Preferences - General

Basic Settings

Automatically save changes when closing files, causes modified files to automatically be saved whenever they are closed. By default, Yate asks you whether you want to save the changes.

Automatically check for application updates, when checked, will let you know when application updates are available. This can be done manually via Yate>Check for Application Updates.

Automatically check for action updates, when checked, looks for updates to actions downloaded from the resource web page. The auto-check is performed at most once within 24 hours when Yate is started. This can be done manually via Yate>Check for Action Updates.

The Yate menu has an item named Quit Discarding Changes. When this item is selected, all changes to audio files are discarded and the application will attempt to terminate. You will still be prompted if an open database file has unsaved changes. By default a confirmation panel will be displayed whenever this function is invoked. You can disable the display of the confirmation panel by setting the Allow Quit Discarding Changes without warning option.

You can elect to allow document windows to become Full Screen (where supported) or not. The Allow document windows to become Full Screen setting affects the behaviour of Action Editor windows and Database Viewer windows.

Various menus which have special key sequences display a How to Use this Menu... item. These items will pop up a small help window when selected. Other menus have How to use this Menu... items which provide standard help viewing for the current menu. You can choose to hide these menu items by enabling the Hide 'How to Use this Menu' items option.

Starting with Big Sur the OS displays vertical alerts with centered text. These alerts may not be suitable for alerts with longer text displays or those which display a full file path. You can enable the Use alternate alert style setting. These alerts display similar to pre Big Sur alerts. You can also enable the Larger text setting to use somewhat larger font sizes when displaying the alert. These settings are ignored on OS versions prior to 10.12. Alerts with very long text may not fit on the display. Yate's alternate alert style encloses the text in a scrollable region.

You can control what happens when Yate's dock icon is clicked. There are three settings:

Show the Main Window

If the main window is minimized it will be restored. The main window will be displayed unless the Action Pending Window is displayed and the main window is closed. This is the pre Yate v6.4.2 behaviour.

Preserve the Window Layout

The existing window layout will be preserved unless no windows are displayed in which case the mode is equivalent to Show the Main Window.

Active Dependent Behaviour

If the application is active (ie.the current application) the mode is equivalent to Show the Main Window. If Yate is not active the mode is equivalent to Preserve the Window Layout.

Remember that you can always force the main window to display via Window>Show Main Window (⌘N).

Audio previews persist until they are finished, the Preview window is closed or the Preview function is selected while a Preview is playing. You can choose to have the preview file change if the selection is changed by selecting the Update Preview on selection changes option. When the option is enabled, a preview will switch to a new track if the selection is changed. This setting applies to changing the selection in the main window file list, the File Browser and track databases. More information can be found in Previewing Tracks and Other Files.

The word mix is a valid Roman Numeral and is often used when tagging. Roman Numerals can be processed during case transformations and in numeric conversions. This setting allows you force the word mix to not be treated as a valid Roman Numeral.

Yate suports one hundred custom fields. These fields are not displayed on any of the default content edit panels. The fields may be displayed in the main file list and can be assigned to custom content edit panels. You configure custom fields and optionally assign them to displayable columns via the Custom Fields button or alternately via Edit>Custom Field Editor.

You can configure how notifications are handled via the Notifications button.

If your Mac is running OS 10.14 (Mojave) or greater, you can configure the dark mode behaviour of various windows.

Yate implements an algorithm to modify text to Title Case. You can configure the algorithm via the Title Case button.

If your Mac is running OS 10.12 (Sierra) or greater, you can control how Yate's windows get combined into single tabbed windows. You can modify the tabbed window settings via the Window Tabbing button.

You can create droplets on the desktop which automatically open the files dragged into them. The files are opened with a supplied Open Mode and a supplied action is run. You create droplets via the Droplets buton.

Advanced Settings

Yate fully supports the ability of fields to contain multiple values. Within audio file the multiple values are encoded dependant on the audio format. Yate supports a multi value delimiter to represent the encoding specific data. Many applications which display tagging information, such as iTunes, ignore multiple values if found. Setting the value to an empty string will treat it as the default value of ;;;. Note it is strongly recommended to leave the default value of ;;; as is. If you do change it, be aware that some audio formats require that the multi value delimiter is written out as displayed.

Yate uses unique values for Album and Track Database IDs. It also allows you to generate these values via the \U escape sequence. By default a UUID which is a standard 128 bit value will be produced. Alternately you can also choose to produce a GUS (Globally Unique String) which is a wider form of a UUID. There is no reason to change the default value unless you have a personal preference for one of the other types of unique values. Note that as Yate always uses string compares when comparing unique values, mixing and matching the unique value types will not have a detrimental effect due to the different representations of the values. You can temporarily override this setting in actions by using the Preferences action statement.

By default Yate uses a faster tooltip display rate than the system default. If you prefer tooltips to take longer to display you can enable the Use system tooltip display rate setting. Note that changes do not take effect until Yate is restarted.

You can automatically open databases when Yate starts by using the Open sticky databases on startup option. Databases are made sticky by holding down the Shift key while selecting them in the File>Open Recent menu. If the Option key is depressed when Yate starts this option will be ignored. You can elect to minimize these databases automatically opened by selecting the Minimize option. Note that this will effectively cause the windows to be ungrouped if window tabbing has been enabled for the database windows.

If you use the Finder alternative Path Finder, you can activate support via Support Path Finder. Support entails a Show in Path Finder menu item when appropriate.

When manipulating artwork, Yate has to know if your Mac has a Retina display. When your Mac only has a single display, this is trivial. When you are using multiple displays the configuration, the possible use of a dock and the OS version can all affect the proper detection of a Retina display. You can override the default settings using the Determine if retina display adjustments are required setting. A detailed explanation can be found in the Using Yate with Multiple Displays topic.

Each time Yate is closed it creates a backup of the application preferences. These backups are stored in the ~/Library/Application Support/Yate folder. A backup can be restored via the Yate menu's Import Preferences from Backup... item. The number of files retained is configurable to any value in the range of 10 through 1000. Note that while these automatic backups may help you, they are no substitute for periodically backing up your preferences via the Yate>Export Preferences... menu item.

You can elect to automatically zip the backup files.

When you update to a new version of Yate, the most recent backup file is renamed to Pre version Backup. Note that if you want to import from one of these files, it must be manually unzipped (if required). It is recommended that you copy the zip file before unzipping so that you can easily identify the unzipped plist file which will have a different name. These files are not automatically deleted.

The Yate UID field is simply a means of entering text to identify a running version of the application. This only makes sense if you have more than one copy of Yate installed and you want to be able to test in an action which copy is running. When the \YI escape sequence is used in an action, the identifier will be inserted. Note that the Yate UID value is exported when Settings are exported. However, a non empty Yate UID will only be imported if the current value of the Yate UID is empty.

Yate's notepad file is by default stored at ~/Library/Application Preferences/Yate/Yate Notepad.txt. When the field is empty, the default location is used. You can choose a different file and location or reset the default value. The only real reason to do this is you are running Yate on more than one Mac and you want the file to be in a shared folder (Dropbox, Google Drive, ...).

There is a mechanism to automatically sync preferences between instances of Yate running on different Macs. This is done by by using the preference import/export system. A file is designated to be the auto import/export preferences file. This file is kept in a location accessible to every copy of Yate. This can be a shared folder (Dropbox, Google Drive, ...). The feature is enabled by selecting the Auto import/export preferences file option and then by choosing a file. See Syncing Preferences Between Multiple Copies of Yate for more information. You can also select what metadata gets synced via the Configure button.

You can elect to automatically zip the synch file. Note that the displayed path in the preference panel will always have a .plist filename extension. In order to work correctly, every Mac synching preferences must have the same zip setting.

Many menus support the display of a function menu appropriate for the displayed items. Out of the box the submenu is initially displayed by selecting an item in a menu while holding down the Option key. The Modifiers to display function submenu setting allows you to change the modifier sequence to whatever you wish.

The following table describes the menus which support function submenus: