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Lyrics

Downtify can download lyrics and embed them directly into audio files at download time.

Enabling lyrics

Lyrics are enabled by default. You can toggle them in Settings → Lyrics → Download lyrics.

Provider

The only active provider is lrclib — a free, open, community-maintained lyrics database. No API key is required.

lrclib is queried with the track title, primary artist, album name and duration. It returns:

  • Plain lyrics — static text, embedded as standard lyrics tags
  • Synced lyrics — time-coded LRC format, embedded as a separate tag and also saved as a .lrc sidecar file alongside the audio

Embedding

Format Plain lyrics tag Synced lyrics tag
MP3 USLT (ID3) USLT with timestamps
FLAC LYRICS (Vorbis comment) LYRICS with LRC content
M4A ©lyr ©lyr with LRC content
OGG / OPUS LYRICS (Vorbis comment) LYRICS with LRC content

Sidecar .lrc file

When synced lyrics are available, Downtify also saves a .lrc file next to the audio file with the same base name. This lets media players that support external lyrics files (like Jellyfin or certain portable players) show the time-synced lyrics independently of the embedded tags.

Fallback behaviour

If lrclib returns no result for a track, the download continues normally — the audio file is saved without lyrics. No error is raised.

Legacy providers

The settings UI may show genius, musixmatch and azlyrics as options inherited from an earlier version of Downtify. These are no-ops — selecting them has no effect. Only lrclib fetches real lyrics.