Interface & navigation

Tunetorch has two layouts: one for the desktop (from 1024 px wide) and one for tablet and phone (below that), which adapts to the width. The features are the same everywhere, just arranged differently.

The areas

The navigation bar gives you three areas:

On the right is the user menu with your personal areas: settings, statistics, history, playlists, audiobooks, audio export and, for admins, the server settings. Which entries you see depends on your permissions and on whether there's anything to show. Audiobooks you've started, for example, only show up once there are some.

Home

The home page is made up of sections you put together yourself. In the home page editor (user settings) you decide which sections appear, in what order and how big they are. For cover sections you choose rows and columns, for track sections the number of tracks. You change the order by dragging: on a computer by the whole row, on a touchscreen by the handle (⠿) on the left. The section follows your finger, and the list makes room where it will land when you let go. With the keyboard, tab to the handle: ↑ and ↓ move by one place, Home and End to the start or the end.

These sections are available:

• Library figures (number of tracks, albums, artists, genres)
• Recently played tracks and artists
• Most played artists, tracks and albums
• Recently added albums
• Albums not played in a while
• Favourites: artists, albums, tracks

In front of each section title there's a + button that adds the whole section to the queue. For track sections that's all tracks in the order shown, for cover sections the cards currently visible.

A click on the section title “Recently played tracks” takes you to the complete history.

Library

You can show each tab as a cover grid or as a table:

• Artists: cards with the cover art of the newest album
• Album artists: the view onto compilations
• Albums: all albums
• Tracks: all tracks as a simple list
• Genre: grouped by genre

Both views only draw the rows currently visible, and cover art loads as you scroll. That keeps browsing smooth even with very large libraries.

Filtering and sorting

Above the list there's a filter bar. On a phone you can collapse it so it doesn't take up space. You can filter by:

• Genre
• Year
• Tags (Live, Remaster, Acoustic …; with several tags, an entry has to have all of them)
• Audio: format (FLAC, MP3, Opus …), quality (lossless or lossy), bitrate and channels (mono, stereo, multichannel)
• Maintenance: one entry in the filter menu, next to it you pick: file offline, no cover, no year, no genre, multiple audio versions
• Favourites only

All filters apply at once: "No cover" and "No genre" together only show tracks that are missing both. The bitrate ranges are the same as in the statistics (> 320, 320, 257–319, 256 … < 128).

The audio filters look at the best version of a track. If it exists as FLAC and as MP3, "MP3" won't find it, because there's no need to rip it again. "Multiple audio versions" finds exactly those duplicates: tracks that were scanned and also uploaded. "Lossless" follows from the format, so a FLAC file made from an MP3 still counts as lossless.

You can sort by name, year and date added, among others, each ascending or descending.

A filter you've set is always visible and can always be removed, no matter whether you set it on the desktop or on the phone.

Detail panel

A click on an album or track card opens an overview right below it: large cover art, a track list with number, length and actions, and a footer with the count and total duration.

Search

Search has an area of its own. It starts half a second after your last keystroke. The X clears the field immediately.

The results are sorted by relevance: an exact match comes before a match at the start of a word, which in turn comes before a match in the middle of a word. Umlauts and accents don't matter. With the bar above (artists, album artists, albums, tracks) you narrow the search down if needed. Each category shows up to eight matches, and the category with the best match is at the top.

A click on a result takes you to the artist's profile page. The matching album is opened there, or the track is highlighted.

Artist profile page

A click on an artist card opens a page of its own:

• Large image with the name, a short description and an optional caption
• Most played tracks, counted across all users
• Albums in three sections: the artist's own albums, Collaboration albums (with a “with …” line) and Guest appearances. An album counts as a collaboration album if all its tracks have the same credit with several names. If a second name only appears on individual tracks, it's a guest appearance (see Managing metadata)
• Biography below the albums: description, master data and, if entered, the band members with photos

If you have the Metadata permission, the options menu (⋮) next to the name contains a section of its own for editing: Edit the biography, Edit metadata (opens all of the artist's albums in the editor) and Import database; see Managing metadata. Without the permission this section is missing.

Action buttons and the options menu

Next to every track, album and artist there's a main button and an options menu (⋮).

What the main button does is up to you in the user settings: “Add to queue” (default) or “Play now”. You'll find the other action in the options menu. So both are within reach without appearing twice.

Depending on where you are, the options menu also offers:

The menu looks the same everywhere: in the library, search, history, home page, artist profile and playlist manager, on the desktop as on the phone.

On narrow displays, two icons move into the menu

A track row normally shows the heart, track number, title, playing time, note icon and the action buttons side by side. On a phone that leaves hardly any room for the title; it gets cut off after just a few characters.

If the display is narrower than 560 pixels, the heart and the note icon therefore move into the options menu, into a section of their own. The title gets the space that's freed up.

So that you can still see at a glance what's marked, the row shows small icons below the title: a filled heart for a favourite and a note icon if there's a note. The icons only show the state; you toggle it in the menu.

This affects the track rows in an opened album, the track list in the library and “Most played tracks” on the artist profile page. On tablets and on the desktop everything stays as usual.

“Now playing”

The track that's playing can be recognised in every track list by small animated equaliser bars in the accent colour: in the queue, in the library, on artist profiles (where they replace the rank in “Most played tracks”), on the home page, in the history, in search and in the playlist manager. When paused, the bars stand still.

Seeking within a track

Clicking the progress bar in the player jumps to that point. The keyboard works too: you can reach the bar with the Tab key, and it then shows an outline.

A screen reader announces the bar as a slider, with the position as a time (“1:23 of 4:56”).

Appearance

You set all three in the user settings. They apply to your account on every device.

Colour scheme and layout belong to Tunetorch Pro. Without an active subscription, “Tunetorch” and “Flat” apply, and the two selection fields don't appear. Instead, a short paragraph at the bottom of the settings dialog says whether the server has Pro and who can get it. Your earlier choice stays saved and applies again as soon as Pro is back. Tunetorch doesn't reset anything.

The language changes immediately, without the page reloading, and it does so across the entire interface. That covers all views, menus and dialogs, the admins' server administration and also the server's messages: error messages (such as “A tag with this name already exists.”), the progress texts of running background jobs (export, collection import) and the error page that appears when something goes wrong in the interface.

The language names in the switcher are always written in their own language (“Deutsch”, “English”). That way you find your way back if you accidentally set a language you can't read.

Names from your music library (artist, album, track, genre) aren't translated; they always appear exactly as they're stored. Dates, times, numbers and sizes follow the chosen language. In English that means British format with a 24-hour clock and the month written out (Tuesday, 4 Aug 2026). The biography details on the artist pages follow the language too: the labels (“Founded”, “Country”) change, the values themselves stay as they are.

One small point concerns exports and imports that ran before the switch: for those, the line for progress or errors in the overview stays empty. The old text couldn't be translated reliably, and a made-up substitute would be worse than none. New runs aren't affected.

On the phone

• The filter bar can be collapsed.
• The player bar at the bottom shows cover art, title and artist.
• The top edge of the bottom bar curves up in the middle into an arrow handle and doubles as the progress bar of the current track: the part of the line already played lights up green. You seek in the full-screen player, not on the line.
• The full-screen player opens with a tap on the arrow handle or with a swipe up over the bottom bar. A swipe down closes it again, and the animation follows your finger.
• In the full-screen player, the indicators next to the cover art let you switch the quality level (tap the bitrate) and loudness normalisation (LUFS) directly, and “EQ” opens the equaliser.

User settings

You reach them via the user menu. They're organised into tabs:

All settings live on the server and apply on every device you sign in on. The exception is the values on the App tab, which only apply on the device in question.

Where to go next

• Playback & audio quality
• Playlists & favourites