diff --git a/app/gui.py b/app/gui.py
index 48aca66..08272d7 100644
--- a/app/gui.py
+++ b/app/gui.py
@@ -136,7 +136,7 @@ class CoverLoader(QObject):
     def run(self):
         from concurrent.futures import ThreadPoolExecutor, as_completed
 
-        pool = ThreadPoolExecutor(max_workers=8)
+        pool = ThreadPoolExecutor(max_workers=6)
         futures = {
             pool.submit(load_cover, it): i
             for i, it in enumerate(self.items)
@@ -1634,7 +1634,7 @@ class StoreCoverLoader(QObject):
     def run(self):
         from concurrent.futures import ThreadPoolExecutor, as_completed
 
-        pool = ThreadPoolExecutor(max_workers=8)
+        pool = ThreadPoolExecutor(max_workers=6)
         futures = {
             pool.submit(load_cover, it, 8, self.quick): row
             for row, it in self.tasks
@@ -5954,8 +5954,24 @@ class MainWindow(QMainWindow):
         event.accept()
 
 
+def _raise_nofile_limit():
+    """Raise the soft file-descriptor limit to the hard limit.
+
+    Cover/metadata loading opens many short-lived sockets, and each worker
+    QThread's GLib event dispatcher creates a wakeup pipe. On systems with a
+    1024 soft limit this aborts the process with GLib's "Too many open files".
+    """
+    try:
+        import resource
+        _soft, hard = resource.getrlimit(resource.RLIMIT_NOFILE)
+        resource.setrlimit(resource.RLIMIT_NOFILE, (hard, hard))
+    except Exception:  # noqa: BLE001 - best effort, never block startup
+        pass
+
+
 def main():
     logging.basicConfig(level=logging.INFO, format="%(asctime)s %(levelname)-7s %(name)-14s %(message)s")
+    _raise_nofile_limit()
     init_db()  # migrate legacy on-share DB/covers to local storage, then schema
     # Auto-ingest any missing DATs so scanning matches against the catalog
     # even on a fresh/reset database (no manual `python -m app.ingest` step).