February 3, 2010

Changing How You See Your Media Library

You have more power over your view of the media you own than you may have realized if you're not in the habit of clicking around and dragging to see what you can do. When you use the List option to view your library (click the leftmost of the three View controls next to the Search box, or use As List at the top of the View menu) you can rearrange the order of the columns for instance by grabbing each in the title bar and dragging it to a new location.

You can resize the columns by dragging the lines in between them in the title bar -- convenient when you need to see all of a name too long to fit in the default "name" space for example. And clicking on a column header sorts your library contents by that criteria. (Clicking again reverses the order. Want a quick way to find all the digital booklets in your music library? Sort by Time. They'll all be at either the beginning or end of the list depending on whether you're sorting short to long or vice versa.)

You can also add and subtract columns to and from the view. Choose a section of your library (Music, Movies, etc.) then select List view and then choose View Options... in the View menu. Enter and remove checks from the Show Columns check boxes to determine which columns you'll see. You can make different choices for each of your library sections.