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Private Press scans your music collection — Apple Music or local folders — finds albums with missing or low-quality cover art, searches three artwork providers, and presses high-quality artwork directly into your audio files. Once pressed, artwork is part of the file — it travels with your music across devices, apps, and platforms.

Pressing is embedding artwork into the metadata of your audio files. Unlike Music.app's temporary cache, pressed artwork is permanent — it stays with the file no matter where you move it. Think of it like a vinyl pressing: once it's in, it's in.

macOS 15 (Sequoia) or later. Universal binary — runs natively on both Apple Silicon and Intel Macs.

Private Press supports all major formats:

• M4A / ALAC (Apple Lossless)
• MP3
• FLAC
• AIFF / AIFC

Each format uses its native metadata container — no conversion, no hybrid tags.

You get 25 free presses across all sources — enough to try the full workflow on real albums. Scanning, searching, and browsing are unlimited. To press more, buy a Test Pressing ($14.99 for 500 presses), a Press Run ($24.99 for 1,000 presses), or unlock unlimited pressing with Pro ($59.99, one-time). Purchase at privatepress.app, receive your license key via email, and activate it in the app.

One album = one press, regardless of track count. Pressing a 20-track album uses the same single press as a 3-track EP. Re-pressing the same album later doesn't consume additional quota.

A one-time purchase of 500 presses for $14.99 — across all sources (Apple Music and local folders). Test Pressings unlock batch pressing (press multiple albums at once) and provenance export (CSV + JSON). They’re re-purchasable and presses stack. Purchased presses are tied to your license key, not your Mac. Best for collections under 500 albums.

A one-time purchase of 1,000 presses for $24.99 — across all sources (Apple Music and local folders). Press Runs unlock batch pressing (press multiple albums at once) and provenance export (CSV + JSON). They’re re-purchasable and presses stack. Purchased presses are tied to your license key, not your Mac. Best value for larger collections.

$59.99, one-time purchase. Pro unlocks:

• Unlimited presses, all sources
• Smart Rules & Autopilot
• Press Sync — quality-aware sync between Macs Coming soon
• 3 device activations
• Pro app icon

Yes. Presses from Test Pressings and Press Runs are yours to keep. Pro simply makes all future pressing unlimited. Nothing is wasted.

Smart Rules let you define conditions for auto-accepting artwork matches — for example, “always accept iTunes matches above 90% confidence for jazz albums.” Autopilot runs your Smart Rules automatically during batch operations, pressing matches that meet your criteria without manual review. Both are Pro features.

A Pro feature that shows collection health metrics, pressing history, and provider performance — how many albums are pressed, which providers delivered the best matches, and your overall quality score over time. You can generate a shareable Stats Card to show off your collection’s progress.

Three providers, searched in parallel:

• iTunes Search API
• MusicBrainz + Cover Art Archive
• Discogs

All three work out of the box — no API keys required. iTunes and MusicBrainz are built-in; Discogs credentials are provided automatically.

Results are scored using text similarity on album and artist names, plus bonuses for matching track count, year, and edition (e.g. “Deluxe Edition”). Matches above 85% confidence are auto-accepted during batch search. You can adjust this threshold in Settings.

Reject it and the next-best result is promoted. You can also type a custom search query to refine results. Nothing is pressed until you explicitly accept a match.

Private Press can identify unknown tracks by listening to the audio itself. An in-house Chromaprint engine generates acoustic fingerprints and looks them up via AcoustID. Even when tags are missing or wrong, your music can still be identified and matched with artwork.

Pressing is completely lossless. Only metadata (artwork and tags) is modified — your audio data is bitwise-identical before and after. All writes use atomic operations: changes go to a temporary file first, then swap in only if the write succeeds. If anything fails, the original file is untouched.

Yes, by default. Before pressing, the original file is copied to a backup folder. Backups are kept for 30 days (configurable). You can restore any album from backup in the Album Detail view. Backups can be disabled in Settings if you prefer.

Yes. With backups enabled (the default), click any album and choose “Restore from Backup” to revert to the original file. For batch operations, the app keeps an undo history of the last 3 batches.

Private Press creates automatic backups before every press — 30-day retention, configurable in Settings. This is your first safety net.

We also recommend an independent backup strategy — Time Machine, an external drive, NAS snapshots. Your music collection is irreplaceable. We especially recommend a full backup before your first large batch operation.

Confidence scoring uses Sørensen–Dice text similarity, edition token alignment, track count proximity, and year proximity. It’s probabilistic — not guaranteed. The auto-accept threshold defaults to 85% confidence and is tunable in Settings.

Compilations, live albums, and greatest-hits collections are the most common sources of edition confusion. We recommend spot-checking batch results before pressing, particularly for these categories.

If a wrong match slips through, you can always reject it and restore from backup.

A preflight check runs before any writing begins. If any file in the batch is locked or unwritable, the entire operation fails early — before any files are modified. The error message lists which files need their permissions updated.

Yes. If “Auto-Sync After Press” is enabled (the default), Private Press tells Music.app to re-read the file metadata after pressing. Your artwork appears in Music.app immediately.

No. Pressing works whether Music.app is open or not — artwork is written directly to your files. If Music.app isn't running, the sync step is simply skipped. You can sync manually later.

It can — iCloud Music Library sometimes replaces local artwork with Apple's lower-resolution version during sync. Cloud-Safe Mode (a Pro feature) warns you about high-risk albums and lets you decide whether to proceed before pressing.

Initial scan: under 60 seconds for 10,000 tracks. Subsequent scans are much faster — drift detection skips unchanged files, so a rescan typically takes under 10 seconds.

A Pro feature that flags albums where a higher-quality version exists in your collection or where your files could be upgraded. For example, if you have an album in 128 kbps MP3 but also own a lossless copy, the advisor surfaces it and recommends which to keep.

Depends on your collection size and disk speed. Roughly 30–60 minutes for 1,000 albums. A progress bar shows the current album, completion percentage, and estimated time remaining. You can cancel mid-batch and completed work is preserved.

Yes — two ways, both Pro features:

Press Sync (coming in a future Pro update) will sync your actual music files between Macs on the same local network. Your Macs will discover each other automatically, compare libraries, and build a quality-aware Sync Plan — classifying every album as new, a quality upgrade, a conflict, or already in sync. You’ll review the plan before anything transfers.

iCloud Sync syncs your app state — accepted matches, press history, provenance records, settings, and Smart Rules — automatically between your Macs via CloudKit.

Absolutely. Pressed artwork lives inside your audio files, not in the app. Move your music collection to a new Mac and all your pressed artwork comes with it.

Try a custom search — edit the album or artist name in the search field (e.g., remove “feat.” credits, try an alternate spelling, or search by catalog number). Different sources index different releases, so the artwork may exist under a slight name variation.

Artwork providers enforce rate limits. When one is hit, Private Press pauses briefly and retries automatically. This is normal during large batch searches — the pause protects your API access.

Common causes: Music.app’s cache hadn’t refreshed yet, the track was removed from Music.app, or a file permission changed. The app shows exactly which tracks failed and offers a “Retry” button to re-sync just those tracks without re-pressing.

Before pressing, a preflight check confirms there’s enough space for backups. Free up disk space or disable backups in Settings to proceed. No files are modified until the space check passes.

No. Zero analytics, no crash reporters, no telemetry. The only network calls are artwork searches and license validation. See our full privacy policy.

Everything stays on your Mac in the app’s local support folder. If you’re a Pro user with iCloud Sync enabled, your matches and settings also sync to your private iCloud database — encrypted end-to-end by Apple. We never have access to it.