Imploded Software

Helium needs to scan your music folders and read each file's tags before anything appears in your library. Adding music is that first step — without it, views like Albums, Artists, and Tracks show nothing. Once files are indexed, your entire library becomes searchable, browsable, and playable.

How to open the dialog

There are five ways to open the Add to Library dialog:

1. Main menu: Click the main menu button, then choose File → Add music → Add files to Library.... The keyboard shortcut is shown next to the menu item.
2. Toolbar: Click the teal Add files to Library button on the default toolbar.
3. Keyboard shortcut: Press Ctrl+Insert from anywhere in Helium. This shortcut can be changed under Options → Keyboard shortcuts.
4. Right-click in a track list: In any track list — Albums, Tracks, Play Queue, and others — right-click and choose Add to Library.
5. My Computer / Music Explorer (direct mode): Right-click a folder in the My Computer view or the Music Explorer tree and choose Add to Library. Helium skips the dialog entirely and starts scanning that folder immediately. This is the fastest way to add a single folder.

Adding your folders

The setup screen shows the list of folders Helium will scan. To build that list:

1. Click Add to open a folder browser and select a folder. For most users this will be a single root music folder such as D:\Music.
2. Alternatively, drag and drop one or more folders from Windows Explorer directly into the folder list.

A few things to know:

• Helium scans all sub-folders automatically. You do not need to add each sub-folder individually.
• If you add a sub-folder of a folder that is already in the list, Helium keeps only the parent folder to avoid scanning anything twice.
• To remove a single folder from the list, click the × button on the right side of its row.
• To remove all folders at once, click Clear.

The OK button stays disabled until at least one folder is in the list.

Choosing formats to scan

Click Formats to add to open a dropdown showing every supported audio format, each with a checkbox.

• All formats are selected by default.
• Uncheck any format to exclude those file types from this scan.
• Your selection is remembered the next time you open the dialog.

For the full list of supported formats and file extensions, see the tagging files article.

Picture options

Two checkboxes near the bottom of the setup screen control how Helium handles artwork:

• Add pictures from tags: When checked, Helium extracts artwork embedded directly in the audio file tags and saves it as album or artist art.
• Prioritize pictures from tags (indented, only available when the above is checked): When checked, embedded tag artwork takes priority over any image files found in the music folder, such as folder.jpg or cover.png. Leave this unchecked if you prefer folder image files to take precedence.

Assigning a Volume (Premium)

The Selected volume area lets you assign all newly added tracks to a specific Volume within a Collection.

• Click Select... to open the Volume selector, where you can pick an existing Volume or create a new one. This requires a Premium licence.
• Click Reset to clear the assignment. Tracks will be added without any Volume assignment.

To learn more, see the Collections and Volumes article.

Starting the add

Click OK to begin scanning. The setup screen is replaced by a progress screen showing two circular progress rings:

• Current — progress through the current step.
• Total — overall progress across all steps.

A description below the rings updates as Helium moves through each phase: adding files, creating albums, updating artist information, rebuilding the cache, and more. The Windows taskbar button also shows a progress bar while the operation is running.

• Minimize: Click Minimize to hide the dialog. The add operation continues running in the background.
• Cancel: Click Cancel to stop the operation. Depending on how far Helium has progressed, some data may already have been written to your library. If you cancel partway through, run Update Library afterwards to ensure your library is in a consistent state.

When the add completes

The dialog closes automatically when the operation finishes. A notification then appears summarising the result — for example, "42 files added", "3 files updated", or "No updates were performed" if all scanned files were already in the library.

If any files could not be read, a message appears pointing to a log file that lists the affected paths, so you can investigate those files separately.

All open views refresh automatically to show the newly added tracks.

Duplicate handling

Helium never adds the same file twice. Files already in the library are silently skipped during a scan.

• If you add a folder that is already fully indexed, the result will be "No updates were performed".
• If files have been moved or renamed on disk since they were originally added, re-adding their folder will not update their location in the library. Use Update Library for that.

How pictures are applied

When adding files, Helium looks for artwork in the following order:

1. Image files in the folder — files such as folder.jpg or cover.png are used by default.
2. Artwork embedded in tags — used when Add pictures from tags is checked. If Prioritize pictures from tags is also checked, this embedded artwork wins over any folder image files found in step 1.
3. Existing picture storage — if no artwork is found by either method above, Helium checks the album and artist picture folders it already knows about. This means that if you have a curated set of artwork from a previous database and you create a new database and re-add the same files, your existing pictures are automatically reused without any extra effort.

Add files vs. Update Library

Update Library is faster and more efficient for ongoing maintenance. Use Add files to Library only when introducing a completely new folder for the first time.

For full details on keeping your library current, see Keeping your library up to date.

See also

• Keeping your library up to date
• Collections and Volumes