User Interface

Music Explorer

The Music Explorer provides a very powerful view of the database and your music files which offers several different ways of browsing through your music and manually categorizing your music.

Using the Music Explorer to browse

Show the Music Explorer by clicking View > Views > Music Explorer from the main menu.

The following sub-views are available for browsing (the number of sub-view items displayed and their order may vary depending on your current Settings). Most of the sub-views in the Music Explorer can be customized to meet your specific needs. The sub-views specified below is the standard setup available immediately after installing Helium.

Read more about customizing Music Explorer Nodes here.

Entire Library
Clicking this node will display all contents in your Library. Please not that if you have lots of contents in your Library, this may take some time to complete.
My Folders
Shows a list of all drives and folders where audio files in the database reside. The tracks for each of the lowest level folders are shown in the track list.
iPod Devices
Possibility to browse and manage the files that exist on your iPod devices.
Computer
This node works similarly to Windows Explorer as it can browse all your drives for music, but with the benefit of reading tags on the files so you will get all Heliums columns shown, so that you are able to review the tags on the files before adding them to the database. Read more about options available from the Computer tree here.
Unavailable Items
The tracks for each selected windows drive are shown in the Track List. Lists those music files in the database that are not currently accessible by Helium Music Manager.
Artist
Separated with each leading character and containing Album as a sub-view. The tracks for each selected Album are shown in the Track List.
Album
Separated with each leading character (no album covers are shown). The albums also have artists as sub-views. The tracks for each selected Album are shown in the Track List.
Title
Separated with each leading character. The tracks for each selected Title are shown in the Track List.
Genre
Contains Genre Category and Genre Style as sub-views and the last sub-view is Genre. The tracks for each selected Genre are shown in the Track List.
Rating
Contains Genre and then artist as sub-views. The tracks for each selected Rating/Genre/Artist are shown in the Track List.
Release Year
Shows decades with Release Year and Artists, Albums as sub-views. The tracks for each selected Decade/Year/Artist/Album are shown in the Track List.
Recording Year
Shows decades with Recording Year and Artists,Albums as sub-views. The tracks for each selected Decade/Year/Artist/Album are shown in the Track List.
Mood
Shows Genre and Artist as sub-views. The tracks for each selected Mood/Genre/Artist are shown in the Track List.
Situation
Shows Genre and Artist as a sub-views. The tracks for each selected Situation/Genre/Artist are shown in the Track List.
Release Type
Release Type Shows Artists and Albums as sub-views. The tracks for each Release Type/Artist/Album are shown in the Track List.
Quality
The tracks for each selected Quality are shown in the Track List.
Series
Contains Albums as a sub-view. The tracks for each selected Series/Album are shown in the Track List.
Note:Related tag is Part Of Series.
Publishers
Publishers shows Artists and Albums as sub-views.
Grouping
The tracks for each selected Grouping are shown in the Track List.
File Date
Separated by Year, Month and Day and shows a list of last modified file dates of all music in the database. The tracks for each selected Year/Month/Day are shown in the Track List.
Added Date
Separated by Year, Month and Day and shows a list of when files were added to the database.
Playing History
Separated by Year, Month and Day and shows a list of when files were played as recorded in the database.
User Defined 1-5
Shows a user-defined tree. The tracks for each selected lowest level (user defined) leaf node are shown.
Favourites
Favourites displays your favourite tracks, favourite artists and favourite albums.
Collection/Volume
Shows all Collections and Volumes in the database as sub-view, the volumes also have Album as sub-views. The tracks for each Collection/Volume are shown in the Track List.
User categories
Shows User Category as a sub-view (dependant on user definition). The tracks for each selected user category are shown in the Track List.

Duplicates
Shows duplicate music files in your database. The tracks that are duplicated under each of the following categories are shown in the Track List:
- Path + Filename
- Artist + Title
- Artist + Title + Remix
- Artist + Album + Title
- Title + Track length
Untagged Items
The track listing shows entries where the fields listed below are empty (i.e. untagged):
- Title
- Artist
- Album
- Genre
- Rating
- Mood
- Situation
- Tempo
- Release Type
- Recording Year
- Release Year
- Quality
The tracks for each selected field above are shown in the Track List.
Artist/Group Relations
Expand this node to browse through the defined artist/group relations in your Library.

The Bottom Toolbar

The toolbar at the bottom of the Music Explorer Sidebar is context sensitive.

To display the toolbar, you need to activate Sidebar Toolbars from View > Toolbars >Show Sidebar Toolbars.

The buttons displayed/enabled are dependant on which Music Explorer tree node is currently selected. The toolbar contains the following controls:

Options
Click this button to open the Music Explorer page in Options.
Collapse all nodes
This button will collapse all currently open nodes, so that only the root nodes are displayed.
Folders
This button is enabled when sub-views are selected in the My Folders tree node.
Collection/Volume
This button is enabled when the Collection/Volume tree node is selected.
Customize...
This button is enabled on all nodes that can be customized.
Categories
This button is enabled when the Categories tree node is selected.