Using the Library to browse your music collection

Library Home Page

By default, whenever you tap on the 'Library' icon (the left-hand icon in the Navigation Bar at the bottom of most Poweramp screens) you will be taken to the main Library Home Page, offering you a choice of various Categories from which you can browse your music collection.

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If you tap on the three-dots menu icon and choose 'List Options' you can configure how the Library Home Page initially looks. For example if you never intend to use either of the Folder views, you can untick them so they will no longer be shown in the main Library view. If you only ever want to browse by Artists, you can long-press on 'Artists' in List Options and that Category will become the initial Home Page view when you next open the Library (that functionality can be overridden to get back to the top level again by long-pressing on the Library icon instead of tapping).

You can even set the Library Home Page as the initial startup view for when you first open Poweramp, using Settings=>Look and Feel=>Start at Library.
 

Mini Player

At the bottom of the Library (or any of the Category view pages) is the "Mini Player" which shows you the currently playing song. You can Play/Pause via the Mini Player, and there is a scrollable seekbar underneath, or you can swipe left or right on the song title to change tracks. Tap on the Mini Player to return directly to the main Player Screen. 

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Digging deeper into Categories to browse through your songs

You can tap on any Category that is shown in the Library Home Page to drill down and start browsing your personal music collection, layer by layer based on the Category you have chosen. For example, here is the screen you might see if from the Library Home Page you selected Artists=>ABBA:

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From that Artist view, you can tap on 'All Artist Songs' to see a complete (potentially long!) list of every song in your collection by that artist - or probably more usually you'd tap on one of the individual Album Titles to view the songs in that album:

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From a songs list, tap on any Song Title to commence playing that song. By default, starting playback in this way will return you to the main Player Screen, but if you wish to remain in the current view while listening you can set that as an option using Settings=>Library=>Lists=>List Item Click Action.

Alternatively you can tap the Play icon (shown at the upper-left of the list) to start regular playback from the beginning of the Album, or tap the Shuffle icon to play the Album's songs in random order. Please see the Repeat/Shuffle Guide for more detailed information on how these options work, and how to configure what happens when playback reaches the end of the current Album - e.g. Stop, Repeat, move on to the next Album in the Category, etc.

You can also long-press on any Song Title to bring up a list of other options. These include adding to a Playlist or the temporary Queue, updating the cover artwork image, showing file Information/Tags, or even deleting the physical file (for which you would be shown a warning prompt first). You can multi-select songs before you choose an action:

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List Options

At any Library level - from the top Library Home Page right down to a Songs level - you can tap the three-dots menu icon and select 'List Options' to adjust various settings which define how you would like to see the content displayed. Each Category and sublevel can have its own individual settings, and some even offer specific choices valid for that list alone.

There are various different sizes of List View available - with or without thumbnail artwork - plus several square Grid Views. You can pick these specifically from the List Options menu, or tweak them while viewing by using pinch-to-zoom finger gestures. The examples shown above use the default Compact List view.

You can also adjust the sorting order applied for each list view. So for example you might wish to sort the Artists level 'By Name' (alphabetically), but display their individual Albums sorted 'By Year', and show the Songs level 'By Disc Number / Track Number'. Or for Folder viewing, you'd probably prefer to sort by Paths and Filenames. Or for the 'All Songs' Category you might choose to sort your whole collection 'By Time Last Played', shown in Reverse, so you can see the songs that you haven't listened to recently. There are lots of options available to suit pretty much every taste:

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Some specific Categories - currently Playlists and Folders - also have List Options settings to allow them to return to where you left off the last time you were using them. Enabling 'List Position' remembers the song that you were last listening to when you next press the 'Play' icon, while 'Per Track Progress' remembers the exact playback position within each song.

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