Tips & Tricks

Hidden Shift options

Several menus have extra items that only appear while you hold Shift, including ↳ After Current Track (queue a track next), Delete Track File, Lock for playlists, and Vacuum Playtimes. Try holding Shift while right-clicking.

Make a random playlist of 10 tracks

Press Ctrl + Shift + E to make a smart playlist. In Take, choose All tracks. In Then, add Sort › Shuffle tracks and Limit › Number of tracks…, and set it to 10. Choose Regenerate whenever you want a fresh set.

Build playlists from search

In global search, hold Ctrl while clicking results to add them to the playlist you’re viewing. Search stays open, so you can quickly collect several artists or albums.

Folder names show up in search results too. Right-click any result to find it in its playlist without playing it.

Transfer play counts to another track

To move play counts, loves and ratings from one track to another, for example to a better-quality copy:

1. Select the old track and press Ctrl + C.
2. Select the new track and press Ctrl + Shift + P.

Press Ctrl + Z to undo.

Make a playlist from the queue or play history

• Right-click the queue and choose Queue to New Playlist.
• Choose Database… › Play History to Playlist from the main menu to list what you’ve played recently.

Radio Random

Press / (or choose Radio Random from the playback menu) to jump to a random track at a random point, like flicking through radio stations.

Revert

Skipped a track by mistake? Press Shift + / (or Revert in the playback menu) to go back to it, from where you left off.

Shuffle Lockdown

Right-click the shuffle button and choose Shuffle Lockdown for a “party mode”: the playlist plays in shuffle and the controls are hidden. Press Esc to leave.

Widen the side panel past square

Tap Shift while dragging the side panel’s edge to make it wider than the album art. Useful for wide or rectangular artwork.

Time cursor

Middle-click the seek bar to show a cursor with the time at that point.

Slow down or speed up

Use the speed slider in the playback menu (☰) to change playback speed from 0.1× to 3×. Handy for practising along to a song.

Copy the playing track’s title

Right-click empty space in the bottom panel and choose Copy Title to Clipboard.

Physically delete a folder

Right-click a track and choose Meta… › Modify Folder…. The box has a Trash button. Hold Shift to change it to Delete. See Folder Management.

Fix garbled Japanese text (mojibake)

If Japanese text in your tags displays as random accented characters, it was probably saved in the wrong encoding. The best fix is to correct the tags:

1. Select the album’s tracks and choose Edit Tags….
2. In the tag editor, choose Tools › Fix Mojibake.
3. Check the result, then click Write tags.

For a quick fix that only changes Tauon’s database, not your files, right-click a track and choose Meta… › Fix Mojibake. To undo it, use Meta… › Rescan Tags.

Audiophile stuff

To get sample rates forwarded to your DAC, turn on Avoid resampling in Settings › Audio › Output. You will also need to enable dynamic samplerates in your Pipewire configuration, see here on how to do that.

The downside of enabling Avoid resampling is that fades will no longer occur between tracks of differing sample rates.