# Preferences - File List

You can keep the system default white background, have an alternating line background or you can choose a custom background colour. The text colour will appropriately be set to black or white.

You can choose to draw a grid around the cells in the main table display. Dashed Grid draws dashed horizontal lines. Solid Grid draws solid horizontal lines. The grid presentation depends on the OS version.

Disable Artwork panel when tracks in multiple folders are selected is a safety feature. When checked, it will restrict the editing of artwork when selected tracks are not in the same folder. It will also disable the dragging of artwork to the main file list area. When an artwork editing control is disabled by this setting a lock icon will be displayed.

The Year field can be treated as a text string or a formatted string where all but a YYYY value is removed. In order to remain compatibility with earlier versions of Yate, there are three settings for the Format the Year field setting:

> Never
>   The Year field will will not be modified in any way and is treated as a text string.
> Display as YYYY
>   The UI will present the Year field as empty or a positive integer less than or equal to 9999. Values of YYYY-MM-DD will be displayed as YYYY. When values are manually edited, the formatting will be enforced. Actions may set any value and when the Year field is imported from a data source it may also contain any value. If you do not manually edit a value the unformatted value is preserved.
> Display and Save as YYYY
>   The UI will present the Year field as empty or a positive integer less than or equal to 9999. Values of YYYY-MM-DD will be displayed as YYYY. When values are manually edited, the formatting will be enforced. Whenever a file is saved, the formatting is applied.

If for any reason you wish to be able to set Replace the File List while in Playlist Mode you must enable the Allow Playlist-Replace Open Mode option.

You can elect to have open databases updated whenever you Save files. You can choose to update only those items already in a database or to add new items as well. The update is performed whenever a Save, (File or context menu), is issued. The option has no effect when saving from an action statement, closing files, or quitting the application.

When Use natural sorting is set, leading words such as 'The', 'An and 'A' will be ignored when sorting the Album, Album Artist, Artist, Conductor, Composer, Lyricist, Original Album, Original Artist, Original Lyricist, and Title fields. The list of words to be ignored is in the Exception Natural Sort list, identified by an S in the Preference-Exceptions set table.

When Use sort fields when sorting is set, the Sort Album, Sort Title, Sort Artist, Sort Album Artist and Sort Composer fields, if they exist will be used as a replacement for their non sort equivalents when sorting. Note that if a sort field exists it will override natural sorting as described above.

You can have Yate automatically scroll a track to be visible in the main file list when its state changes. This will happen during saves, when linking to iTunes, etc. If you would like this to be enabled, set the Follow file state change option. Setting the Smooth option will make the scrolling less jumpy but does have a performance cost.

When tabbing to a single line control, the Yate default implementation deselects all text and positions the insertion point to the end of the field. If you prefer the system default of selecting all text in the field, enable the Select field contents when tabbing option. Note that multi-line fields such as Comments, Musician Credits and Involved People are not affected by this options.

If you want to auto-size the table columns whenever a file or group of files are loaded, enable the Auto size column widths after loading files option. This option is equivalent to selecting the table header context menu item Auto Size All Columns (Limited).

The Editing State by default has various automatic set and clear criteria. You can elect to make the setting and clearing of the Editing State largely manual. You can also elect to automatically set the editing state before starting an action. See The Editing State for more information.

The standard Mac controls for text fields with a list popup set the width of the menu to the width of the field. This can cause cropping when the field is narrow. The Use wide menus for list display setting enables the display of a wider menu. Note that you should only enable this setting if you realy feel it is necessary. Some menu functionality such as automatic placement is lost.

iTunes 12.5 added support for marking a track as loved or disliked. You can save the setting in Yate, regardless of your usage of iTunes or Music. By default the Loved checkbox cycles through the values of ... (not set), Loved and Disliked. You can constrain the control to cycle only between ... (not set) and Loved. The Disable Disliked in the Loved Checkbox setting enables this mode. If a track is marked as disliked via an action or a menu, the control will still display Disliked. The setting only controls the range of values set when clicking the control.

You can configure override situations for the Open Mode via the Open Mode overrides - Configure button.

Yate has an extensive context menu associated with the main file list. While menu items not valid for the current context are automatically hidden, there might still be menu items that you are never interested in seeing. You might also wish to rearrange the menu items. You can disable context menu items and rearrange the menu via the Context menu - Configure button.

You can configure the padding of track numbers, track counts, disc numbers and disc counts. You set the padding via the Disc / Track Padding - Configure button.

Yate preference files can be imported by the Yate>Import Preferences... menu item or by dragging the preference plist file to the file list. The Dragged preference file - Configure button lets you set what and how items get imported. Note than items which are not enabled for import are simply ignored when a file is imported. You can always see the type of content in a Yate preference file via the Yate>Examine Preference File Contents... menu item. Alternately you can drag a plist file while holding down the Shift key to the file list area.

Yate allows you to map three columns directly to UDTIs. You configure these mappings via the UD Text Column Mappings - Configure button. When looking at the context menu associated with the main window's table, these columns are displayed as: UD Text Mapping #(name). # is 1, 2 or 3. name is the name of the UDTI associated with the column.

There are ten action toolbar items named Action 1 through Action 10. These toolbar icons can be associated with specific actions in the Action Manager. If you wish, you can apply your own images to these action icons. You configure the icons via the Toolbar action icons - Configure button.