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Your collection

Your collection is every track openDJ knows about, with everything it knows about them: one database file with every track's tags, rating, color, cues, loops and beat grid, your playlists, smart lists and folders, and the history of what you played. It points at your audio files where they are, and only moves them between your stage folders when you turn that on (see Stages).

Collection is the top of the tree on the left, and the first source in the rail. Together with Files and the streaming services it makes up the browser, the lower half of the screen.

Sources

The rail at the far left picks where the tree and the track list come from:

  • Collection: all your tracks, with their stages, crates, sets, playlists and history.
  • Files: any folder on your computer, as it is on disk.
  • Spotify, TIDAL, Apple Music, SoundCloud and Mixcloud: your playlists and saved tracks on those services, for browsing (see Streaming services).
  • Jam: the Groove Box, your instrument plugins, the Mic and the Mixer (your aux inputs), dragged onto a deck to play there instead of a track (see Jam on a deck).
  • Plex, Navidrome and Jellyfin: your own music server, searched from openDJ with its tracks downloaded into your collection (see Your own music server).
  • Bandcamp, Beatport and OneLibrary: coming soon.

Settings › Sources lists every source by kind (streaming services, stores, your own servers, free music, add-ons and the built-in ones). Each row says whether the source is signed in or set up, and its In rail switch shows or hides it in the rail, as right-clicking the rail does. Click a source to open its settings: its server and sign-in, the folder its downloads go to, or Sign out for a streaming service. The cache for tracks played from your own servers is at the top of the page: one size for all of them (10 GB unless you pick another); Manage under Settings › Collection › Storage clears it.

Streaming services

openDJ shows what you saved on a streaming service, but doesn't play its audio: a track plays on a deck when your collection holds the same track, and the others are greyed out. Double-click one to open it on the service's own site; SoundCloud tracks and Mixcloud shows also have a ▶ button (and Play on… when you right-click) that plays them there in your browser. Tracks are matched by ISRC when both sides have one, then by artist and title. If a match is wrong, right-click the track and pick Change Match….

To keep track of songs you mean to get, right-click a greyed-out track (or several picked ones) and pick Add to Wanted. Right-click a playlist and pick Add to Wanted to use it as a shopping list: its tracks you don't have go on the Wanted list, and so does anything you add to it later, each time openDJ signs in or you open it. Tracks you take off the Wanted list stay off. Stop Adding to Wanted leaves what's there. With a download add-on such as the Soulseek add-on installed, Add to Downloads sits beside it and searches the add-on for each track.

A download add-on's panel lists your Searches, then Downloads (everything it is fetching and has fetched, with cancel, retry and clear), then any page of the add-on's own, such as the Soulseek add-on's Sharing: what you share, and uploads now, waiting and done lately.

Under the playlists, Signed in as shows your account; click it to Sign out.

Each service is signed in to with your own app, so openDJ ships no keys:

  • Spotify: create an app at developer.spotify.com with the redirect URI http://127.0.0.1:8898/callback and paste its client ID.
  • TIDAL: create an app at developer.tidal.com with the same redirect URI and the scopes user.read, playlists.read and collection.read, and paste its client ID.
  • Apple Music: needs an Apple Developer account. Under Certificates, Identifiers & Profiles › Keys, create a key with MusicKit and download its .p8 file. Enter your Team ID, the key's Key ID and the file's path, then sign in with your Apple ID on the page that opens. You see your library's songs and playlists.
  • SoundCloud: register an app at soundcloud.com/you/apps with the same redirect URI and paste its client ID and secret. You see your Likes, your own tracks and your playlists.
  • Mixcloud: just type your username. You see your shows, favourites, listening history and playlists; shows play on mixcloud.com.

openDJ keeps your playlists and the tracks of those you opened, so after a restart they show straight away. A playlist you open is checked again in the background and updated if it changed (Spotify, TIDAL, SoundCloud and Apple Music say when a playlist changed, so unchanged ones aren't fetched again at all). The refresh button at the top right of the side panel, beside the service's name, fetches the list of playlists again. Signing out forgets what was kept.

Your own music server

If your music lives on a Plex Media Server, on Jellyfin (or Emby), or on Navidrome (or any other server that speaks the Subsonic API, such as Gonic, Airsonic, Ampache or LMS), openDJ can search it and bring tracks into your collection. These are your own files, so unlike the streaming services they play on decks.

Pick the source in the rail: until it's set up, its panel asks for the server and sign-in, and Connect saves them. You can also fill them in later in Settings › Sources: click Plex, Jellyfin or Navidrome to open its settings.

  • Navidrome: the server's address (for example http://192.168.1.20:4533), your username and your password. The password is only ever sent as a salted token.
  • Jellyfin (or Emby): the server's address (for example http://192.168.1.20:8096), your username and your password. openDJ signs in once and then uses the server's access token.
  • Plex: the server's address (for example http://192.168.1.20:32400) and your Plex token. To find the token, open any track's ⋯ menu in Plex Web, pick Get Info › View XML, and copy the X-Plex-Token at the end of the address that opens.

Then pick the source in the rail, type in the search bar at the top and press Return. The cog next to it sets what to search for: Auto finds albums and songs, Track, Album and Artist narrow it down (Artist lists that artist's albums), and Playlist lists your server's playlists whose name has the text in it (leave it as * for all of them). Open an album or playlist to see its songs.

Each song, album and playlist offers two ways to bring it in:

  • Play (double-click a song, or its ▶) loads it onto a deck that isn't playing, fetching it into the cache first. A FLAC on your home network takes a second or two.
  • The cloud downloads it into the cache, to play later or offline. A filled cloud means it's there. Cached tracks stay out of your collection, and the oldest go when the cache is full (10 GB for all sources together unless you pick another size in Settings › Sources). Their waveform, tempo and key are kept as long as the file stays in the cache.
  • + Collection (or + Album) brings it into your collection for good: Downloaded/Plex, Downloaded/Jellyfin or Downloaded/Navidrome in your music folder, one folder per artist and album with its cover, or the Collection folder set for the source in Settings › Sources. A song already in the cache moves over from there instead of downloading again.

Tick several rows to Download them to the cache or Add to Collection together. openDJ fetches the original files, so a FLAC stays a FLAC.

How tracks come in

Tracks come into your collection in three ways:

  • Your music folders. openDJ looks through them each time it starts, and when you press the circling arrows at the top right of the Collection sidebar. New files are added, and changed files have their tags read again. Add as many folders as you like under Music Collection in Settings › Collection with + (pick the folder in Finder or your file manager), and take one out by selecting it and pressing −, or start openDJ with the OPENDJ_MUSIC environment variable set to one. There's no default folder: ~/Music is where Ableton, GarageBand and other apps keep their samples, so openDJ only looks there if you add it. When a folder is no longer looked through, its tracks leave your collection, except ones you rated, played, staged or put in a list. The files stay where they are.
  • Files. The Files source in the rail browses any folder on your computer. Load or drag a track from there to add it.
  • Another DJ app. openDJ can bring in your VirtualDJ library (see below).

Bringing a track in only reads its tags: title, artist, album, genre, year, key, BPM, rating, comment and cover art. It is quick, and nothing is played or analysed yet.

Stages: Inbox, In Prep and Play Ready

Stages take new music from wherever it lands to tracks that are ready to play. Set them up in Settings › Collection › Stages:

  • Inbox: the folder where new music arrives, such as Downloads, a Soulseek folder, or where purchases land.
  • In Prep: where tracks you are preparing are kept. Its subfolders are prep crates (for example Yoga STG or Journey STG), for sorting tracks by where they'll go.
  • Play Ready: where prepared tracks are kept. Its subfolders (such as Albums) stay as they are.

Once the In Prep and Play Ready folders are set, Inbox, In Prep and Play Ready show under Collection at the top of the tree, after Wanted, each with its track count and subfolders. Every track gets the stage of the folder it is in.

Right-click tracks to move them along, or drag them onto a stage. The track menu shows Inbox › In Prep › Play Ready with the track's stage lit; click another stage to move it there, or use the lines below it, whose arrows say whether a track goes back or forward:

  1. Send to In Prep (or Send to In Prep › a crate) for inbox tracks worth keeping. Tracks you don't want go to Quarantine.
  2. In In Prep, prepare each track: tags, cover, rating, tempo and key. Show the Prep column (right-click a column heading) for a dot each for tags, rating, and tempo and key; tracks in In Prep are analysed in the background, so tempo and key fill in on their own. 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) and Cover. Pick other columns from the header's menu as in any list; In Prep keeps its own set.
  3. Send to Play Ready when it's ready. A track from a prep crate also joins the list named after the crate (Yoga STG goes to Yoga).

Back to In Prep and Back to Inbox move a track back a stage, and ⌘Z (Ctrl+Z on Windows and Linux), or Edit › Undo on a Mac, takes back the last change.

Files only move between the folders when Move files is on. Leave it off while another app, such as VirtualDJ, still uses them: tracks change stage in openDJ at once, their moves wait, and they are made when you turn it on. Files going from the inbox to In Prep are renamed Artist - Title (Remix) from their tags, unless you turn Rename files off. A file is never moved over another one.

Search with stage:inbox, stage:prep or stage:playready (the older stage:triage and stage:collection work too), and is:prepped for tracks with tags, rating, tempo and key.

When tracks are analysed

Tracks in In Prep are analysed in the background. Any other track is analysed the first time it is loaded on a deck: its waveform, tempo and beat grid, and its key when the tags don't have one. It plays while that happens, and the waveform fills in as it goes. The result is saved, so the track loads at once next time.

Storage at the bottom of Settings › Collection › General shows how the disk with your music is used: your music, the analysis results, high quality stems, tracks played from your servers, everything else, and how much is free. Manage clears the analysis results, the stems or the played tracks, each after saying what it costs, and Show cache folder opens the folder they are kept in.

Grids, keys and cues brought in from VirtualDJ are used as they are, so those tracks don't wait for analysis.

The beat grid stays at one steady tempo unless the track really drifts, as live drums and older recordings do; only then does it get tempo sections, and its BPM in the list shows a ~ (as in VirtualDJ). With Beat detection set to Neural (the default, in Settings › Analysis), openDJ then listens for each beat and downbeat with Beat This!, so bar 1 starts on a downbeat. That takes a few seconds more, after the waveform appears: the track plays on its first grid meanwhile. The first time, openDJ downloads the model (about 11 MB).

Beat This! also sets the tempo, from the beats it hears, which suits slow and soft music (ambient, acoustic) far better than the standard detector. Tempos are kept within BPM range (Settings › Analysis, 60 to 180 BPM unless you change it): a faster reading is halved, a slower one doubled.

The grid menu (click the BPM on a deck) says where the grid came from: Detected, Edited or the app it was imported from. A detected grid that fits the beats poorly says may be off, check by ear. Lock grid keeps a grid as it is: a locked grid can't be edited, and analysing the track again leaves it alone. Grids imported from another app come in locked. Back to the detected grid throws away your edits or the imported grid and uses openDJ's own.

To check a grid by ear, turn on Metronome in the same menu: the deck clicks on every beat of the grid, higher on bar 1, through the deck's fader and cue like the music. If the clicks drift off the music, fix the grid while it plays: Bar 1 here on a downbeat puts bar 1 there, Move grid ‹ › nudges it, Tempo here − + changes the tempo, and New tempo section from here starts a new tempo where a live track speeds up or slows down.

Edit Grid

The quickest way to fix a grid is the pencil in the bottom corner of each deck's big waveform (left for decks 1 and 3, right for 2 and 4). It stays dimmed until you point at it. Click it, or press G for the master deck, to start editing: the beat lines run through the waveform, bar lines in lilac, and the pencil lights up. While you edit:

  • Drag the waveform to move the grid under the music; the audio slides and the beat lines stay put until you let go. Hold Alt (⌥) to scrub as usual instead.
  • Set Downbeat in the Edit Grid popover makes the beat at the play line bar 1, and ◀ | | ▶ nudge the whole grid a little earlier or later.
  • More… opens the full grid menu: tempo, ½ and ×2, tempo sections, undo and the metronome.
  • Reset goes back to the detected grid; Lock locks it.

Click the pencil again, press Done or Esc to finish. Editing keeps whatever zoom the waveform is at, and loading another track finishes it. In the Prep layout the grid is always open for editing while it is unlocked, and the metronome turns on by itself there and back off once the grid is locked. Controllers and keyboard shortcuts can use edit_grid (the beats_edit control).

To analyse tracks yourself, right-click them and choose Analyze Track (or Analyze 12 Tracks when you picked several), or right-click a list, folder or stage and choose Analyze All. They are analysed again from scratch in the background, one at a time: tempo, beat grid, key, loudness, mini waveform and phrases. A grid you edited and a key you typed in or got from the tags stay as they are. While it runs, each waiting track has a gray dot by its title (lilac and pulsing while it is being analysed), and the footer shows how far along it is, with a ✕ to stop.

A track with no cover also gets one: openDJ takes the first cover it finds online, if it is at least 600 pixels, and saves it in the file's tags. When the first one is smaller the track is left without, so you can pick one yourself from the cover dialog in Info.

Phrases

Once a track has a beat grid, openDJ splits it into phrases of whole bars: intro, build (up), drop (peak), chorus (main groove), verse, break and outro. Each deck's overview shows them as a bar under the minute dots: deep blue for the intro and outro, violet for a build, rose for a drop, green for a chorus, gold for a verse and tangerine for a break. Phrases are 8 to 32 bars long, so a short fill never gets one of its own. openDJ listens for changes in the bass, the level and the chords, so a new part starts where the music changes even when it doesn't get louder, and it matches parts that come back: a second verse is a verse too. They are saved in your collection with the track, and move with the grid when you edit it.

Rest the pointer on a deck's overview to see the phrase under it: its kind, how many bars it runs and where it starts and ends.

The scrolling waveforms flag where each phrase starts: a line in the phrase's color and a small tab with its name (INTRO, BUILD, DROP and so on) just under the bar numbers. Between flags the waveform is left as it is. In 4-Deck, where the waveforms are thin, only the lines show.

Right-click a deck's overview and choose Hide phrases (or Show phrases) to turn the bars off or on for every deck. Right-click a scrolling waveform to do the same for the flags; the two are separate.

Bringing in a VirtualDJ library

Press Set up… next to Import from VirtualDJ in Settings › Collection › Import. That tab is always there and lists every DJ app openDJ can bring a library in from; Serato DJ is marked coming soon. Three steps follow:

  1. Find your library. openDJ looks for database.xml in ~/Library/Application Support/VirtualDJ (or ~/.vdj on Linux) and shows what it holds. Choose another file if yours is elsewhere.
  2. Choose which lists come across. Every playlist, virtual folder, filter folder (as a smart list) and history session is in a tree with a tick box. Ticking a folder ticks everything in it, and All lists at the top does the lot. History is grouped by year. Everything starts ticked except filter folders, whose searches may not mean quite the same here. Lists you add in VirtualDJ later come in ticked.
  3. Choose whose tags win when a track's title, rating or color differ: VirtualDJ's, while you still use it, or openDJ's.

Press Import. Each track keeps VirtualDJ's tags, stars, color, comment, play count, dates, BPM, beat grid, key, hot cues with their names and colors, saved loops, gain, and its remix and automix points. Anything VirtualDJ leaves empty is filled in from the file's own tags. The lists go into a VirtualDJ folder, and history into the History tab. A VirtualDJ folder that holds songs itself becomes a folder whose first list, with the same name, holds those songs.

openDJ only ever reads VirtualDJ's files. If you keep using VirtualDJ, openDJ checks its files each time it starts and brings in what changed. Tracks are matched by their file, so nothing is added twice. Grids and cues you edited in openDJ are kept. The VirtualDJ folder is made again each time, so change those lists in VirtualDJ, or copy one out of the folder to keep editing it in openDJ.

Once it's on, VirtualDJ's section of the Import tab opens up with these choices and the two buttons below. Lists › Choose… opens the tree again to change which lists come in. Stop leaves what came in but stops updating it. Remove… takes out the VirtualDJ folder and history, VirtualDJ's cues, grids and markers, and the tracks only VirtualDJ had. Tracks in your own lists or music folder stay. Either one closes the section again, back to Set up….

Lists of online tracks

Streamed tracks (TIDAL and VirtualDJ's other online catalogues, or TIDAL, Spotify and the other streaming services in rekordbox) have no file to play, so they stay in their lists as placeholders, in their place. A placeholder is greyed out and shows its service (TIDAL) where the album would be. It keeps the artist, title and length the app saved, and the service's own track id. Double-click one to open it on the service's site. Lists made only of streamed tracks come in too, marked online only in the list picker.

When the song comes into your collection later (you buy it and it lands in the inbox, or a scan finds the file), the placeholder becomes that track, in the same place. openDJ matches by ISRC when both sides have one, then by artist and title at the same length (within 2 seconds). While you're signed in to TIDAL or Spotify, openDJ asks the service for its tracks' ISRCs, so the match is sure. If a match is wrong, or one is missed, right-click the track and pick Change Match….

Placeholders aren't put on the Wanted list for you: right-click one (or several) for Add to Wanted or Add to Downloads, or right-click the list in the tree to add every placeholder in it. To have every streamed track in the app's playlists go on the Wanted list, turn on Add streamed tracks to Wanted under that app in Settings › Library › Import. New ones join at each import; tracks you take off stay off. History is never added: what you played isn't always what you want to keep.

The Wanted list holds only what you put there: tracks you clicked Buy on and tracks you added with Add to Wanted. While the stores are off, it's under Collection. The search box narrows it. A track leaves the list once your collection has it; to take tracks off by hand, pick them (⌘A picks all) and right-click for Remove from Wanted.

Buying Wanted tracks

Pick tracks on the Wanted list, right-click and choose Buy… (or Buy N Tracks…). openDJ looks for each track in the stores it knows: the artist's own site and Bandcamp, Mirlo, the iTunes Store, Qobuz, Bleep, Boomkat, Beatport, Juno Download, Traxsource and Amazon Music. It finds tracks by their ISRC on MusicBrainz, by Bandcamp's and the iTunes Store's search, and opens a search on the stores it can't ask.

For each track it chooses a store that has it, preferring the artist's own site, Bandcamp and Mirlo, where most of the money goes to the artist, then the store whose files reach your library fastest, then lossless files. A store that doesn't have the track only shows up as Try, to search there. Click a track's store to choose another one it's sold on.

The tracks are grouped by store. Open opens the first track's page: add it to the store's cart, then press Next for the next one. Click a track to open just its page. Check out once on that store when they're all in the cart. openDJ never sees your payment, and its links carry no referral codes. Tracks you opened show Buying on … for a week.

Turn on Bring purchases into Inbox and what you download into Downloads afterwards is filed into your music folder, goes to the Inbox stage and comes off the Wanted list, matched by ISRC or by artist, title and length. Zips are unpacked. It takes only files that arrive after you turn it on. On a Mac, Also take purchases from the Music app does the same for iTunes Store purchases the Music app downloads, taking only tracks you are buying and leaving them where the Music app keeps them.

Bringing in a rekordbox library

Import from rekordbox works the same way. openDJ reads rekordbox 6 and 7's own database, master.db, which it finds where rekordbox keeps it (~/Library/Pioneer/rekordbox on a Mac, AppData\Roaming\Pioneer\rekordbox on Windows). For rekordbox 5, or if the database can't be opened, export your collection from rekordbox (File › Export Collection in xml format) and choose that file in the first step.

From master.db each track keeps its tags, stars, color, comment, play count, date added, key, My Tags (each category a tag group, see Your tags), hot cues A to H with their names and colors, memory cues, saved loops, its beat grid with any tempo changes, and rekordbox's phrases (Intro, Verse, Chorus and so on, shown on the waveform as openDJ's own phrases are). Playlists come in their folders, intelligent playlists as smart lists where openDJ's search can say the same thing, and history into the History tab. An XML export holds tracks, grids, cues and playlists, but no phrases, history or intelligent playlists.

Bringing in a Mixxx library

Import from Mixxx works the same way. openDJ reads Mixxx's mixxxdb.sqlite (only reading it, so Mixxx can stay open), which it finds where Mixxx keeps it: ~/Library/Containers/org.mixxx.mixxx/Data/Library/Application Support/Mixxx or ~/Library/Application Support/Mixxx on a Mac, ~/.mixxx on Linux and AppData\Local\Mixxx on Windows.

Each track keeps its tags, stars, color, comment, play count, dates, key, hot cues with their labels and colors, saved loops, the main cue (as a memory cue), intro and outro (as sections) and its beat grid, whether a steady grid or a beat map with tempo changes. Playlists come in a Playlists folder, crates in a Crates folder, and history sessions go to the History tab. Auto DJ's queue stays in Mixxx.

Bringing in a Traktor library

Import from Traktor works the same way. openDJ reads Traktor's collection.nml (only reading it), which it finds in the newest Documents/Native Instruments/Traktor x.y.z folder on a Mac or Windows. If yours is elsewhere, choose the file in the first step.

Each track keeps its tags, stars, color, comment, play count, dates, key, hot cues 1 to 8 with their names, saved loops, its beat grid, other cues (as memory cues) and fade in and fade out (as Automix points). Playlists come in their folders, folders within folders just as Traktor shows them. Traktor's own _LOOPS and _RECORDINGS lists and its smart lists stay out.

Bringing in a djay Pro library

Import from djay Pro works the same way. openDJ reads a copy of djay's MediaLibrary.db, so djay can stay open and its library is never changed. It finds it in Music/djay/djay Media Library.djayMediaLibrary on a Mac or Music/djay/djay Media Library on Windows. If yours is elsewhere, choose the file in the first step.

Each track that is a file on this computer keeps its title, artist, album, genre, BPM, key, rating, year, comment, hot cues 1 to 8 with their names and colors, saved loops (as memory cues), Automix start and end (as Automix points), play count and color. When you set the first downbeat in djay, the grid starts there. Playlists come in a djay Pro folder, in djay's order and with djay's folders, and djay's history comes as one session per set. Tracks streamed from TIDAL, Beatport, SoundCloud or Spotify show in their lists as streamed tracks, with their artist, title and length.

Bringing in an iTunes or Music library

Import from iTunes works the same way for iTunes and the Music app on a Mac, and iTunes on Windows. openDJ reads the library's XML file (only reading it):

  • Music app: choose Music › Settings › Advanced and turn on Share Library XML with other applications, so Music keeps Music/Music/Library.xml up to date. Or choose File › Library › Export Library… once and save Library.xml.
  • iTunes: it keeps iTunes Library.xml (or iTunes Music Library.xml) in its Music/iTunes folder by itself.

openDJ looks in those places, and for an exported Library.xml in your Music folder or on the Desktop. If yours is elsewhere, choose the file in the first step. When Music's file changes, openDJ reads it again at its next start.

Each track keeps its title, artist, album, genre, grouping, composer, comments, year, track and disc number, BPM, stars (not the ones Music worked out from the album), play count, date added and when it was last played. The file has no cues or beat grids, so openDJ analyses the tracks as usual. Playlists come in their folders, folders within folders. Music's own lists (Library, Music, Purchased, Genius and the like) stay out. Smart playlists are off at first; ticked, each comes in as a plain list of the tracks it held when Music last wrote the file. Podcasts, audiobooks, videos and voice memos stay out. Apple Music songs you added but don't have as files (and protected downloads, which openDJ can't play) show in their lists as streamed tracks, with their artist, title and length.

The same song from two apps

When a second app's library has a different file of a song you already have (the same artist and title, ignoring case and punctuation, and a length within two seconds), openDJ doesn't add it twice. The copy already in your collection stays, and the second app only fills in what it left empty. Its lists point at that copy. Its grid is only used when the track has none from another app, and its hot cues come in as memory cues when the track already has hot cues, so nothing is lost. Removing the second import takes out what it added and leaves the track as it was.

The tree

The collection's tree has these parts:

  • Collection, with how many tracks you have. Select it for all of them; open it for Wanted (tracks you went to buy or added with Add to Wanted) and the stages.
  • Crates: lists for sorting your music, such as Yoga, Journeys, Dance or a style. A crate has no order of its own (it sorts like the Collection) and holds each track once. The + beside the heading adds a crate or a Crate Folder; crates have a box icon, or the one you pick.
  • Playlists: running orders, for gigs or anything else. A playlist keeps the order you add tracks in, and a track can be in it twice. Its icon is always lines with a note. The + beside the heading adds a playlist, a smart playlist or a folder. Your smart lists are here too.

Right-click any folder for New Crate, New Playlist or New Folder, so folders can hold folders and a folder can hold both. Right-click a list for Make It a Crate or Make It a Playlist (a playlist that becomes a crate keeps each track once).

Drag a crate, playlist or folder onto a folder to move it there, or onto the Crates or Playlists heading to take it back to the top (a crate's top is Crates, a playlist's is Playlists; a folder can go under either).

  • Imported: other apps' lists (a folder per app) and Groupings and Tags. They are read-only, because the app's next import makes them again, so they show a padlock and dimmer names. To keep an app's lists as your own (say, once you stop using that app), right-click any of them and pick Make These Lists Mine: they move to Playlists and can be changed, and that import keeps bringing in tracks, cues and grids but no more lists. Turning the import off and on again brings its lists back.

Everything starts closed, and the tree remembers which folders you left open. Drag tracks onto a crate or playlist to add them, or onto a stage to move them there. Or right-click tracks and point at Add to playlist: a panel opens beside the menu with the lists you added to most recently at the top. Type to find one, or pick New crate to make one with the tracks in it. Show in playlist lists the crates and playlists a track is in and opens the one you pick.

Go to Artist and Go to Album on the track menu show the whole collection narrowed to that artist (any track they're on) or album, with a chip on the filter bar; clear the chip to see everything again.

A track can be in as many crates as you like, and the Crates column (right-click a heading) shows which ones it is in. Search with crate:yoga for tracks in a crate with "yoga" in its name, crate:=yoga for that crate only, and crate:"" for tracks in no crate yet.

History

Every track that plays on a deck for 30 seconds goes into that night's history session, named after when it started (such as "Sat 31 Oct 2026, 22:15"), in the History tab beside the tree. A session opens in the order you played it: the # column is the play order and Played At the time each track was played. Click any heading to sort by it, and # to go back to the order played. History sessions have their own columns, so changing them doesn't change your other lists. Playlists and crates open in their own order too, and the collection keeps its sort.

Right-click a session, playlist or crate and pick Export to Spotify Playlist to make a private Spotify playlist of it in that order. openDJ finds each track on Spotify by its ISRC, then by artist, title and length; the list's header says how many went in and names those Spotify doesn't have, and the new playlist opens in your browser. If you signed in to Spotify before this was added, sign out and in again so openDJ may make playlists.

Playlist files

Right-click a playlist, crate, folder, history session, album or mixed set and pick Export as M3U8…, then the folder to save it in. A list becomes one .m3u8 file named after it; a folder becomes a folder of them, with its folders inside. Tracks kept in the file's folder or below it are written with paths from there, so a USB stick with the music beside the list works on any computer; the rest are written in full. Online tracks in a list have no file, so they go in as a note with their name and service.

To bring a list in from another app, pick Import Playlist File… from the + beside Playlists. openDJ reads M3U, M3U8, PLS and XSPF (from VLC, foobar2000, Winamp, Serato and others), makes a playlist with the file's name and finds each track in your collection: by its path, by its path from the file's folder, then by its file name. Files on disk that aren't in your collection yet join it. The list's header names any tracks it couldn't find.

Taking your library to another app

File › Export › rekordbox XML… (or right-click Collection and pick Export as rekordbox XML…) saves your whole collection as one rekordbox.xml file: every track with its tags, rating, color, comment, date added and play count, its beat grid (one marker per tempo change, so a grid that changes tempo comes across), hot cues with their numbers and colors, memory cues and saved loops, and every crate, playlist and folder in its tree. Right-click a single list or folder to save just that one.

To open it in rekordbox, pick the file under Preferences › Advanced › Database › rekordbox xml, turn on rekordbox xml under Preferences › View › Layout, and it shows as a node in rekordbox's tree. Library tools such as Lexicon and Rekord Buddy read it too and convert it to Serato, Traktor, Engine DJ and VirtualDJ. A few things don't fit the format:

  • Your tags go into the comment as /* Tag / Tag */, the way rekordbox writes its own My Tags there.
  • rekordbox has eight hot cues (A to H) and eight track colors: pads 9 and up come across as memory cues, and a track's color as the nearest of the eight.
  • Phrases, stems, stages and online tracks with no file are left out.

Collection Health

Collection Health, the cross under Collection in the rail, finds what needs fixing in your collection: duplicates, junk in names, missing or poor tags, covers, low bitrates, files that went missing, and more.

Search and filters

Search, the filter bar and smart lists have a page of their own: Filtering tracks.

Picking several tracks

Click a track to pick it, shift-click another to pick every track in between, and ⌘-click (Ctrl-click on Windows and Linux) to add or drop one track at a time; ⌘A picks the whole list. Right-click, drag, rate or add to a playlist and it applies to every picked track. Sorting or a refreshed list keeps the same tracks picked. With several picked, the list's heading says how many and their total time ("12 selected · 1h 14m") in place of the whole list's time.

The track menu's Rating and Color rows set every picked track at once; the colors are the ones color:red, color:blue and so on search for.

A track's color shows as a dot in the Color column (headed ●, sorted red, orange, yellow, green, cyan, blue, purple, pink). Settings › Library › Track color changes that to a strip at the row's left edge or a soft tint of the whole row, or turns it off; color searches work either way.

Track info

The Info tab on the right of the browser shows the picked track (or the track on a deck) and lets you edit it in place. The rating is under the title. Below, three tabs keep everything in view without scrolling:

  • Track: track, artist, remix, album and genre, then year and track number, BPM and key, gain and time, two to a line.
  • Tags: your tag groups, grouping and the comment. Each tag is a chip: × takes it off, and the + tag box adds one (or several, with commas between), suggesting tags you already use.
  • File: format, audio, size, the file (with Show in Finder), its folder, plays, when it was added and last played.

openDJ remembers the tab you were on. Tags go into the file as well as your collection.

Pick several tracks and Info edits them together. A field they share shows its value; one that differs says how many values it has. Type a value to give it to them all, or click ▾ to pick one of the values they have (with how many tracks have it), keep each track's own, or clear it in all. Changed fields are marked in lilac (a tab with changes gets a dot) and wait for Apply (or Discard). Apply writes them to your collection and the files' tags in one go, and ⌘Z takes the whole change back. Fields you typed this way are left alone by Clean up and Look up online. The stars set the rating of every picked track at once.

Tags work on all the picked tracks at once, with no Apply. A tag on only some of them shows how many have it ("dreamy 5/12"): click it to put it on all. × takes a tag off all of them, and + tag adds one to all. ⌘Z takes a tag change back. You can also right-click tracks and choose Add Tag: it lists the tags you added lately, then the ones you use most, and you can type to find one or make a new one.

Fixing names

Right-click one or more tracks and choose Fix Names… to tidy their names in one go. Pick a tool, choose In: all names (track, artist, remix and album) or one field such as Genre or Comment, and watch the preview:

  • Find and Replace: what to find and what to put instead (leave it empty to take it out). Match case, Whole words, and Pattern for a regular expression, where $1 in the replacement puts back what the first brackets found.
  • Change Case: Title Case (small words like "of" and "the" stay lower, DJ, MC and UK stay in capitals, names like McCartney are kept), Sentence case, UPPER or lower.
  • Remove Brackets: takes out what's in (round) and [square] brackets.
  • Swap Artist and Title: for tracks that have them the wrong way round.

Review opens the review table: untick what you'd rather keep, then Apply. Undo takes the whole change back. A track or artist name is never emptied.

Columns

Right-click any column heading to choose which columns the list shows, your tag groups included, or Reset columns to go back to the default. Drag a divider on a heading's right edge to make that column wider or narrower (the columns after it move along and keep their widths), and drag the heading itself to move it. Click a heading to sort by it. openDJ remembers your columns.

Your tags

Tags sit in groups you make in Settings › Collection › Tags, for example Mood, Instruments or Vibe: add as many as you need, rename them, and set each to Several tags per track or One. A tag is a name of its own, spaces included ("Peak Time"), with no # needed. Removing a group takes its tags off every track (openDJ asks first when tracks use it), and ↑ moves a group up.

Tags on a group's row lists its tags with how many tracks have each. Give a tag a color (it shows as a dot on its chip), or type a new name and press Return to rename it on every track: a name the group has already merges the two into one. × deletes a tag from every track.

Each group's name works as a search word (mood:uplifting, vibe:"peak time"), and so does its place (tag1:uplifting for the first group); tag: searches every group. The # in front of a tag is optional when searching. On the same tab, give Grouping the name you use it for, such as Trip Stage (tripstage:"4 peak"). Copy into a tag group there makes a group of that name with each track's grouping as a tag, so a track can then have more than one (the Grouping tag itself stays as it is).

Tags from other apps come into your groups: VirtualDJ's User 1 and User 2 each fill a group (each word a tag, the # dropped), and each rekordbox My Tag category becomes a group of the same name. A group you already have with that name takes them. Rename a group made this way and later imports still go into it.

Backups

openDJ backs up your collection (cues, tags, crates, playlists and history) and your settings once a day, under Backups in Settings › Collection › General. Back up sets how often: Off, Daily (the default) or Weekly. The newest 10 backups are kept. Each is one .opendjbackup file, which also holds your own controller mappings. Sign-ins to streaming services stay out of it.

Backup folder is a Backups folder next to openDJ's settings until you pick another; a cloud folder (iCloud Drive, Dropbox) keeps your backups off the computer. Back Up Now makes one straight away.

Restore… picks a backup. It goes in when openDJ next starts, so quit and open it again. How things were before is saved first, as a "Before restore" backup in the backup folder, and you stay signed in to your services. Cancel drops a restore that hasn't happened yet. Music and sample files are not part of a backup.