TRACKER-WRITEBACK-(1)

📦
version 3.7.1 · 7 versions
, in ubuntu noble

TRACKER-WRITEBACK-(1) 💅

okay bestie, welcome to the Tracker manual page for tracker-writeback-3 — she's a little background gremlin and she's so good at her job 🎀

✨ NAME ✨

tracker-writeback-3 — the lil utility that takes the metadata you set in Tracker and writes it back out into your actual physical files. no cap. 💖

✨ SYNOPSIS ✨

tracker-writeback [OPTION...]

✨ DESCRIPTION ✨

so like. tracker-writeback is not supposed to be run by you, the user. she gets launched by her own .desktop file the second you log in, like she's got main character energy and a schedule 📅✨

that said, you can totally start her manually — for debugging purposes, obviously. but heads up bestie: you can not run more than one instance of this at the same time. one girl only. no clones. 💀

tracker-writeback writes metadata from the Tracker database back into files only. and the way that support is currently limited is:

  • XMP metadata — which covers PNG, JPEG, TIFF, MP4 and 3GPP formats 🖼️
  • play lists — which covers MPEGURL, SCPLS and IRIVER formats 🎧
  • taglib supported mime types — which covers MP3, MP4, OGG, WAV, FLAC and some Windows media formats 🌈
⚠️ important!! Data is only written back if write-back is enabled in the tracker-miner-fs configuration. so if nothing's happening, go check that setting, iykyk 🫶

✨ OPTIONS ✨

  • -?, --help — shows you a summary of the options. the classic "help me help you" moment 🙈
  • -V, --version — returns the version of this binary. she'll tell you exactly who she is 💅
  • -d, --disable-shutdown — disables shutting down after 30 seconds of inactivity. so she just… stays. iconic behaviour fr fr 👑

✨ SEE ALSO ✨

and that's the whole page, bestie!! this was version 3.7.1, dated 02/03/2026, straight from the Tracker manual. go forth and let the metadata flow back into your files 💖✨🦋🌸

📦 where this page comes from