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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. Artwork displayed by Music may live in its database rather than in your files. Pressed artwork lives in the file, so it travels with the file when you copy it to another supported player or device.

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

Private Press edits artwork and metadata in these 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 with a match score above 90/100 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 artwork sources are available:

• 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.

Artwork match scores combine album and artist similarity with track-count, year, and edition signals. A score ranks candidates on a 0–100 scale. During batch search, the default auto-accept threshold is 85/100; you can adjust it in Settings. Accepting a match and pressing it are separate steps.

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. A native Swift 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.

Private Press modifies artwork and tag metadata. Artwork-only operations are designed not to modify the encoded audio payload. Changes are staged before replacement, and the app reports failures so you can review the affected file and use available recovery or backup state.

Yes, by default. Before pressing, the original file is copied to a backup folder. Backups are kept for 30 days (configurable). Restore requires a matching, retained backup and its verification evidence. If available, choose “Restore from Backup” in the Album Detail view to attempt recovery. Backups can be disabled in Settings if you prefer.

With backups enabled (the default) and a retained backup available, click any album and choose “Restore from Backup” to attempt recovery. For batch operations, the app keeps an undo history of the last 3 batches. Maintain an independent backup for recovery outside the app.

Private Press keeps pre-write backups by default, with 30-day retention that can be configured in Settings. Backups can also be disabled.

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.

The artwork match score uses Sørensen–Dice text similarity, edition-token alignment, track count, and year. It ranks the available candidates rather than expressing a measured probability. The default batch auto-accept threshold is 85/100, adjustable in Settings. Compare release details when editions are close.

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, reject it. If a retained backup is available, you can use the app’s restore action; keep an independent backup as the authoritative recovery path.

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.

Scan time depends on the collection size, source, storage speed, and file access. Drift detection lets rescans skip unchanged files. Progress is shown while the app works.

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.

It depends on the number and size of files, storage speed, and artwork retrieval. A progress bar shows the current album, completion percentage, and estimated time remaining. You can cancel mid-batch and completed work is preserved.

Mac-to-Mac synchronization is in development. It is not available in the current release.

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 state sync is also in development. Artwork already pressed into your files travels with those files today, independently of these future sync features.

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.

Private Press has no advertising or third-party in-app tracking SDKs. Artwork search, audio identification, and licensing use the network, and Keynell records pseudonymized result-side Identify service analytics. See the full privacy policy for the data sent by each feature.

Collection state, settings, file paths, and raw audio are stored locally. Selected network features transmit the specific metadata described in the privacy policy.