Help / Your library
Lyrics: fetching, timed lyrics and .lrc files
Vesari Stylus shows lyrics beside whatever is playing, scrolling in time when a timed copy exists. Lyrics are free on every tier. Here is where they come from, how to fill a whole library, and what reaches disk.
Where lyrics come from
Two sources, and only two.
- Lyrics already inside your files. A scan reads the lyrics tag along with everything else, so anything a previous tagger embedded is there from the start.
- LRCLIB, a free community lyrics database, asked one track at a time.
Nothing runs on a timer, and no lookup fires while you are just listening. A fetch happens because you asked: the buttons below, plus two larger jobs that carry a lyrics step of their own. Super-Tag pulls artwork and then lyrics for every track it managed to tag, and a CD rip does the same for the tracks it just ripped. What the online lookups send covers exactly what goes out.
An .lrc file already sitting next to your music is not read. Sidecars are something the app writes, not something it imports, and there is no import for them today. The only time one is opened is to check it before overwriting it. If a track shows no lyrics despite an .lrc beside it, that is why.
Lyrics for the track you are playing
The now-playing pane has a Lyrics tab, and the full-screen view shows lyrics beside the artwork. A track with none gets a Fetch from LRCLIB button in that space. A hit is saved in your library, so the next play is instant and works offline. When nothing matches, the pane says No lyrics found on LRCLIB.
Timed lyrics
LRCLIB carries plain text and timed (LRC) lyrics, and a timed copy is preferred at every stage: the exact match first, then a retry with remaster and "featuring" noise stripped from the title and artist, then a wider search ranked timed-copy-first, which can upgrade a plain-only result uploaded under a slightly different name.
When a timed copy exists, the pane scrolls: the current line is highlighted and kept centred, driven off the playback clock. Click any line to jump to that moment, which works on single-file CUE albums too.
Filling a whole library
Library Health collects the lyric work into categories, each with a count and a button:
- Missing lyrics, with a Fetch lyrics button. Tracks with no lyrics text at all. It skips anything that already has text, so it cannot overwrite words you or a tagger put there.
- Get timed lyrics, with a button of the same name. Tracks with plain lyrics but no timed copy, plus tracks a previous run definitively missed. It writes only the timed copy, leaving your plain text alone.
- Lyrics fetch errors (retry), with a Retry errored button. Tracks where LRCLIB could not be reached. They are held out of Missing lyrics so one bad network moment does not make every run retry them.
- Lyrics → save as .lrc, with a Save .lrc button. Writes sidecar files, described below.
The three fetch buttons share one engine, so only one runs at a time; it shows live progress and a Stop, and stopping keeps what it already banked. The .lrc write is separate work with its own Stop, and sidecars already written stay on disk. See The app says Not Responding during a scan or a big job.
A definitive "no lyrics" answer, including an instrumental, is remembered, so the track leaves Missing lyrics instead of being asked again on every run.
Saving lyrics to disk
Two destinations, kept deliberately separate.
An .lrc sidecar is a small text file named after the track and written next to it, the convention other players and car stereos look for. Three things write them: the batch button in Library Health, the Save .lrc button in the lyrics pane, and the closing step of a CD rip. The timed copy is used when there is one, otherwise plain text. Four protections apply: an existing timed sidecar is never replaced with untimed text, one that cannot be read is left untouched, only paths inside your library folders are written to, and CUE virtual tracks are passed over, having no file of their own (see Single-file albums and CUE sheets).
Inside the audio file is the other option, and only if you ask: fetched lyrics live in your library, not in your files. The tag editor has a Lyrics field with its own Fetch from LRCLIB button; edit the text if you want, press Save, and it goes into the file's tag. Opening that editor does not wipe fetched lyrics. See The tag editor.
When nothing turns up
Coverage is community-contributed: strongest on well-known recordings, thinner on live sets, obscure pressings and classical works. Two things are worth trying:
- Check the tags first. The lookup matches on title, artist, album and track length, so placeholder metadata finds nothing. Fix the tags or run Super-Tag, then fetch again.
- Come back later. Uploads keep arriving, and Get timed lyrics re-checks tracks that previously came back empty.
If lyrics arrive for the wrong song and the tags are correct, use the in-app bug reporter, including the track's title, artist, album and length. Is this a bug? How to report it covers what helps.