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Tags will not save to a WAV file

You edited a WAV's title or artist, pressed Save, and the change did not stick, or a notice said it went to the library only. WAV is the awkward format for tags.

The short answer

WAV was defined without a place to put tags. Vesari Stylus writes them as an ID3 tag inside the file, the same kind an MP3 carries, and that works for most WAVs. When it cannot, the app keeps your edit in the library instead. Your metadata is not lost, it is just not in the file.

When the edit lands in the library only

Before writing, the app checks it can read the file's tag area back. If it cannot, it does not write at all: tags nothing can read back are worse than no tags. The edit goes to the library and the editor stays open to say so.

Two quite different WAVs end up there, and the difference matters.

The container is sound, but the tags will not parse. This is the common one. Programs disagree about how a tag is stored in a WAV, down to the spelling of the chunk holding it, and the app's general purpose reader declines some spellings. The file is fine and there is nothing to repair, so no repair is offered. A tag that will not parse is a tagging problem, not a container one.

The RIFF container is genuinely broken. The size field in the header disagrees with the file, or the audio chunk cannot be located. Only this case shows the message Saved to library only. This WAV's tag container is malformed and can't be written, and only this case lights the Repair file & save tags button.

If the message mentions a .tags sidecar, ignore that part. Sidecars go only to raw bitstream files with no tag container at all (.dts, .dtshd, .ac3, .eac3, .thd, .truehd), never next to a WAV, even one holding a DTS stream.

Two cases give an error instead. A WAV holding a compressed bitstream rather than plain PCM, such as a verbatim DTS audio CD rip, is left untouched on disk: there is no writable tag home in a DTS or AC-3 stream. And a write whose read-back disagrees with it is rolled back to the file's previous tags.

The repair, and exactly what it touches

Library Health carries a WAV container repair card. Its Scan & repair button probes every WAV in your library, then rewrites only the ones found broken. The count is what the probe found broken, not how many WAVs you own; unprobed WAVs show as not yet scanned.

The repair itself is deliberately narrow:

• It copies the file byte for byte and corrects only the RIFF size field. No decoder, no remux.
• Audio, cue points and existing tag chunks are carried across unchanged, and payload, chunk inventory and format tag are re-checked before the swap.
• Your original is kept beside it as a .bak file and stays until you remove it. A leftover .bak blocks a second repair of the same file until you move it aside.
• A sound WAV is refused rather than rewritten, as is one the app cannot read or one whose audio is truncated.

Ordinary reasons a tag write fails

Not every failed save is a WAV problem. Every tag write goes to a full temp copy beside the file, which is flushed to disk and renamed over the original, so an interrupted write cannot leave half a file. That needs:

• The file is not read-only. A read-only file is refused up front rather than quietly overwritten.
• The file is not held open. An error about a rename failing with the file in use usually means the track is playing. Stop playback and save again.
• The folder has room and is writable. The temp copy is as large as the file.
• The name is one Windows can open. A colon, or a trailing dot or space, which a NAS can create and Windows cannot, is skipped with a plain reason. See Tags and paths on a NAS.
• The track has a file of its own. A track from a CUE sheet does not, so edit tags on the source audio file instead. See CUE sheets.

What this means for other players

The ID3 tag inside a WAV is a convention added long after the format, which is enough for a WAV tagged in one program to look untagged in another. Embedded cover art too. Two things travel better:

• A cover image in the album folder. An image named cover, folder or front with a .jpg, .jpeg, .png, .webp, .bmp or .gif extension is read by Vesari Stylus and by most other software. Names whose words include back, disc, tray or booklet are skipped, matched whole, so discography.jpg is safe. See Artwork.
• A format with a real tag container. Converting to FLAC elsewhere gives the tags a standard home.

Still not saving

If a plain PCM WAV on a local drive refuses tags, is not read-only and is not playing, report it and say whether the repair card flagged it. Settings has a Report a Bug section. See Is this a bug? How to report it and Library Health categories.

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