Docs / Getting started

The interface

Nastro is three panels in one window: the player on top, a 10-band equalizer and the playlist. This page names every part of them, so the rest of the documentation can refer to them. How the panels look is decided by the skin, so colors and textures differ, but the parts are always the same.

The player

The player is the main panel, and the only one that is always shown.

Title bar

The logo and the name NASTRO at the left, and three buttons at the right:

• Minimize sends the window to the taskbar or the dock.
• Collapse shrinks the player to a single bar, see Shade mode.
• Close quits Nastro.

Dragging the title bar moves the whole window, with all the panels in their places.

Menu bar

Under the title bar: File, Play, Options, View and Help. Dragging an empty spot of the menu bar also moves the window. The menus are not skinned: they follow the light or dark choice made in Settings.

The menus are described in context in Playlists, Playback, Skins and Settings.

The display

The dark screen in the middle of the player shows what is happening:

• State glyph. A triangle while playing, two bars while paused and a square when stopped.
• Clock. The time played so far, as minutes and seconds (01:12; minutes keep counting past 99). Click it, or press T, to show the time remaining instead, with a minus sign (-02:35). Click again to go back. This is the same as Show remaining time in the Options menu and is remembered. When the length of a file is not known, the clock shows the elapsed time.
• Badges. Small labels about the file being played, from left to right: the codec (FLAC, MP3, ...), the bitrate (320 kbps), the sample rate (44.1 kHz) and the channels, which is STEREO, MONO or the count (6 CH). The bitrate is left out when the file does not tell it. The channels badge is the filled one.
• Visualizer. Click it to cycle through Spectrum (24 bars with a falling peak marker), Oscilloscope (the waveform) and Off, and back to Spectrum. The same choice is in Options, Visualizer and in Preferences. It is remembered.
• The track line. At the bottom of the display: the position in the playlist, the artist and title, and the length, for example 8. Erik Satie - Gymnopédie No. 1 (3:07). When nothing is loaded it reads Nastro. Drop music here or press L to open files. When a track fails, the error message takes its place until the next track starts. The line scrolls while music plays, freezes when you pause and returns to the start when you stop.

Seek bar

The horizontal bar under the display shows how far into the track you are. Click or drag it to jump. While you drag, only the thumb and the clock move, and the seek happens when you release the button. It does nothing when no track is loaded.

Transport row

From left to right:

• Previous, Play, Pause, Stop and Next. The Play button is highlighted while playing and the Pause button while paused. What each does is in Playback.
• Open. The same as File, Open files...: it adds the files you choose and plays the first.
• Volume, the slider with the speaker icon.
• BAL, the balance slider. It has a tick in the middle and snaps to the exact centre when you get close to it.

The volume and balance sliders are explained in Playback.

The four toggles

The bottom row has four buttons with a small light that is on when they are active:

The equalizer panel

A title bar (EQUALIZER, with Collapse and Close buttons), the buttons ON, AUTO, PRESETS and RESET, the response curve, the PRE slider and the ten band sliders. Everything is explained in The equalizer. Its Close button hides the panel, the same as the EQ button, and you can drag its title bar to move it, see Docking.

The playlist panel

From top to bottom:

• Title bar (PLAYLIST), with Collapse and Close buttons. Close hides the panel and keeps the playlists. Drag it to move the panel.
• Tabs, one per playlist, then the + button to add a playlist, and at the right the Filter box.
• The track list. One row per track: its number (a play glyph for the loaded track), the artist and title, and the length. Only the rows on screen are drawn, so very long playlists are as light as short ones. An empty playlist says Drop files or folders here, or use ADD.
• The footer. The buttons ADD, REMOVE, SELECT and SORT, each of which opens a menu, and at the right the number of tracks and their total time.
• The resize grip in the bottom right corner.

Everything you can do with them is in Playlists.

Shade mode

Each panel has a Collapse button in its title bar. A collapsed panel is reduced to a thin bar and the panels docked below it move up to close the gap. Click the button again to expand it. The View menu has Collapse player, Collapse equalizer and Collapse playlist, and Alt W collapses the player.

• The collapsed player keeps the essentials in one bar: a small clock, the track line (it does not scroll in this bar, it is cut with an ellipsis if it is too long), the five transport buttons, and Minimize, Collapse and Close.
• The collapsed equalizer shows only its title, with a small light at the left that is lit when the equalizer is on.
• The collapsed playlist shows only its title.

Hiding panels

The equalizer and the playlist can be hidden entirely: with the EQ and PL buttons of the player, with the check items Equalizer and Playlist in the View menu, with Alt G and Alt E, or with the Close button of the panel. The window shrinks to fit the panels that are left. Hiding a panel does not stop anything: the equalizer keeps working, and the playlist keeps playing. The player cannot be hidden. Which panels are shown, collapsed and where they are is remembered for the next start.

Moving and docking panels

All the panels live inside one window, and the player's title bar moves that window, so the whole group moves together. The equalizer and the playlist can also be moved around inside the window by dragging their own title bars. While you drag, a panel snaps magnetically: when one of its edges comes within a few pixels of another panel it jumps to touch it, leaving a small fixed gap, and it also snaps to line up its edges with the edges of the others. Drag it away from the others and it is free again. Docked panels follow when a panel above them is collapsed or the playlist is resized.

Resizing the playlist

Drag the grip in the bottom right corner of the playlist. The height snaps to a whole number of rows, with a minimum of 4 rows, and the width cannot go below the width of the player and the equalizer. Panels docked below or to the right of the playlist move to keep their place. The size is remembered. The player and the equalizer have a fixed size, which you change with Skin size.

Layouts

View, Layout arranges the three panels in one of four ways. Choosing a layout puts every panel in its place, shows all three and expands any collapsed one. You can then move things as you like.

The window

The Nastro window is transparent, so the panels appear to float on your desktop, with a margin around them for their shadow.

• On Linux with Wayland and on Windows, a click in the gap between two panels, or in the margin around them, goes through to the window behind. On Windows the thin shadow around each panel still takes the click. On X11 and macOS, the gaps are still part of Nastro's window and absorb the click.
• While a menu is open, the window grows downwards to make room for it. The extra space is transparent, and the window goes back to its size when the menu closes.

Found a mistake? Edit this page on GitHub or open an issue.