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# Scrub Plugin

The `scrub` plugin lets you remove extraneous metadata from files’ tags. If you’d prefer never to see crufty tags that come from other tools, the plugin can automatically remove all non-beets-tracked tags whenever a file’s metadata is written to disk by removing the tag entirely before writing new data. The plugin also provides a command that lets you manually remove files’ tags.

## Automatic Scrubbing

To automatically remove files’ tags before writing new ones, enable `scrub` plugin in your configuration (see Using Plugins) and install `beets` with `scrub` extra

    pip install "beets[scrub]"

When importing new files (with `import.write` turned on) or modifying files’ tags with the `beet modify` command, beets will first strip all types of tags entirely and then write the database-tracked metadata to the file.

This behavior can be disabled with the `auto` config option (see below).

## Manual Scrubbing

The `scrub` command provided by this plugin removes tags from files and then rewrites their database-tracked metadata. To run it, just type `beet scrub QUERY` where `QUERY` matches the tracks to be scrubbed. Use this command with caution, however, because any information in the tags that is out of sync with the database will be lost.

The `-W` (or `--nowrite`) option causes the command to just remove tags but not restore any information. This will leave the files with no metadata whatsoever.

## Configuration

To configure the plugin, make a `scrub:` section in your configuration file. There is one option:

- auto: Enable metadata stripping during import. Default: `yes`.