Library Management on Navidrome

Tagging Guidelines

Mon, 02 Jan 2017 00:00:00 +0000

Why Proper Tagging is Important

Navidrome organizes your music library entirely based on the metadata tags in your audio files. Unlike some music players, it does not use folder names or file names to group tracks (why?). This means that having clean and consistent tags is crucial for your music to display correctly. Proper tagging ensures that albums aren’t split up, artists are listed correctly, and you can easily browse or search for your music in Navidrome.

Artwork location resolution

Thu, 05 Jan 2017 00:00:00 +0000

Artists

Fetching images for artists is controlled by the ArtistArtPriority config option. This is a comma-separated list of places to look for artist images. The default is artist.*, album/artist.*, external, meaning:

First try to find an artist.* image in the artist folder(s)
If not found, try to find an artist.* image in one of the album folders for this artist
If not found, try to fetch it from an external service
If not found, use the artist image placeholder (grey star image)

Albums

CoverArt fetching for albums is controlled by the CoverArtPriority config option. This is a comma-separated list of places to look for album art images. The default is cover.*, folder.*, front.*, embedded, external, meaning:

Missing Files

Mon, 02 Jan 2017 00:00:00 +0000

Overview

When using Navidrome, you may encounter missing tracks or albums in your library. When moving or renaming files, Navidrome may not be able to match the old versions of your files with the new ones when scanning your library. This can result in “ghost” (grayed out) tracks or albums in your library.

Only admins can see the missing tracks and albums in the library:

Missing files are not removed from the database on new scans to avoid inadvertently losing information like ratings, and play counts and references in playlists.

Exclude Content From Library

Sat, 05 Jul 2025 00:00:00 +0000

Overview

Navidrome allows the usage of a .ndignore file to exclude content from being added to Navidrome’s library. These files can be used in the following ways:

A blank .ndignore file can be added to a directory, and as a result Navidrome will ignore that folder and its subfolders from being added to Navidrome’s library.
A .ndignore file also supports .gitignore syntax inside of it to set rules for content to exclude. This allows you to place a single file in your parent Music folder and then use a single file to establish rules on ignoring certain folders, filetypes, or files.

Key behaviors

Cascading: Patterns from parent directories apply to all subdirectories
Multiple files: You can place .ndignore files in different directories

A new or updated .ndignore file should be auto-detected by Navidrome, or can be detected with a Quick Scan.

Syntax Usage and Examples

A single .ndignore can be placed at the parent folder of your library and then syntax added to it.