Layouts

The menu at the top left of the window switches layouts:

Player works like a music player and mixes for you. One bar along the bottom of the window shows the track you hear: its album art, title, artist, BPM and key (colored by its place on the key wheel, so keys that mix have neighboring colors), and what Automix plays next. In the middle are Previous, Play/Pause and Next over a thin line through the track: white for what has played, and a dim lilac where the next mix happens. Next cuts straight to the next track in Up Next, as other players do (the Mix now button in the Automix panel mixes into it instead). Point at the line and it turns lilac and shows the time there; click or drag to move through the track. The time played and the track's length are either side. On the right are the master volume, the mini player button, the lyrics button and the queue button, which shows or hides Up Next (the Automix list), and under them the file's quality: format, bit depth and sample rate in lilac for lossless files (FLAC 16-BIT 44.1 KHZ), or the bitrate in grey (MP3 320 KBPS). The heart beside the title puts the track playing in Favorites (a playlist made at the top of Playlists the first time), or takes it out; it is filled lilac while the track is there. Right-click it to add the track to a crate or playlist, or to a new crate. Click the album art on the bar for Now Playing: the art large over the whole library, with the title, artist, album, BPM, key and the file's quality under it, and on the right the track's Lyrics (large, the line sung lit) or its Details (album, track number, year, genre, length, tempo, key, file, rating, plays, when it was last played and added). Up Next stays beside it. The lyrics button opens it on Lyrics; the art again, or the ⌄ at the top left, goes back to the library. The mini player (⇧⌘M, View › Mini Player, or its button on the bar) is a small square window of album art that stays on top of the others. Point at it and the art dims and shows the title, artist, a progress line (click it to move through the track), Previous, Play/Pause and Next; ✕ brings back the main window, which hides while the mini player shows. It has no title bar: drag the art to move it, and the grip in its bottom right corner to resize it (it stays square). The moon on the bar is a sleep timer: after 15, 30 or 45 minutes or an hour the music fades out over ten seconds and stops, or pick End of track to stop when the track playing now ends (Automix switches off so nothing mixes in). Point at the moon to see the time left; Turn off timer in its menu cancels it. Order and Repeat are at the top of Up Next. With Repeat on, a played track goes back to the end of Up Next instead of leaving it, so the list keeps going round. Up Next shows the track playing on top, under Now playing. Each mix follows the panel's Length and Style, unless you pick one for a single track: right-click it in Up Next and choose under Mix into it (Panel goes back to the panel's). A row with its own mix shows it in lilac, such as ⤵ 32 bars · Cut. Click the artist on the bar, an artist in the search box's results, or Go to Artist in a track's menu, and their page opens over the list: their tracks in your collection, most played first, and their albums, newest first. Click an album (or Go to Album) for its page, with its tracks in order. Play plays the page now, Shuffle in a random order, and Mix in the order that mixes best by key and tempo; clicking a track plays it now (on an album, with the rest after it). The arrow at the top left goes back; picking a list closes the page. Player opens on Home: what you played and added lately, your crates and playlists, and mixes made from your collection by genre and decade (each a page of up to 50 tracks in the order that mixes best). Crates and mixes show four of their tracks' covers with their name on a bar. The house button beside the search box comes back to it. Keep going, under them, is Player's cruise control, off at first: while it is on, Up Next never runs dry. When fewer than two tracks wait, a track that mixes with the last one goes on the list (close on the Camelot wheel, close in tempo, not played in the last 3 hours, not the same artist twice in a row), and the next three picks show greyed at the end of Up Next, so you can drag in something else first. From picks where they come from: Everything, or the list the browser shows. Switching it on also switches Automix on. Right-click a track and pick Start Radio (the track plays next, then picks from everything) or Start Artist Radio (the artist's tracks and those sharing their genres), or right-click a crate or playlist and pick Start Radio to keep going from it. The keyboard's play/pause, next and previous keys, the buttons on headphones, and the system's Now Playing (Control Center on macOS, the media overlay on Windows, the desktop's media controls on Linux) work Player as its buttons do, and show the track with its art. The DJ layouts leave them alone unless Media keys in every layout is on in Settings › Keyboard, so a headphone button can't stop a deck in the middle of a set. The top bar keeps to search. The search box (⌘F) is Player's only search box: it filters the track list and shows the best matches as you type: artists and albums first, then tracks (tracks first when a title is the better match). Point at one, or move with ↑ and ↓, and pick Play next, Add to queue (the end of Up Next) or Play now, which mixes into it straight away; on an album these take the whole album in order, and on an artist Show tracks searches for them. The keys are ↵, ⇧↵ and ⌘↵; Esc clears the box and the list's search. There is no MASTER button (the bar's volume is the master volume); REC shows only while recording (start it from File › Record Mix), and there is no MIC button (switch to another layout to use the microphone). Underneath, decks 1 and 2 take turns and Automix mixes from one to the other. Play switches Automix on, Next mixes into the next track straight away, Previous goes back to the start of the track, and Order puts Up Next in order (shuffle, BPM, harmonic and so on). The large waveforms and the FX bar are hidden in Player.
2-Deck shows the full decks, with jogs, tempo faders, pads and loops, and the mixer between them (see Decks and mixer).
2-Deck Basic shows two lighter decks without jogs or tempo faders, the slim mixer between them and the pads and loops in a bar under them (PADS shows or hides it, JOG adds a jog to each deck). It is off at first: switch it on with the layout menu's pencil.
4-Deck shows four decks side by side, in the order 3, 1, 2, 4, as djay Pro does. Each deck is a strip with its own EQ, filter, gain and channel fader, PLAY and CUE, loop, pads and effects. A bar under the strips holds each deck's crossfader side, SYNC and tempo, either side of the crossfader; click a deck's tempo there for key lock, quantize and a tempo reset. With WAVEFORMS lit in the top bar, the four large waveforms are stacked above the decks in the same order. A Groove Box deck shows its step grid only in 2-Deck.
Prep shows deck 1 alone, for getting tracks ready (see Prep).

The button at the bottom left of the window hides the decks for a compact view in 2-Deck and 4-Deck.

Your layouts

The layout menu offers only your layouts. At first that's Player, 2-Deck, 4-Deck and Prep, in that order. To change them, click the pencil at the top right of the layout menu. It turns the menu into a list of every layout, each with a switch, as the side panel tabs' and the library rail's choosers have:

Switch a layout on to put it in the menu, or off to take it out. The layout you're on, and the last one on, can't be switched off.
Drag a row by its grip (the six dots at its left) to move it up or down the menu.
Reset to default goes back to Player, 2-Deck, 4-Deck and Prep.

Click the lit pencil to go back to the menu. Settings › Layouts shows the same list with a small drawing of each layout: ↑ and ↓ move one of your layouts, − takes it out, and + Add puts one of the others back.

A controller's VIEW button (on the DDJ-FLX4, SHIFT + right LOAD) goes to the next of your layouts, and from the last back to the first. Layouts added to openDJ in later versions start switched off.

In openDJ 0.6 2-Deck was called 2-Deck Pro, and 2-Deck Basic was called 2-Deck. Your layouts carry over.

Appearance

Settings › Layouts › Appearance picks Dark, Light or Match system, and so does the row at the foot of the layout menu (Auto there is Match system). Dark is the default. Light is easier to read in daylight and at outdoor gigs: panels, the library, buttons and Settings turn light, while the big waveforms and the overviews stay on black with their colours, as they read best there. Lilac text turns a deeper lilac so it stays readable on white, and the Player layout drops its striped rows. Match system follows your computer's light or dark setting, also when it changes while openDJ is open. The mini player and the karaoke screen stay dark.

Prep

Prep shows deck 1 alone, with no mixer, crossfader or effects, and opens the browser on In Prep (see Stages). The In Prep list has its own columns, to see what each track still needs: Grid (✓ locked, ✓ edited, ? check when the analysis wasn't sure, the number of tempo sections, or detected), Cues (how many hot cues), Tags (✓ with a genre and at least one of your tags), Cover, Ready (checklist lines ticked) and Score. Pick other columns from the header's menu as in any list; In Prep keeps its own set. Load a track and work through it:

The large waveform shares the zoom of every other layout (see Waveform zoom); − and + above the hot cues zoom out and in, with the step between them. While the grid is unlocked, dragging the waveform slides the audio under the grid, so you can line the beat lines up with the kicks by hand; one drag is one Undo. With the grid locked, dragging moves through the track as on the other layouts.
Beat grid has the grid tools from the deck's grid menu: Bar 1 here, Beat here, Tap, Click (a metronome on every beat), move the grid earlier or later, tempo − and +, ½ and ×2, tempo sections, Undo and Detected (back to the detected grid). Lock keeps the grid from being changed.
CUE and play, jumps of 1, 4 and 8 bars, a loop, and the deck's headphone cue and level.
Eight hot cue pads with their names and times: click an empty pad to set it, a set one to jump there, Shift-click to clear it.
The side panel's Cues tab lists the track's hot cues, memory cues and saved loops in track order. Type a name, click the dot for the next color, click a time to jump there, or click the number to move the cue to another pad (the cue on that pad takes its place) or make it a memory cue. + Memory cue (or C) adds one at the playhead; while a loop plays it saves the loop instead. Outside Prep the tab follows deck 1 or deck 2.
The side panel's Checklist tab lists what makes the track ready. The app ticks its own lines when the track has them: Grid checked (locked or edited), 4 hot cues, Genre, Rating and Cover; tick one by hand when the track is fine without it. Add your own lines, such as "Vocals checked", in Settings › Collection › Stages (or Edit checklist lines… at the bottom of the tab), where you can also turn the app's lines off. Tick a line with a click or Option+1–9. Below the lines, give the track your own score from 1 to 10; it shows in the Score column and doesn't count towards ready.
Play Ready, next lights up once every line is ticked (the count is beside it). It works before that too, for a track that is fine as it is. It locks the grid, moves the track to Play Ready and loads the next track In Prep. Cmd-Z (Ctrl-Z) takes the stage change back.

A strip under the waveform lists the quick review keys, with how long this track has taken and your average per track sent to Play Ready from Prep.

Keys in Prep: Enter Play Ready, next; Tab and Shift-Tab next and previous phrase (8 bars at a time when the track has no phrases); ← and → four bars; Option+1–9 tick a checklist line; 1–8 set or jump to a hot cue (Shift clears it); B Bar 1 here; T tap; M the click; [ and ] move the grid; − and = tempo; L lock; C memory cue. Space plays and pauses, as everywhere.

Crossfader assignment

In 4-Deck, each deck says which side of the crossfader it is on: LEFT, RIGHT or THRU (not affected by the crossfader). Decks 1 and 3 start on the left, 2 and 4 on the right. Click the label to change it.

Decks 3 and 4 on a two-deck controller

A controller with two decks, such as the DDJ-FLX4, plays decks 1 and 2. In 4-Deck, click deck 3's number to move the controller's left side to deck 3, and deck 1's number to move it back; deck 4's and deck 2's numbers do the same for the right side. The number of each deck the controller plays is lit. Switching to another layout moves both sides back to decks 1 and 2.

Automix always mixes between decks 1 and 2.