media_metadata

A Flutter plugin to read metadata from media files on Android, iOS, macOS, Windows, and Linux.

Supported formats

Extension	Audio	Video
.mp3	✅
.mp4		✅
.mkv		✅
.3gp / .3gpp		✅
.mov		✅
.aac	✅

Fields returned

Field	Type	Description
title	String?	Title tag
duration	Duration?	Total duration
artist	String?	Primary artist
album	String?	Album name
albumArtist	String?	Album artist
trackNumber	int?	Track number
trackTotal	int?	Total tracks on the album
discNumber	int?	Disc number
discTotal	int?	Total discs
year	int?	Release year
genre	String?	Genre
imageData	Uint8List?	Embedded artwork as raw image bytes
fileSize	BigInt?	File size in bytes

Usage

import 'package:media_metadata/media_metadata.dart';

// Read metadata from a file path
final metadata = await MediaMetadata.read('/storage/emulated/0/Music/song.mp3');

if (metadata != null) {
  print(metadata.title);       // "Bohemian Rhapsody"
  print(metadata.artist);      // "Queen"
  print(metadata.album);       // "A Night at the Opera"
  print(metadata.duration);    // Duration(minutes: 5, seconds: 55)
  print(metadata.year);        // 1975
  print(metadata.trackNumber); // 11
  
  // Display the album art
  if (metadata.imageData != null) {
    Image.memory(metadata.imageData!);
  }
}

// Write metadata back to a file
final success = await MediaMetadata.write(
  '/storage/emulated/0/Pictures/photo.jpg',
  Metadata(title: 'Vacation', artist: 'Unknown', year: 2024),
);
if (success) {
  print('Metadata written successfully');
}

// Check if a file is supported before reading
if (MediaMetadata.isSupported('/path/to/file.mp3')) {
  // supported
}

Write support

The MediaMetadata.write API is now available. It writes the metadata fields supported by the current platform and returns true when the operation succeeds.

Supported platforms:

• Android: image metadata via ExifInterface for .jpg, .jpeg, .png, .webp, .heic
• Windows: file metadata via the Shell Property Store
• Linux: audio metadata via TagLib when available
• iOS / macOS: currently not supported; the API returns false

Setup

Android

Add the following permissions to your AndroidManifest.xml:

<!-- Android < 13 -->
<uses-permission android:name="android.permission.READ_EXTERNAL_STORAGE"
    android:maxSdkVersion="32" />

<!-- Android 13+ -->
<uses-permission android:name="android.permission.READ_MEDIA_IMAGES" />
<uses-permission android:name="android.permission.READ_MEDIA_VIDEO" />
<uses-permission android:name="android.permission.READ_MEDIA_AUDIO" />

Request the permission at runtime using permission_handler or another package.

The plugin uses Android's built-in MediaMetadataRetriever — no extra dependencies required beyond androidx.exifinterface (added automatically by the plugin's build.gradle).

iOS / macOS

No additional setup needed. Uses AVFoundation and ImageIO (both system frameworks).

Windows

Uses the Windows Shell Property Store (IPropertyStore) and Media Foundation. Requires Windows 10 or later. No extra SDKs needed — links against propsys, mfplat, mfreadwrite, shlwapi, and windowscodecs.

Linux

Uses TagLib for metadata extraction. Install the development package:

sudo apt install libtag1-dev   # Debian/Ubuntu
sudo dnf install taglib-devel  # Fedora

The plugin will compile without TagLib but will only return file sizes in that case.

Platform notes

Platform	Library used	Album art
Android	MediaMetadataRetriever + ExifInterface	✅
iOS	AVFoundation + ImageIO	✅
macOS	AVFoundation + ImageIO	✅
Windows	Shell Property Store + WIC	✅ (thumbnail)
Linux	TagLib	✅ (ID3v2 only)