there is a pink / orange circle with the text "Version 3".

This release brings many changes, including an upgrade to Qt6, a completely new plugin system, several improvements to the user interface, cover art processing, ISRC submission and many more. More details below.

Picard 3 Release Candidate 4

We received good feedback on the previous release candidate 3, which resulted in several bugfixes and small improvements. The Picard team hence decided to release a fourth release candidate in preparation for the final release of Picard 3.0.

It fixes an important performance issue, so if you are currently running any of previous alpha, beta or release candidate versions upgrade ASAP.
It also fixes issues related to internationalization, causing some of existing translations to not actually show in the application (mainly constants).

Please test, test, and test, report any issue on forums, matrix, or, ideally, on the ticket system. When reporting an issue, always provide details about your environment and a full debug log helps us a lot. Also now is a good time for final review and improvements of the translations.

Download links and a detailed list of changes since Picard 3 release candidate 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.

If you are updating from Picard 2, note that some of the changes are backward incompatible, hence we recommend you make a backup of your Picard.ini config file before trying this version. You can do so in Picard’s Options under Advanced > Maintenance.

MusicBrainz Server update, 2026-09-21

Hi! It’s been a while since our last release since we have been working on stability improvements for both website and search to better cope with all the load we are handling recently. The first related changes are part of this release, with more to come, including limiting searches to 500 results (if you need something further down the search, sorry but you probably need a better search!). Additionally, the very annoying bug that sometimes lost track times when parsing tracklists should hopefully be gone now (thanks dvirtz!), and a lot more aggregator and shortener links are now blocked; even when not yet blocked, remember to always add all the relevant destination links rather than redirects and aggregators if possible.

A new release of MusicBrainz Docker is also available that matches this update of MusicBrainz Server. See the release notes for update instructions.

Thanks to derat, dvirtz, ibmibmibm and mib for having contributed to the code. Thanks to DenizC, derat, dvirtz, HibiscusKazeneko, j.rohr, outsidecontext, Raman Sinclair, rinsuki and salo.rock for having reported bugs and suggested improvements. Thanks to AligFu, AndrejsD1718, BestSteve, blueday, Covium, Denatura, EmO686, Flavia Telcean, joao_over9k, Kolesteraw, Life4649, liilliil, mfmeulenbelt, naturbrilian, NorwayFun, Priit Jõerüüt, pXF, syntariavoxmortem, TheParaziT, Vaclovas Intas, vacuousVersifier and wileyfoxyx for updating the translations. And thanks to all others who tested the beta version!

The git tag is v-2026-09-21.0.

Picard 3 Release Candidate 3

Today the Picard team is making available a third release candidate for Picard 3. We received good feedback on the previous release candidate 2, thanks to everyone for testing and providing feedback. The final 3.0 release is planned to happen in a few weeks.

Please test, test, and test, report any issue on forums, matrix, or, ideally, on the ticket system.

When reporting an issue, always provide details about your environment and a full debug log helps us a lot.
Also that’s (always) a good time to review and improve translations.

Download links and a detailed list of changes since Picard 3 release candidate 2 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.

Picard 3 Release Candidate 2

Today the Picard team is making available a second release candidate for Picard 3. We received good feedback on the previous release candidate 1, thanks to everyone for testing and providing feedback. The final 3.0 release is planned to happen in a few weeks.

Download links and a detailed list of changes since Picard 3 release candidate 1 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.

Picard 3 Release Candidate 1

The Picard team is excited to announce the first release candidate for Picard 3. With this release we are confident that Picard 3 is now suitable for testing by a wider audience. The final 3.0 release is planned to happen in a few weeks.

Since we are near a final release, we tried to focus on bugfixes, final changes to the Plugin API and further UI/UX improvements. On the UI side, Picard now fully supports dark / light mode across all supported operating systems, with the ability to change the theme without a restart.

Download links and a detailed list of changes since Picard 3 beta 9 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.

Picard 3 beta 9 released

Today, we have released MusicBrainz Picard 3 beta 9. This new versions brings several fixes over the last beta 7 (yes, we have skipped a beta number again), but also improvements and some new features.

Since we are near a final release, we tried to focus on quality of life and UI/UX improvements, some changes in the UI are quite important (release preferences UI is a complete overhaul, and the new About dialog also got a nice refresh). Among the highlights are:

MetaBrainz OAuth2 support and various OAuth improvements and bug fixes
ISRC reading (from files or CD) and optional submission
Word diff for tags in the Metadata Box
UI/UX improvements: Redesign of some option pages, along re-organization and performance improvements
Plugin API improvements

Download links and a detailed list of changes since Picard 3 beta 7 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.

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

MusicBrainz Server update, 2026-07-30

We’re happy to release our first MusicBrainz Server update since the schema change, following our migration of user accounts to the MetaBrainz website, which we’ve been spending most of our development time on until now. (This blog post also lags a bit behind the date we tagged the release, as you can tell from the title.)

In case you’re running a local MusicBrainz Server for development purposes, know that you can preserve the ability to log in without OAuth by adding sub LOCAL_ACCOUNTS_ENABLED { 1 } to lib/DBDefs.pm. (It’s already enabled by default if DEVELOPMENT_SERVER is.)

We’ve also made changes to digest authentication in the web service, detailed in the blog post linked above. If you don’t use digest authentication or any apps that do, it’s recommended you disable it from the Applications page.

A new release of MusicBrainz Docker is also available that matches this update of MusicBrainz Server. See the release notes for update instructions.

Thanks to julian45 and rinsuki for having contributed to the code. Thanks to affronttonature, Anesidora, arsinclair, chirlu, DarkAdonis, jesus2099, julian45, Lotheric, practik, rinsuki, and wileyfoxyx for having reported bugs and suggested improvements. Thanks to 7Stars, ApeKattQuest/MonkeyPython, Denatura, Early6431, EmO686, Flavia Telcean, GABG, Jeluang, JerryBest, KevinOpperman, LAY.JOSHI97, Lummerkurt, MFreedom89, Philipp Wolfer, ROManceJP, RalfZhang, The
ParaziT, afterthemagic, blueday, coffeeicus, cuhsy, jerry155756294, julian45, karpuzikov, meze, mfmeulenbelt, mr_monkey, salo.rock, sashimi3433, scientists360, silentbird, soonaf, sq, welikeheon, wileyfoxyx, and
zatto13 for updating the translations. And thanks to all others who tested the beta version!

The git tag is v-2026-07-30.1.