Helium is very configurable and you can easily access the most common settings via Tools > Options.

Note: This page is revised for Helium 17.


General

  • Language allows you to change language in Helium
  • Active tag editor allows you to select the default tag editor which should be started when the edit tags command is executed via hotkeys or from context-menus
  • Use global hotkeys will enable media keys for playback
  • Enable automatic update checks will perform an update check upon each startup, if selected
  • Auto-size columns will auto-resize columns in track lists when contents are read
  • Center the active track in the Play queue will keep the active track in the Play queue in the middle, if selected (usable for long Play queues)
  • Always invoke custom download window in CD-Ripper will show the custom download window in the CD-Ripper instead of trying to auto download data. This can be useful if you have a barcorde or catalog number for the CD that's being ripped to always force an exact result using the Discogs plug-in.
  • Use sort order will use the sort order fields for all sort operations if enabled. Applies to albums, artists, titles and albumartists
  • Show sort order values is only available if Use sort order is selected. If selected, Helium will display the sort order fields, otherwise it will display the non-sort fields. For example, if Show sort order fields is NOT selected, 'The Beatles' will now display as 'The Beatles' but sort under the letter 'B' as oppose to being displayed as 'Beatles, The' if selected.
  • Words used for auto sort order defines a list of words that are used when automatically setting sort order using the tag editors. For example if "the" is included in this list and an artist starts with the, Helium will automatically set the sort order to "Artistname, the" if auto-set sort order is enabled in the Tag editor.
  • Party mode will toggle if party mode is active or not. If active, a password set in the field below, will need to be entered to allow invocation of tools and access to the differnt views and the Play queue.

Advanced

  • Custom gain application will allow you to select a specific application for calculating volume gain. Control the input parameters using the track and album parameters fields.
  • Default script will allow you to define which script that should be executed when the Execute default script hotkey is invoked
  • Export playlists with relative paths will export playlists with realtive paths (M3U, M3U8 and PLS). If not selected absolute paths will be used.
  • Include extended information when exporting playlists will add tag-meta data in exported playlists, if check marked.   
  • Render artist and album detail page statistics (can make rendering slower) will render extra information for these page types when selected. Please note that this might have a performance impact, especially with Sql Compact databases.
  • Auto-split multiple album artists on add/update operations will automatically extract multiple album artists when adding/updating tracks if enabled.
  • Always open album folder when changing pictures will use the albums folder as the inital path when changing album picture instead of the current pictures path.
  • Disable anonymous telemetry will disable sending of anonymous crash logs  if a crash occurs.
  • Use system file dialogs will use the default operating system open/save dialogs instead of Heliums themed dialogs. If you experience any issues when working with dialogs, try to activate this setting.

Extended logging

  • Use extended logging will log much more data when enabled. Avoid to use this option unless you are working with a support issue. It's possible to control the details of the extended logging with the checkboxes below.

BPM range

  • This setting will control the default range to be used when calculating BPM with Helium.

Views
These options allows you to control how the sorting in the Releases, artists, track views and releases under artist details. 

Special settings for Releases view:

  • Show tracklist in thumbnails/card mode will display a tracklist below the releases view which will be updated with the tracks from selected release, if the setting is active.
  • Show track list in split mode will show a track list showing the tracks for the selected album instead of displaying the full album details. This applies to split mode only.
  • Do not group multi-cd albums will avoid to use grouping on CD for albums with more than one CD.


Special settings for Artists view:

  • Show track list will display a tracklist below the artist view which will be updated with the tracks from selected artist, if the setting is active.
  • Show track list in split mode will show a track list showing the tracks for the selected artist  instead of displaying the full artist details. This applies to split mode only.

Special settings for Tracks view only:

  • Hide texts for columns with icons will hide the descriptive text for columns that display an icon such as file type, quality and more.
  • Show column filters will present an advanced filter editor for the columns is selected.
  • Limit genre to single line will present genre as a single line only (visually) if selected. If unselected genres will wrap if needed.
  • Disable hyperlinks will disable hyperlinks in the track list if selected.

Special settings for Labels view only:

  • Show track list will display a tracklist below the labels view which will be updated with the tracks from selected label, if the setting is active.

Special settings for My computer view only:

  • Scan subfolders will scan folders recursively if selected. If not selected only files from the selected folder will be read, not from its child folders.
  • Save changes automatically will save changes made with the Quick editor directly when the selected file changes if this setting is active. If not, you will have to click the Apply button to save changes.

Special settings for Genres view only:

  • Hide styles will hide the genre styles grouping if selected
  • Collapse styles will collapse all genre styles by default if selected

Special settings for Playlists view only:

  • Manually save playlists will not save changes made to a playlist automatically if selected. Instead the user needs to save the changes manually

Advanced

The tooltips that can be configured are using the Tag to filename format for rendering. Some special fields are available for these views:
  • {{country}} - the country the artist/group is from
  • {{borned}} - the borned name of the artist
  • {{formed}} - the date the group/artist was formed
  • {{disbanded}} - the date the groupe/artist was disbanded
  • {{artisturl}} - the Url to the artist/group webpage
  • {{albumcollections}} - the album collections the specific album is contained in



Visual
These options allows you to control various visual settings for Helium:
  • Use dark theme will run Helium in dark theme
  • Use light theme will run Helium in light theme
  • Font-size allows you to scale up/down the default font-size in Helium
  • Desktop alerts configures the handling of desktop alerts
  • Show advanced filters will show the advanced filters for views that supports them. it is possible to toggle this setting on/off from the Views menu.
  • Disable window overlay will disable the dimming overlay for the main window when another window is opened if selected.
  • Small navigation bar icons will use smaller icons in the navigation bar if selected.
  • Hide tooltips will disable tooltips for controls if selected.
  • Auto-hide graphic position bar will hide the graphic position bar if a track is not playing
  • Show letter navigation bar will show the letter bar for views supporting it which allws the user to quickly jump to the first occurance of an items starting letter
  • Show top image on detail pages will create a dimmed and blurred section of the artist/album picture to use in the summary header
  • Scroll window title will scroll the played tracks title in the window title if selected and the title is too long to be displayed
  • Dock now playing tabs in Play queue will dock the Play queue in the Right sidebar when active
  • Hide suggested tracks from Now Playing will hide suggested tracks on the Now Playing page if selected.
  • Hide albums in Now Playing will hide albums from the Now Playing page is selected.
  • Expand all albums in album details mode will expand (show all tracks) for all albums when working in album details mode.
  • Thumbnail size allows you to control the thumbnail size for all thumbnail driven views in Helium
  • Thumbnail aspect ratio allow per-view configuration of thumbnail aspect ratios
  • Crop thumbnails will apply cropping if selected, if not fit and scale will be used
  • Hide overlay control on thumbnails will hide the overlay control on thumbnails if selected.
  • Hide overlay on thumbnails will hide the overlay on card view thumbnails if selected.
  • Hide smart play will hide the smartplay button in the player if selected.
  • Hide visualizations will hide the visualizations button if selected.
  • Hide Auto-enqueue will hide the auto-enqueue button if selected.
  • Hide crossfade will hide the crossfade button if selected.
  • Hide repeat Play queue will hide the repeat play queue button if selected.
  • Hide shuffle will hide the shuffle button if selected
  • Show pitch in player will show the pitch control in the player, allowing you to speed up/down music
  • Player information allows the user to control which information the bottom player will shown. The format is using the Tag to filename engine.
  • Show drop playlist will show the drop-zone in the player where you can drag and drop tracks to for quickly adding them to the selected playlist
  • Show quick moods will show the mood select button which allows you to quickly change mood for the played song.
  • Navigation buttons will allow you to enable/disale which view navigation buttons that are visible

Advanced

  • Album background allows you to control the default settings for the album details pages
  • Artist background allows you to control the default settings for the artist detail pages
  • Spectrogram quality allows you to control the render precision of the Spectrogram
  • Hide time markers in waveform/spectrogram will hide the time indicators in the waveform/spectrogram if selected.
  • Use mono-space fonts for template controls will force a mono-spaced font to be used in template based controls for better readability.

Capitalizer
This page allows you to control which default captialization mode the capitalizer should use for a specific field as well as which characters to use as delimiters.

Example results of capitalization modes with the input text "this is a text":
  • None: "this is a text"
  • Sentence: "This is a test"
  • Word: "This Is A Test"
  • Uppercase: "THIS IS A TEST"
  • Lowercase "this is a test"
  • User defined: The character following by the specified user characters will be converted to uppercase
     

Custom capitalization
Enter words in this list that always should have a specific capitalization no matter which rules that are set for a field.

Word replacement
Define how specific words would be replaced form this list.


Variables
Variables allows you to define custom variables which can be used withing tagging and renaming operations. If you for example create a variable named %hello% with the value "hello world", write it in the subtitle field in the Tag editor, then the variable will be replaced with the value, "hello world".

Contents
Allows editing of contents stored and used in drop-down controls in tag editors and other tools.

Select the specific content type to edit from the top drop-down control at the top.


Pictures
Album pictures
  • Album picture path will allow you to specify a path to where album pictures should be copied to
  • Copy album pictures to the above folder will if selected always copy album pictures to the above folder when modified.
  • Copy album picture to album folder will copy an album picture when modified to the specific albums path
  • If Overwrite existing pictures is checked, Helium will overwrite existing pictures without asking.
  • If Force copy pictures to the specified folder during add is selected, pictures found during add will be copied to the folder defined above using the naming convention defined below during adding.
  • Album picture name format defines the filename format pictures that you download or add manually. You can use codes to use data from the actual album (album name and albumartist). If you for example always prefer your album pictures to be named then simply enter folder as a format. The format is using the Tag to filename engine.

Artist pictures
  • Artist picture path will allow you to specify a path to where artist pictures should be copied to
  • If Overwrite existing pictures is checked, Helium will overwrite existing pictures without asking.
Label pictures
  • Label picture path will allow you to specify a path to where label pictures should be copied to
  • If Overwrite existing pictures is checked, Helium will overwrite existing pictures without asking.


Music explorer
This page allows you to control the visibility and order of the nodes in the Music explorer view.
The majority of the nodes allows you to be customized to select the fields you want them to include. Click the Customize... button to customize the selected node.


Multiple artists
This page allows you to control various settings for multiple artist controls used in Heliums tag editors.


Player
  • Output device allows you to select a specific output device. If you do not hear any sound whilst playing a file, please make sure that the proper output device is selected.
  • Playback buffer (ms) controls the length of the buffer when playing music. A calculated recommended value is shown below. You should always try to use buffer as small as possible unless your system suffers from latency during playback. Larger buffers affects the realtime DSP and FX that are in use (Replay gain, equalizer, pitch etc) in a negative way. 
  • Clear Play Queue when playing items will automatically clear the Play Queue when a track is played if selected.
  • When Clear Play queue on double-click track is selected, the Play queue will be cleared when you double-click a track before new entries are added.
  • Add all tracks on double-click will add all tracks from the current view when double clicking a track if selected.
  • If Stop when a track has finished playing is selected, playback will not continue to play the next track when a track is played
  • Select Calculate Bpm when playing tracks with no bpm to automatically calculate the bpm for the track currently being played. The calculated bpm will be stored in your library and on tags.
  • Show pitch in player will show the pitch control in the player if selected.
  • Use crossfade will use crossfading when starting a new song. It is possible to control the length of the crossfade as well as when if shall start using the settings below. Seconds is used as the unit to control crossfade values.
    Crossfading can also be toggled directly from the player.
  • Replay gain controls how to use replay gain data, when available. Replay gain can be calculated via Tools > Volume gain. Click here for more information about replay gain.
  • Update play counter, will defined the minimum length a song needs to be played before the play counter will be updated.  
  • Smart play control the offsets for the Smart play feature available from the tag editors and the main window.


NOTE: From Helium 17, WASAPI is the default and recommended playback type. It's built into the player natively therefore there are no longer any specific WASAPI settings available.


Shortcuts
This page allows configuration of shortcut keys in Helium, used to start tools and switch between views.


Toolbar
This page allows configuration of the toolbar items that will be shown just below the main menu in Helium.


Plug-ins
This page allows you to configure the available download plug-ins.


Web service
This page allows you to enable the web service in Helium so that you can use it with the remote controlling apps.
  • Port will allow you to select which port the web service should use
  • Clicking the button Open port in Windows firewall will open the selected port in Windows firewall and your router.


External applications
This page allows configuration of the external applications in Helium.


Releases ordering
This page will allow you to control which order releases will appear on under artist and label details.

Custom fields, columns & release types
  • Custom fields will allow you to control how custom fields on tags are read an mapped to a specific field.
    Change display name to specifiy how the name of a custom field should be shown in Heliums tools and views.
    You can map a custom field to a specific tag field/frame by entering the name of the field in the Map-to-frame text box.
    When a field is mapped, contents from this field will be mapped to the custom field when reading tags. This can be usefull to increase compatibility with tag fields not supported by Helium.
  • Custom columns will allow you to create up-to five columns with totally dynamic contents. The templates used for these fields will use the rules from Tag to filename to render the contents.
  • Release types allows you to configure the names of the five custom release types.
  • Release type tag-frame mappings allows you to control if and how the value of a specific tag frame should be converted to a release type during read. 
    Example:
    A file contains a TXXX tag-frame named "releasetype" (key) with the content "Maxi / Single".
    To remap all TXXX frames matching the key and with the value "Maxi / Single" to Helium's release type "Maxi", enter "Maxi / Single" (without the quotes) in the Value field for release type "Maxi".
  • Music Explorer user defined node names will allow you to rename the User defined nodes in the Music Explorer



Last.fm
This page allows you to register an Last.fm account to use for scrobbling with Helium.

Database
This page allows detailed configuration of the SQLite and MySQL/MariaDb database connections.


Tags
This page control various tag settings used in Helium:
  • Save album artist with full external compatibility will force album artist to be saved in the TPE2 tag frame (Band/Orchestra) instead of TXXX tag frames. This is because other applications like MP3Tag and iTunes for example only accepts reading of album artist from the TPE2 tag frame, thus Band/Orchestra will be disabled in Tag editors and the values entered in Album artist will be saved to this tag frame.
  • Save ID3 v2.x tags as version 2.3, if check marked, ID3v2 tags will be saved as version 2.3 ,otherwise 2.4 will be used. When active, certain tag frames such as release year and recording year will not be available. We do not recommend that this setting is active unless you have an external dependency which requires strict v2.3 tags.
  • Save ID3v2 contents in UTF8 will save the ID3v2 tag contents in UTF8. If not selected Unicode will be used.
  • Save play counter to tags (MP3 files only) will save the play counter when updated during playback to tags if selected. This applies to MP3 files only.
  • Save recording year in legacy mode will save year as TYER instead of TDRC.
  • Save ID3v1.x tags will automatically generate an ID3v1 tag when tags are saved.
  • Pad Track and Disc with leading zero will add a leading 0 to Track and Disc tags if the value is less than 10.
  • Read album artist from TPE2 (MP3Tag support) will read album artist from the TPE2 tag instead of TXXX which is the standard field. MP3Tag does not follow the ID3 standard and saves album artist to TPE2.
  • Use paranthesis for multiple artists will display multiple artists within a parenthesis block if enabled. Please note that this also affects tagging.
  • Use year compatibility fallbacks will fallback to release year if release year fields are not read. This setting can be set if year is not read properly from your files (e.g. tagged using older tagging formats)
  • Save BPM without decimals for compatibility will only save whole numbers to the BPM fields when enabled
  • Disable rich-text formatting in lyrics and biography editors will disallow rich-text formatting for lyrics and biography editors when enabled.
  • Vorbis tags will allow you to control which tag name that's mapped to a certain field for vorbis tags.