# Automatically clear artwork on import

**URL:** <https://discourse.beets.io/t/automatically-clear-artwork-on-import/1001>\
**Category:** Help\
**Created:** [November 12, 2019, 9:05pm UTC](https://discourse.beets.io/t/automatically-clear-artwork-on-import/1001 "2019-11-12T21:05:35Z")\
**Posts on this page:** 6\
**Page:** 1

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**Author:** ![dorade](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/b3f665/32.png) [@dorade](https://discourse.beets.io/u/dorade)\
**Post date:** [November 12, 2019, 9:05pm UTC](https://discourse.beets.io/t/automatically-clear-artwork-on-import/1001/1 "2019-11-12T21:05:35Z")

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Is there a way to clear embedded artwork on import? `Scrub` seems to be hardcoded to preserve it, and there doesn’t seem to be a way to run `clearart` on import.

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**Author:** ![adrian](https://yyz1.discourse-cdn.com/flex029/user_avatar/discourse.beets.io/adrian/32/4_2.png) [@adrian](https://discourse.beets.io/u/adrian)\
**Post date:** [November 12, 2019, 10:37pm UTC](https://discourse.beets.io/t/automatically-clear-artwork-on-import/1001/2 "2019-11-12T22:37:48Z")

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No, I don’t think there is.

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**Author:** ![kergoth](https://yyz1.discourse-cdn.com/flex029/user_avatar/discourse.beets.io/kergoth/32/240_2.png) [@kergoth](https://discourse.beets.io/u/kergoth)\
**Post date:** [November 16, 2019, 8:44pm UTC](https://discourse.beets.io/t/automatically-clear-artwork-on-import/1001/3 "2019-11-16T20:44:11Z")

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A combination of a plugin to set a flexattr for the last import and an import hook to clear just those will do the job, I was using that for a bit.

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**Author:** ![dorade](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/b3f665/32.png) [@dorade](https://discourse.beets.io/u/dorade)\
**Post date:** [November 16, 2019, 8:55pm UTC](https://discourse.beets.io/t/automatically-clear-artwork-on-import/1001/4 "2019-11-16T20:55:27Z")

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Thanks. I’ll look into that.

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**Author:** ![jef](https://yyz1.discourse-cdn.com/flex029/user_avatar/discourse.beets.io/jef/32/326_2.png) [@jef](https://discourse.beets.io/u/jef)\
**Post date:** [December 9, 2019, 11:30pm UTC](https://discourse.beets.io/t/automatically-clear-artwork-on-import/1001/5 "2019-12-09T23:30:44Z")

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I’ve wanted to do this in the past and I would’ve thought Scrub does this.

> The `scrub` plugin lets you remove extraneous metadata from files’ tags…the plugin can automatically remove all non-beets-tracked tags…

Does this mean that Scrub only removes tags outside of ID3? That’s assuming beets tracks ID3 type metadata.

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**Author:** ![adrian](https://yyz1.discourse-cdn.com/flex029/user_avatar/discourse.beets.io/adrian/32/4_2.png) [@adrian](https://discourse.beets.io/u/adrian)\
**Post date:** [December 10, 2019, 2:41am UTC](https://discourse.beets.io/t/automatically-clear-artwork-on-import/1001/6 "2019-12-10T02:41:22Z")

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No, it doesn’t remove entire tag _types_ like ID3. It removes only those _tags_ that aren’t in the MediaFile tag mapping list.