Built for Collections Worth Protecting

Imagine a collection built over many years: CD rips, purchased ALAC, imported FLAC, and files gathered from several folders. In Music.app, albums may look complete even when some local files have no embedded cover or carry an older image.

Copy a few tracks to an older player or a media server and you may notice the difference. Some covers travel with the files. Others were supplied by the app or its catalog. A familiar album can also have the wrong edition or a mismatched track list.

The useful question is what each file contains and what you want to repair.

The collection is more than its covers

A long-kept collection gathers decisions made with different tools and at different times. One track can have a different format or bitrate from the rest of its album. Tags may disagree about track numbering or genre. A cover may belong to a reissue rather than the edition you own.

Those details are hard to spot in a player view. A collection scan makes them easier to inspect before you change anything.

What pressing changes

Private Press writes artwork into the metadata container of supported local audio files: MP3, M4A/ALAC, FLAC, and AIFF. The format-specific editors preserve the encoded audio payload; they do not transcode it. Embedded artwork then travels with the file to players that read that format's metadata.

Private Press stages and validates edits, journals file replacement, and supports recovery after an interrupted press. Pre-write backups are on by default and configurable. See Support for backup settings and recovery guidance.

A free way to try the workflow

The free tier includes 25 presses across Apple Music local files and local folders. Scan and search before choosing which albums to press. Try a few files you know well, then check them in another player or on another device.

Pressed artwork is stored in the file. That makes the result portable to players that read it.

Who this is for

Private Press is for people who keep local music files and care about artwork, edition identity, tags, and audio format. It works with Apple Music local files and selected folders, including mounted NAS volumes. The same folders can also be used by Plex or Navidrome, according to each app's own settings.

The app searches iTunes, MusicBrainz/Cover Art Archive, and Discogs. Its match score combines text similarity with release signals such as track count, year, and edition. For more on comparing candidates, see The Right Album Can Still Be the Wrong Edition.

What is inside the app

The shipped app is built with Swift and Apple system frameworks, with zero linked third-party package dependencies. Its audio fingerprinting engine uses MIT-licensed Chromaprint classifier and encoding material. The app also bundles DM Mono fonts under the SIL Open Font License 1.1; source and font notices ship with the app. Fingerprinting reads audio to help identify recordings; it is outside the file-writing path.

Four format-specific editors handle shipped artwork and metadata writes. A separate pure Swift FLAC encoder and decoder is experimental work in a separate target. Shipped FLAC pressing edits metadata without invoking that codec. Liner Notes lists the current framework credits and explains the division between shipped editors and codec research.

Private Press is distributed directly for macOS 15 or later. The free tier includes 25 presses, and paid options include press packs and Pro for unlimited pressing and automation.

Your collection took years to build. The artwork should be as portable as the files.