Fix Character Encoding

Repair audio tags that display as garbled or unreadable characters.

The Fix Character Encoding function corrects metadata that was saved using the wrong character encoding — the classic cause of "mojibake", where non-Latin characters appear as question marks or random symbols. If you aren't sure which encoding was used originally, it may take a little trial and error. Keep Preview on so you can see exactly what the function is doing before saving.

Metadatics Fix Character Encoding window

Example: Restoring Korean Tags

Below is a file that was saved with the incorrect character encoding. The Track Title and Artist appear as unreadable symbols:

Audio tags showing garbled characters before correction

The correct character encoding for this file turned out to be Korean (Mac OS):

Character encoding set to Korean Mac OS in the Fix Character Encoding window

After applying the function, the characters display correctly:

Audio tags with correct Korean characters after applying the fix

Tip: If you aren't sure which encoding to pick, try a few common ones for the language you suspect (for example, Shift-JIS for Japanese, GB18030 for Simplified Chinese, Windows-1251 for Russian/Cyrillic) and use Preview to see which one produces readable text.