Amarok/Manual/AmarokWindow/PlaylistPane: Difference between revisions

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Pressing the upwards pointing arrow moves the selection to the previous search result, and the downwards pointing arrow moves to the next result, all without losing focus on the search input box.
Pressing the upwards pointing arrow moves the selection to the previous search result, and the downwards pointing arrow moves to the next result, all without losing focus on the search input box.
The <samp>x</samp> button in the search field will clear your query.


Enabling <menuchoice>Show only matches</menuchoice> from the menu will cause your playlist to display only the tracks matching the query.
Enabling <menuchoice>Show only matches</menuchoice> from the menu will cause your playlist to display only the tracks matching the query.

Revision as of 03:51, 2 December 2010

The Amarok playlist pane.

Playlist

Introduction

Just like any other good music player out there on the market, Amarok offers excellent playlist management for all of your songs.

Basic Playlist Manipulation

Adding music to your playlist is a simple drag-and-drop or double-click operation.

Two playlist-related options are available when performing a drag-and-drop operation to add music to your current playlist. You can either use Add to Playlist, which will append the songs you have selected; or Replace Playlist, which will replace all the contents of the playlist with your selection.

Context Menu

Right-clicking on any song or album in the playlist will bring up the playlist context menu.

Queue/Dequeue Track

Queuing a track will temporarily modify the play order without modifying the actual playlist order by setting the user-selected track as the next track.

As many tracks as required can be queued, and the order of queuing is indicated by a green circle with the determined order.

Tracks can be dequeued by opening the context menu and selecting the Dequeue Track option.

Searching the Playlist

Playlist searching options.

Amarok offers powerful searching capabilities for playlists. Simply enter your query for a song into the text box labelled Search playlist and it will match your keywords up against the match criteria you specify in the options menu — for instance, you can choose to search only by Albums and not Artists, or choose to match both of them.

Playlist search bar.

Pressing the upwards pointing arrow moves the selection to the previous search result, and the downwards pointing arrow moves to the next result, all without losing focus on the search input box.

The x button in the search field will clear your query.

Enabling Show only matches from the menu will cause your playlist to display only the tracks matching the query.

Playlist Functions

Playlist bottom bar.

The bottom bar of the playlist pane provides various additional options for manipulation of your playlist.

Clear Playlist

This removes all items from your playlist.

Save Playlist

Clicking this will, by default, save the current playlist into the Amarok database.

Save playlist menu.

However, holding down the left-mouse button on this button will bring up the save playlist menu, where you can also choose to save your playlist file onto the hard drive instead of into the database.

Undo

This undoes the last operation you performed on your playlist, e.g. adding items or removing items.

Redo

This reverts the last undo operation you performed.

Show Active Track

This scrolls your playlist up or down to the track which is currently playing — useful if you have a large collection of songs in your playlist.

Track Progression

Track progression menu.

The track progression menu enables you to modify the order in which Amarok progresses through the tracks in your playlist.

The top half of the menu specifies repeat options — whether songs should be repeated by track, by album or by playlist; whereas the bottom half specifies the order in which the tracks play in — in random order or by favor. Only one type of progression may be selected, e.g. you cannot select both random track and repeat playlist.

Favor

Playlist favor menu.

Favor is an innovative method to determine the next track to be played when using the random selection mode. The next track to be played can be determined depending on their score (a measure of how often they are played), their user-given rating, or if they have not been recently played.

Sorting Levels and Bookmarking

Playlist sorting and bookmarking toolbar.

Sorting Levels

Menu for adding a sorting level.
Menu for adding a sorting level.

Amarok's robust sorting abilities offer the ability to sort not only by one field of a track, but by many combined in a series of levels.

There are many different modes by which a sorting level can act. For instance, songs can be sorted by their Genre and then their Album.

A sorting level can be added by clicking the right-pointing triangle, which will bring up the menu for adding another sorting level.

Clicking the small triangle on the right of the sorting level's name will cause items in the playlist to switch between ascending and descending order, which is indicated by the direction in which the triangle is pointing — up or down, respectively.

To remove a sorting level, click the name of the sorting level that precedes the one you wish to remove. Multiple sorting levels can be removed — provided that they are all lower in the hierarchy — by clicking on the ancestor of all of them. If you wish to clear all sorting levels, you can click the playlist icon to the left of the first right-pointing arrow.

Bookmarking

Bookmarking menu.

The bookmarking menu provides options to save your current playlist layout. Clicking Bookmark Playlist Setup will add your playlist layout to the layout bookmarks, which can be viewed in Bookmark Manager.

Copy Current View Bookmark to Clipboard copies an Amarok playlist layout URL to the clipboard, which can be used for backing up your playlist layout.