Getting Started

Get Your Files in Order

muwav has one rule about your files: it never touches them. Not to fix a typo, not to embed artwork, not ever. Once a file is in your library, it’s yours, byte for byte, forever.

That promise means the moment to get things right is before a file comes in. Titles, artists, album artwork — square them away at the door, once, with whatever tagging tool you already like. Then drop the file into your watched folder and forget about it. muwav reads what’s there and takes it from there.

If you’re staring down a big messy folder, don’t panic and don’t try to fix everything in one sitting. Bring music in a little at a time, in the shape you’d want to find it in ten years from now.

Set Up Your Waves

A wave is a moment in your life where music happens. Work. The commute. Cooking dinner. Winding down before sleep. You name them, and they become the shelves your library lives on.

Don’t overthink the names on day one — you can feel your way into them. The question to ask isn’t “what genre is this,” it’s “when do I want to hear this?” A track can live in several waves at once, because a song that works on the commute might also work while you cook.

Set up your waves on your Mac, and they follow you to your iPhone on their own.

Rate and Categorize as You Listen

Here’s the part people expect to be a chore, and isn’t: you don’t sit down and organize your library. You just listen.

The mini player is small on purpose. Tuck it into a corner of your Mac and go about your day. When a track plays, give it a rating, tap it into the waves where it belongs, and move on. That’s the whole ritual — a few seconds, a few times a day, while the music is already playing anyway.

Do that and your library organizes itself underneath you. No marathon sorting sessions. No “someday I’ll deal with this” folder.

Let the Library Tell You What’s Left

Every unrated track and every track without a wave is just a todo item you haven’t gotten to yet — and muwav can show you exactly what remains.

Filter down to your unrated tracks, or the ones that haven’t found a wave, and there’s your list. Work through it at whatever pace you like, or let those tracks surface naturally as you listen. Either way, the pile only shrinks.

There’s no finish line you’re behind on. A library is never done — it just gets more and more like you.