The Home screen

Home as a way into the whole library — which shelves it shows, the shortcut tiles, and how to change both.

Home is the way into everything else. It is a column of shelves — a podcast's new episodes, your favourites, the albums on your phone, a server's recently added — with, if you want them, a grid of shortcut tiles above them that open a part of the library in one press.

Which shelves, in what order, and which tiles, are all yours to choose. A shelf can be any part of the library: a chip of Subscriptions or Local media, a section such as Favourites, one playlist, or a shelf from a media server.

Each shelf heading ends in a chevron that opens the full list behind it. Pull down on Home to check your subscriptions for new episodes there and then.

What Home starts with

Everything else is a switch away in Edit Home.

Edit Home

Press Edit Home in Home's bar — or, in Settings, Edit Home under Home: Choose shelves and shortcuts, and their order. Every change is saved as you make it; there is nothing to confirm.

The page is in the order Home draws things: the tiles first, then the shelves.

• Places at the top of Home — the shortcut tiles. Switch on any section of the Library: Up to 8, in the order you switch them on. A tile opens its place. A playlist or a podcast is added from its own menu.
• Shelves on Home — the shelves Home shows now, in order. Drag to change the order. Switch one off to take it away.
• The shelves you can add, in groups:

A shelf you switch on joins the end of Home; drag it up from there.

With more than one server, the server group is Media servers, together — the shelves of every server ticked under Show servers, merged — and then each server has a group of its own, so you can have one server's Recently added without the others'. A single server's shelf is headed with the server's name: Living room · Recently added.

From a podcast, a station list or a playlist

One podcast, station list, folder or playlist is put on Home from its own menu, not from Edit Home — a library can hold hundreds of them. Once one is on Home, Edit Home lists it, so it can be moved or taken off there too. The menu is the More button — ⋮ — at the end of its row and in its own screen's bar; holding its row or its cover raises it too.

• Show on Home — Its own row on Home. Once it is there, the entry reads Take off Home.
• Add Home shortcut — A tile at the top of Home that opens it, and Remove Home shortcut after.

Empty shelves

Hide shelves with nothing in them is on unless you change it — They come back as soon as something arrives. If a shelf you switched on is missing, it has nothing in it yet; it has not been turned off. Switch the setting off to see every shelf, empty ones included.

The shelves worth knowing about

Continue is what you have started and not finished, minus whatever is in the player right now.

Surprise me is dealt again each time you come back to Home, after a refresh, and whenever you press the dice — Show me something else.

Media Server Mix is the Mix row of your media servers — press a tile and it starts. What it offers and in what order is set under Media servers in Settings — see Mixes.

Local Media Mix is the same idea built from the songs on your device, with nothing asked of a server — see Mixes from your device below.

Local songs leaves out audiobooks, as the Songs chip does, once audiobooks have been set up.

Local audiobooks leads with the book you listened to most recently, if you have not finished it; then the books you have not started; then the rest you are part-way through; then the finished ones. It reorders as you listen.

Mixes from your device

The Local Media Mix row has five tiles. Each builds a mix from the tags and the listening history of the music on the device, leaving out books and video.

A genre is the same genre however it is spelled: Hip Hop, Hip-Hop and hiphop are one entry, and so is Rap. A genre or a decade needs at least ten songs before it is listed.

A tile with nothing to build from says so rather than doing nothing — for instance Nothing for Rediscover yet, with what it needs.

Other settings

The tabs along the bottom are a different setting — see The tabs along the bottom. Which of a server's shelves its Activity shows, and in what order, is Manage shelves — see Browsing a server.