Library

The Library is Aurral’s index of your music. It includes the files in the Downloads Folder and, if you connect Lidarr, the files in the Lidarr root folders. Open Library in the sidebar to see these sections:

Library shows recently added albums and a short track list.
Favorites shows your starred artists, albums, and tracks.
Albums shows album artwork and how many tracks are available.
Tracks shows each track, its artist and album, and whether its file exists.
Album artists and Artists list the artists.
Genres opens the album list for one genre. A genre tag that lists several genres separated by ; counts under each of them. Other separators such as / and , stay part of the genre name.
Playlists shows your static playlists. Flows have their own Flows item in the sidebar.

To filter the current section, use the search field in the toolbar.

Play and browse

Select a track or album to play it in the built-in player. An artist or album page shows its tracks, playback controls, and favorites. A track without a file stays in the list but cannot play. Missing album tracks appear dimmed.

While the player is open, press Space to play or pause, ← and → to move 5 seconds, Shift+← and Shift+→ for the previous or next track, and M to mute. The keys do nothing while you type in a field.

To see what plays next, select the queue button in the player. Drag tracks or use the handle with Space and the arrow keys to reorder them, remove one, or clear everything after the current track. On a phone, the queue is in the Now playing view. Any track menu with a playable track has Play next and Add to queue. When nothing is playing, either one starts the track.

Aurral remembers the queue in this browser. After a reload, the player comes back paused at the same track and time. Closing the player or logging out stops playback, and closing the player also forgets the queue. If you play in a second tab, the first tab pauses.

Each artist and album has a Discover view and a Library view. On a Library page, select Open in Discover to see releases, tags, similar artists, and previews. On a Discover page, select Open in library to go back.

Favorites belong to each user. They work in the built-in player and in Subsonic clients.

To open a track, album, or artist menu, select its options button, right-click it, or press and hold it on a touch screen. Use the track menu to add a track to a playlist or remove it. To see the indexed metadata of an artist, album, or track, select View info in its menu.

The page tells you when library data is stale, when files are partial or missing, when a service has a problem, and when a list is empty.

On a Discover artist page, you can search releases by title. Filter by all releases, albums, EPs and singles, or compilations. To show or hide live releases in any filter, use the Live albums switch.

Who manages your library

Each artist and album has one manager, Lidarr or Aurral:

With Lidarr connected, new artists and albums go to Lidarr. Lidarr monitors them and downloads albums into its root folders. Artists and albums that Aurral already has stay Aurral’s, and you can still monitor, search, and remove them. Aurral also downloads the tracks for playlists, flows, and single-track downloads into the Downloads Folder.
Without Lidarr, Aurral monitors artists and downloads albums and tracks with your download clients into the Downloads Folder.

Lidarr is connected when Settings > Lidarr > Enabled is on and the API key is set. When Lidarr is connected but cannot be reached, Lidarr actions show an error and Lidarr’s music stays in the Library. Aurral does not take over.

The buttons are the same either way. To get an album, select Download album. To get a track, select its + button and choose Add to library. To follow an artist, open the artist’s page and select Monitor. Discover and Search cards don’t add artists. See Artists.

When you connect Lidarr, the music Aurral already has stays Aurral’s. Lidarr takes an album over only when you send it to Lidarr. See Albums and tracks.

Turning Lidarr off

Turning off Lidarr removes Lidarr’s music from the Library. Aurral stops scanning the Lidarr root folders and removes the artists, albums, and tracks it found there. The files stay on disk. Removing the API key does the same.

Aurral’s own files stay. An album with files in both places keeps its Aurral tracks.
On an album that you downloaded with Aurral, tracks that only Lidarr had stay on the album as missing.
An artist or album that Lidarr managed and that still has Aurral files becomes Aurral’s and starts Not monitored.
Playlist and flow tracks that used a Lidarr file download again, so that Aurral has its own copy.
Favorites and play counts come back when the same music returns to the Library.

To bring Lidarr’s music back, turn Lidarr on again and save. Aurral scans its root folders again. To keep Lidarr’s music in Aurral without Lidarr, ingest its root folder first. See Bring your existing music.

Monitor music

Monitoring decides what Aurral or Lidarr does by itself. It works at three levels: artist, album, and track. Unmonitoring never deletes files. To remove music, see Remove tracks, albums, and artists.

Artists

An artist’s monitoring decides which of its releases download by themselves. On a Discover artist page, select Monitor and make a choice. The button then shows it. On a Library artist page, the same choices are in the artist’s menu. Every artist starts Not monitored, so you never add an artist first.

With Lidarr, Lidarr monitors the artist with its own options: All albums, Future albums, Latest album, First album, Existing albums, and Missing albums. Choosing one for an artist that Aurral does not have adds it to Lidarr with your Lidarr defaults. To choose the root folder, quality profile, tag, or monitoring for one artist before it is added, select Customize add… in the menu. If you change an artist’s monitoring in Lidarr itself, the option shows Custom. When Lidarr monitors or downloads an album that Aurral has tracks from, Lidarr takes the album over. See Albums and tracks.
Without Lidarr, Aurral monitors the artist with its own rules. Aurral keeps monitoring its own artists after you connect Lidarr.

Aurral’s monitoring rules

An artist that Aurral manages is Monitored or Not monitored. A monitored artist follows the default rules, unless you give it its own. To see or change an artist’s rules, select Monitoring rules… in its monitoring menu and turn off Use the default rules. While you change the rules, Aurral lists the releases and top tracks it would download, and what it skips and why. An artist with its own rules shows Custom rules.

An admin sets the default rules in Settings > Monitoring > Default rules. Before a change is saved, Aurral shows how many artists use the default and what it would download for them. A change applies to those artists from the moment you save it.

Back catalogue takes the releases that are already out: Everything, everything Since a year, the Latest releases, up to 10, or Nothing. It counts what was out when you saved the rules, so Latest releases keeps the same releases when the artist puts out another one.
New releases downloads the releases that come out after you start monitoring.
Release types chooses albums, EPs, and singles. Also include adds releases with a secondary type, such as live albums, compilations, soundtracks, remixes, demos, DJ mixes, and mixtapes. Aurral only takes official releases.
Edition chooses the Standard tracklist or the Expanded edition. See Follow an Aurral album download.
Top tracks downloads up to 50 of the artist’s most popular songs that its releases don’t already bring. The list comes from Last.fm when you set a Last.fm API key, and from Deezer otherwise.

The default rules take every album and EP and the new releases. Aurral skips a single, EP, or other release when every song on it is already in your Library or on another release it downloads. A studio album is never skipped this way.

After you change an artist’s monitoring, Aurral reports what it queued and why it skipped the rest. If Aurral cannot load the artist’s releases, it tells you and keeps the old rules. Aurral checks the artists it monitors for new releases and top tracks once a day.

Artists that an earlier version monitored with All albums use the default rules. Future albums and Latest album became rules that do the same. Artists on First album are now Not monitored, and the album they downloaded stays monitored.

A Library artist’s menu also has Delete artist. See Remove tracks, albums, and artists.

Albums and tracks

Downloading something monitors it. When you download an album, Aurral monitors the album and every track on it. When you download one track, Aurral monitors that track only. A monitored track gets everything Aurral does by itself: Aurral downloads it, searches again when it is missing, and upgrades its file below your quality cutoff. An unmonitored track stays as it is. This includes monitored tracks that Aurral did not download, such as ingested music.

A track can be monitored on its own. A single that a synced playlist downloaded puts its album in your Library. The album is unmonitored, and the playlist’s track is monitored. Files that Aurral did not download, such as music you copied into the download folder, start unmonitored.

With Lidarr connected, Download album on an album that Aurral does not have sends it to Lidarr. Sending an album that Aurral has to Lidarr from Discover or Search hands it to Lidarr. Lidarr then manages the album, and Aurral stops monitoring its tracks. When Lidarr has a track, playlists use Lidarr’s file and Aurral deletes its own copy, unless a playlist on a media server still uses it.

To get the rest of an album, open its Library page and select the download button next to Add to favorites. On an Aurral album, Aurral looks up the full track list and downloads what is missing. On a Lidarr album, Lidarr searches for it.
To get one missing track, select the download button on its row. Aurral downloads the track, even on an album that Lidarr manages.
To stop monitoring an album, open the album’s menu and select Stop monitoring album. This stops monitoring every track on it.
To stop monitoring one track, open its menu on the album page and select Stop monitoring track. An unmonitored track shows a crossed-out eye. Lidarr cannot monitor single tracks, so tracks whose files come from Lidarr have no track monitoring.
To keep a file you are happy with, select Keep this file in the track’s menu. Aurral stops upgrading it, including when you ask for an upgrade, and cancels an upgrade that is under way, but keeps monitoring the track. To let Aurral upgrade it again, select Allow upgrades.

If the album or track has unfinished downloads, Aurral asks you to confirm. It then cancels those downloads and keeps every finished file. To monitor something again, download it. When nothing is missing, the menu offers Monitor track or Monitor album instead. An album you unmonitored stays unmonitored when you change the artist’s monitoring later.

Wanted does not list unmonitored tracks. Retry on an album skips the tracks you unmonitored. Re-search on one track still works when it is unmonitored.

Search again for missing tracks

Aurral can search again for missing tracks that you monitor. This is off by default. To turn it on, open Settings > Monitoring and turn on Search again for missing tracks.

Aurral checks once a day and searches every album with a monitored missing track whose Search interval has passed since its last search or download. It skips unmonitored tracks. After you cancel an album’s downloads, Aurral leaves that album alone until you select Retry.

Follow an Aurral album download

A monitored album shows its download state on its page, such as Queued, Downloading, Partially available, or Needs attention. An album is complete when every track you monitor is available.

Aurral asks for the tracklist that most releases of the album share, in the order most of them share. That is usually the standard edition rather than a deluxe edition, a box set, or a pressing that swaps tracks. If the album download turns out to be a whole shorter edition, the album is complete. Aurral stops monitoring the tracks that only the longer edition has and does not search for them. To get one of them, select the download button on its row.

When the artist’s rules choose the Expanded edition, Aurral asks for the longest edition that keeps every standard track and is at most twice as long, such as a deluxe edition but not a box set. If the album download is the shorter edition, Aurral keeps searching for the extra tracks one by one. Switching an artist to Expanded also adds the extra tracks of its albums already in your Library. An expanded edition must use the same recordings as the standard tracks, so a remaster with its own recordings is not treated as one.

To stop unfinished tracks, select Cancel downloads. Finished tracks stay in the Library.
To search again for cancelled and failed tracks, select Retry.

If no download client is set up, or if tracks wait for review, the album page links to the settings page or the Activity view that fixes the problem. To see where a track’s file came from, select View info in its menu.

Replace a track

To look for another recording of a track that Aurral downloaded, right-click the track and select Re-search. The current file stays available until Aurral downloads and checks a replacement. Lidarr tracks do not have this action.

Remove tracks, albums, and artists

When you delete a track that Aurral manages, Aurral deletes its file. If no other file exists for the track, Aurral also removes the track, and any album or artist that is left empty. If one of several files cannot be deleted, Aurral keeps the track until a later attempt succeeds.

To remove an album or artist, select Delete album or Delete artist at the bottom of its menu. Aurral cancels unfinished downloads and removes it from Lidarr too when Lidarr has it. To also delete the music files, select Delete album files or Delete artist files. Aurral then also deletes the tracks’ lyrics files, and album art and folders that the music leaves empty in the Downloads Folder. Otherwise the files stay on disk.

When you delete an album, the artist’s monitoring leaves it out from then on. Deleting a track file also keeps the track out of the artist’s top tracks. To let monitoring download it again, request it yourself or select Allow again in the artist’s Monitoring rules… or in Settings > Monitoring.
Deleting an album or artist that Lidarr has needs Lidarr. If Lidarr cannot be reached, nothing is deleted.
Aurral deletes files only in the Downloads Folder. A file in a Lidarr root folder stays, even when a playlist used it.

Where Aurral keeps files

Aurral keeps permanent tracks in Artist/Album/Track folders in the Downloads Folder. When Aurral knows a track’s position on the album, it names the file 07 - Title, or 2-07 - Title past the first disc, so the folder lists in album order and a title that repeats on another disc gets its own file.

Flow tracks are temporary. They live under _flows and are not part of the Library, with two exceptions:

To add one flow track to the Library, select Add to library in its menu.
To show all current tracks of a flow in the Library, turn on Show in library for the flow. See Flows.

When a Subsonic client favorites a flow track, Aurral adds it to the Library. To turn this off, open Settings > System > Subsonic and turn off Favorite flow tracks.

Aurral stores static playlist membership in its own database. Deleting a static playlist does not delete Library tracks.

How the Library finds new files

Aurral keeps the Library in its own database. It scans the Downloads Folder and the saved Lidarr root folders on local disk. A scan reads the artist, album, and track tags, the MusicBrainz IDs, and the audio files. A scan does not ask Lidarr for artist, album, or track data.

When a file changes in a watched folder, Aurral scans the changed file or folder. It skips files whose size and modification time did not change. It waits a moment for a move or rename to finish. It ignores _playlists, _staging, _fallback, _flows, aurral-weekly-flow, and hidden folders.

On a new installation, Aurral scans the whole library once. After that, it scans only what changes. It does not run scheduled full scans.

To scan now, select Refresh in Library and choose a scan:

Quick scan checks every folder, reads new and changed files, and marks missing files as unavailable.
Full scan reads the tags of every file again. Use it after you retag files without changing their size or modification time, or when a quick scan does not fix stale metadata. A full scan can take a long time on a large library. It keeps running if you leave the page.

When a scan finishes, an open Library page reloads. Recently added sorting on albums, tracks, and artists and the home page use the time that a file entered the Library, not the release date.

If Discover says that an album is in Lidarr but the Library does not show it, Aurral probably cannot read the Lidarr root folder. Run Settings > Storage health > Run checks and fix the Lidarr library section, then select Refresh. See Filesystem and mounts.

When you turn off Lidarr in Settings > Lidarr > Enabled, Aurral removes Lidarr’s music from the Library and stops watching the Lidarr root folders. See Turning Lidarr off.

When a Lidarr root folder is inside the Downloads Folder, Aurral leaves that folder to Lidarr while Lidarr is connected. When the Downloads Folder is inside a Lidarr root folder, the Lidarr scan skips the Downloads Folder.

Bring your existing music

To add music from another folder, such as an old library, a Lidarr root folder, or ripped CDs, open Settings > Library files and use Ingest a folder. Choose the folder and a mode:

Move moves each file into the Downloads Folder and removes the source folders it empties.
Copy copies each file and leaves the source folder as it is.
Hardlink adds each file to the Downloads Folder without using more space. It works only when the folder and the Downloads Folder are on the same filesystem and mount. When it is not available, Aurral says why.

Select Ingest. Aurral reads each file’s tags and files it under the same Artist/Album/07 - Title names that downloads use. The ingest runs in the background and continues after a restart. Stop ends it after the current file, and files already done stay done. When it finishes, Aurral shows how many files it filed and how many the Library already had, and lists each file it skipped with the reason.

Aurral matches music by its MusicBrainz tags first and by artist and album names second, so music from an artist or album that you already have goes into that artist’s or album’s folder. A file without MusicBrainz tags is also matched by the IDs MusicBrainz gives it, even when Fill in missing tags is off. Folder and file names that differ only in capitals, quotes, or dashes count as the same name. Fill in missing tags, on by default, has Aurral add MusicBrainz IDs, and any missing title, album artist, track and disc numbers, year, and genre, to the Library’s copy of each file it matches to MusicBrainz with confidence. Tags that a file already has never change, and the source file keeps its tags. Aurral never overwrites a file:

When the Library already has the track, Aurral skips the file as already in the Library. This includes a track the Library has in another file, such as a FLAC of an MP3 you ingest. With Move, Aurral removes a source file that is identical to the Library’s copy. When other source files are left, Aurral offers to remove them. It checks each one against the Library’s copy again before it deletes it.
When a file’s tags match a Library track but its length differs by more than 3 seconds, it is a different recording, such as a mistagged demo. Aurral skips it and names the track it matched. Fix its tags and ingest again.
When a file is lossless and the Library has the track only in a lossy format, Aurral skips it and says so. To use the lossless file, remove the Library’s copy and ingest again.
When a different file already has the name, two files in the folder claim the same track, or a file has no artist or album tag and is not in an Artist/Album folder, Aurral skips it and says why.

After the Library scan finds the ingested files, Aurral checks them once more. A filed file that the scan puts on a track the album already had, with the same length, is listed as already in the Library. With Copy and Hardlink, Aurral deletes the copy it filed, and the source keeps the file. With Move, Aurral moves the file back to its source folder and offers to remove it like the other sources.

Monitor decides what Aurral does with the music afterwards:

None adds the music and leaves it alone.
Tracks, the default, monitors each ingested track, so Aurral upgrades it below your quality cutoff when Automatic upgrades is on.
Albums monitors each ingested track’s album too, so Aurral also downloads the tracks that the album is missing.

Ingest never monitors artists, because a monitored artist downloads their albums. Monitor the artists you want Aurral to follow from their Library page. Aurral applies the Monitor choice after the Library scan finds the ingested files. From then on, Aurral manages these files. Delete album files and Delete artist files delete them from disk.

When the folder is a Lidarr root folder, Lidarr still points at it. Move takes the files away from Lidarr and breaks its library. Copy and Hardlink leave Lidarr’s files where they are.

A hardlinked file shares its data with another file, such as a torrent client’s copy. Filling in tags or upgrading gives the Library its own file, so the other link keeps its tags and data. The Library file then uses its own space.

Music that you copy into the Downloads Folder yourself also joins the Library. It keeps its file names until you clean up the Library.

Clean up the Library

Downloads and ingested music already get Aurral’s names and tags. For music you added by hand, open Settings > Library files and select Clean up Library. Aurral moves each file in the Downloads Folder to its Artist/Album/07 - Title name and fills in the tags it is missing, the same way ingest does. Files without a confident MusicBrainz match keep their tags and are listed as skipped. When the metadata provider cannot be reached, files keep their tags and say so, and the next clean up tries again. When it finishes, Aurral shows how many files changed and lists any it left alone, with the reason. Only one ingest or clean up runs at a time.

Earlier versions of Aurral left the disc out of the name, so Clean up also renames tracks past the first disc from 07 - Title to 2-07 - Title. A file keeps the track number from its tags or name when the Library’s album has no number for it.

When two files of one track want the same name, such as after the same folder was ingested twice, Clean up lists the extra one as a duplicate. They are the same recording when their lengths agree within 3 seconds. Aurral keeps the better copy, lossless before lossy and then the higher bitrate, and offers to remove the other. It checks both copies again before it deletes one. When the better copy had another name, it takes the removed copy’s name. Two files of one track whose lengths differ are different recordings, so Clean up leaves both and says so. Files whose tags give different track numbers are different tracks of the album, even when MusicBrainz gives them one recording, such as a run of silent tracks. Clean up and ingest keep both.

Download jobs, playlists, favorites, and lyrics files follow each file, and stay with the copy Aurral keeps when it removes a duplicate. A file that a media server playlist still uses keeps its old name too, until the playlist updates. Favorites, play counts, and monitoring follow a track when its new MusicBrainz IDs change its identity. Clean up never takes a name that another file has, and it leaves Lidarr’s files to Lidarr.

Artists without a MusicBrainz ID

Aurral matches Lidarr files to artists by MusicBrainz ID. When a file has no MusicBrainz artist tag, Aurral looks up the artist name on MusicBrainz after each scan. It links the artist only when exactly one MusicBrainz artist has that name or alias. A name that several artists share stays unlinked.

Artists and albums named in another script, such as Japanese, Korean, or Cyrillic, stay apart without MusicBrainz tags. Earlier versions put such artists under one artist and could merge their albums. Run a quick or full scan to split them. Favorites, play counts, and monitoring carry over to the artists, albums, and tracks that split off.

An unlinked artist stays in the Library. Its Discover page can still offer to add or monitor the artist, because Aurral cannot tell that the files belong to that artist.

To fix a wrong or missing link, open the artist menu and select Edit MusicBrainz ID. Paste an artist ID or a musicbrainz.org artist link, or remove the ID. If another library artist already has that ID, Aurral merges the two artists. Later scans keep your choice. You cannot edit a Lidarr artist here. Change it in Lidarr.

Known limits

Aurral hands an album to Lidarr only when Lidarr downloads or monitors it. Aurral never takes albums from Lidarr.
When you remove an album and keep its files in the Downloads Folder, the next full scan adds it back, unmonitored. To remove it for good, delete its files too.
Lidarr files tagged with a release ID but no release group ID can show up as a second copy of an album that Aurral also has.
When Lidarr is connected and Show available music only is on, the Library hides albums that Aurral is still downloading until one track finishes. To show them, turn off the setting in Settings > Lidarr.