Amarok/QuickStartGuide/Playlists

Playlists

The Playlist pane

Having created a collection of music, you will wish to listen to it. In order to do this you need to create a Playlist containing the selection of tracks you wish to listen to. The playlist is created in the Playlist Pane. This is where you play your music, streams, or podcasts. You can sort your playlist by title, by album, by artist and by genre and many others. For instance you can sort your tracks by year first, then by artist and so on.

The search box lets you search or filter your tracks in a way that you can choose only to listen to tracks that, for instance, contains the letters “red”. The two big grey arrows at the top of the Playlist pane lets you skip to the next or previous track containing the letters you have chosen. The wrench to the right lets you filter your tracks by artist, album, etc. The layout of the Playlist pane can be changed through the top-level Amarok menu: click Playlist > Playlist Layouts.

Adding music to a playlist

There are four ways to add music to the playlist in the Playlist pane.

1. Choose some of your music in the Content Browser, and drag it to the right. If you drag it over the Context pane you'll see the "Pop-up Dropper," aka PUD. The image below shows PUD in action. The red arrow indicates a musician that is being dragged from the Collection onto the Context pane in the central part of the Amarok screen. PUD provides three options: Add to Playlist, Replace Playlist, and More.... The option highlighted in a grey area ("Add to Playlist" in this image) is the active one. Dropping the album there adds it to the playlist in the Playlist pane. Choose one of the other options to do something else with your selection. Dragging it over More.. brings up a new menu of choices in PUD.(here goes image)

1. Drag your selection all the way onto the Playlist pane on the righthand side of the Amarok screen.
2. Double-click the album/track you wish to transfer to the Playlist.
3. Right-click the album or track. In your right-click menu, you'll find similar choices. The image below shows the popup menu that appears after an item (1993 - Beethoven in this case) has been right-clicked. Click "Add to Playlist".
   

<img src="File?id=dftrq6tw_47sb59x7gt_b" style="height:315px;width:380px">

Using the Toolbar to play tracks in the Playlist

The toolbar at the top of the Amarok screen provides a simple interface to control the playing of music in the Playlist. Click the round icon on the left to start your music playing, and click it again to pause. On the right is the volume and mute control: click on the centre of the icon to mute. Use your mouse scroll wheel to control the volume, or drag/click your mouse on the outside ring of the volume icon. Once a track or stream begins to play, the (artist)/(album name)/(track title) slowly alternates in bold in the center. On the right is the next track, which you can click to start it playing immediately. Once a track has played it will be on the left, so you can click on the title to go back to it. The progress bar in the middle of the toolbar indicates the time elapsed (left hand) and time remaining (right hand) for the track that is currently playing. If you'd rather see a more traditional toolbar, you can select Slim Toolbar from the View top-level menu.

<img src="File?id=ddx3z95p_7cf6zpkdv_b" style="height:54px;width:648px">

Manipulating playlists

The most important manipulation you will probably perform on your playlist is to delete albums or tracks, to rearrange the displayed items for each track or to rearrange the display order of tracks.

Removing a track from your playlist

You can remove any track or album from your playlist in one of two ways:

1. Right-click on the item in the playlist and choose the option "Remove from playlist".
2. Drag the item to be deleted over the Context pane to activate PUD. Several options will appear over the Context pane. Drag the item to the area marked "Delete from playlist". See the image below that shows a track being dragged onto the Remove option in PUD.

<img src="File?id=dftrq6tw_49d4544jf9_b>

You can undo your delete by pressing control-Z or by clicking the appropriate arrow in the Playlist Toolbar at the bottom of the Playlist pane (see below).

Using the Playlist toolbar at the bottom of the Playlist pane

At the bottom of the Playlist pane are six icons, depicted below:

Icon	Action
<img src="File?id=ddx3z95p_0cg7rn5jh_b" style="height:32px;width:32px">	Clear the playlist of all albums and tracks
<img src="File?id=ddx3z95p_1f5z9rnfd_b" style="height:32px;width:32px">	Save your playlist. If you do not rename it, it defaults to the date as a name.
<img src="File?id=ddx3z95p_2fr7cr4gf_b" style="height:32px;width:32px">	Undo your last edit to the playlist
<img src="File?id=ddx3z95p_3f3gfffgt_b" style="height:32px;width:32px">	Redo your last undo to the playlist
<img src="File?id=ddx3z95p_4c9phs9gj_b" style="height:32px;width:32px">	Highlight the track that is currently playing. Useful if you have a very long playlist
<img src="File?id=ddx3z95p_6hs3tqvc2_b" style="height:32px;width:32px">	Set the play mode: repeat tracks, random order, prefer rarely played, etc

These buttons provide convenient alternatives to several keyboard actions.

Saving and retrieving your favourite playlists

The diskette icon (shown in the table above), visible at the bottom of your Playlist pane, allows you to save the current Amarok playlist. This enables you to recall a particular selection of music from your collection at any time. Playlists only contain pointers to the music you selected, not the music itself. Music on external devices are therefore dependent on these devices being connected and mounted, otherwise the music itself cannot be accessed. The home folder of the Amarok file system has a Playlists option (see the section above: Accessing other media sources: Internet stores, podcasts, etc., containing a table of the options in the Amarok home folder). There are three places to store playlists:

1. outside Amarok on your computer file system,
2. in your Amarok playlist database
3. on an external media device, e.g. an iPod.

Clicking the diskette icon at the bottom of the Playlist pane stores your playlist in the Amarok playlist database. By default, your saved playlist has a name composed of the date and time when you saved it (see image below). By right-clicking the playlist name, you can rename it to something that is more understandable to you. Right-clicking on a playlist name also allows you to add it to your existing playlist in the Playlist pane, or to replace your existing playlist. This is the mechanism that allows you to recall any of your saved playlists. Playlists on an external media device are discussed below (see: Working with external media devices).

<img src="File?id=dftrq6tw_40g4mbkmfs_b" style="height:349px;width:325px">

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The Music Collection

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The Context View