Basic Use Guide

Tauon Music Box is a playlist based music player that makes that assumption that folders are albums.

The words album and folder are often used interchangeably throughout the interface and documentation.

Playlists are intended to be easy to create and delete. Playlists are not only intended to be used to be able to create selections of tracks, but also as a workspace or a way to keep different music collections separate.

For best experience you should have an organized and structured music library, ideally made of albums with each album in its own folder.

Suggestion: If you have a large and varied music library, try keeping artists/albums in different folders based on genre in order to group similar music together.

Importing tracks

• Drag and drop files and folders from your file manager to the center of the window. Tracks will be appended to the end of the actively viewed playlist.

• If you want to quickly import all music from your home music folder, you can also select Import ~/Music from the main menu.

Tip: Try importing all your music to a single playlist to get started

Updating tracks

Updates to your playlists need to be done manually as there is no background file monitoring.

There are two ways of doing this:

• Simply clear a playlist and re-import.
• Select Rescan Folder from the playlist tab menu.

  Explanation: The folder re-scanned by this function is the first folder ever imported into the playlist. So to take advantage of this feature, only import a single folder.

Playlist scrolling

• The playlist scroll bar is to the left of the playlist, hidden until moused over.
• Click above or below the scroll bar to scroll quickly in that direction.
• Right click anywhere in the scroll field to jump immediately to that location.

Feature: Each playlist remembers its position individually

Show playing

• Right click the play button to jump the tracklist back to the currently playing track.

Super Feature: If there is an identical track in the currently viewed playlist, it will be jumped to and set to be the current active track position instead.

Track navigation by buttons

• Forward and Back buttons play the next and previous tracks as they appear in the playlist.

• With shuffle mode on, Back plays songs from playback history.

Top panel

Playlist management

• Tabs can be rearranged by dragging them.
• You can merge playlists together by holding shift when releasing the mouse button.

If there isn't room on the top bar to show all playlists, you can view them by opening the playlist side panel (The button in the far top left corner). From here you can also hide playlists from the top panel by clicking the toggle switches.

Bottom panel

Gallery view

• Ways to enter gallery view:
  • Click MENU then click the second icon from top
  • Press mouse button 4 on a 5 button mouse.
  • Press Tab to enter in gallery keyboard control mode

Click an album to play. (You can change this to a double click in settings in the 'view' tab)

Tip: Albums in the gallery will play on just a single click. You can change this to a double click in settings in the 'view' tab.

Enqueuing tracks

You can override what tracks will be played immediately after the current by adding them to the queue.

• Add single tracks by middle/wheel clicking a track
• Add an album/folder by right clicking the folder title and selecting Add album to queue

You can view the queue by opening the left side playlist panel (button in top left corner). From this view you can:

• Re-arrange or remove individual queued items
• Pause the queue from having effect

Tip: If you wish to enqueue many tracks, you could also consider simply making a new playlist.

Feature: You can force a stop after any items in the queue by right clicking an item and selecting Auto-Stop.

Copying tracks to another playlist

• A selection can be quickly appended to another playlist by dragging it onto a playlist tab.

Tip: You can create a new playlist by dragging tracks into empty area of tab panel.

Moving tracks within a playlist

• Single tracks can be re-positioned within a playlist when holding shift while dragging.
• To move a selection, click and drag.
• To move a single album, click the title and drag.

Hint: To make a selection of tracks, click the first track, then hold shift and click the last track.

Misc playback modes

• Album Repeat Mode: Repeats from beginning of album once end is reached.

  • Right click the repeat mode button and select Repeat Album from the menu.

• Album Shuffle Mode: Starts a random album after the current one finishes.

  • Right click the Shuffle mode button and select Random Albums from the menu.

• Shuffle within a single album: Plays random tracks within a single album.

  • Enable both Album repeat mode as above and the standard single track shuffle/random mode

Extra functions

• Radio Random: Plays a random track with a random starting time.

  Useful for helping discover songs you may have previously disregarded.

• Revert: Resumes from the previous position of the previous track played.

  Useful if you accidentally change track and want to return immediately back where you left off.