Windows Media Player 12: How to permanently display the list pane

Hi Phil74,

Welcome to Microsoft Answers Forum.

Create a playlist:

1. Click Start, point to All Programs, and then click Windows Media Player.
2. If necessary, click Library.

You now see an expandable view of all the media items in your library.

If items appear in the Now Playing list, clear those items from the list to start fresh.

3. Click Now Playing List and then click Clear List.

The list is cleared, and you are ready to build a new playlist. In this example, you will build a playlist of songs from several albums.

4. To add an album to the playlist, in the Contents pane, click the plus sign next to All Music to expand the list, and then click the plus sign next to Album to expand the list of albums.

Windows Media Player expands the category and shows all the albums in your library.

5. In the Contents pane, select an album title in the list, and drag the title to the List pane under Now Playing List.

When you drag an album from the Contents pane, all the songs in that album are added to the playlist.

6. To add selected songs from an album, in the Contents pane, click the album.

In the Details pane, all the songs on the album are displayed.

7. In the Details pane, hold down the CTRL key, and then click the songs you want to add to the playlist.
8. Drag the selected songs to the List pane.

The selected songs are added to the playlist.

To Save your Playlist :

1. Click Now Playing List >> Click Save Playlist As.
2. In the Save As dialog box, type a file name for your playlist, and then click Save.
3. Your new playlist appears under My Playlists.
4. To listen to or watch your new playlist, expand My Playlists, and then double-click the playlist you just created.
5. Windows Media Player adds the songs from the playlist to the List pane and plays the songs, starting with the first song in the list.

Thanks & Regards,

Hope this helps. Let us know the results.

Vijay – Microsoft Support

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Hello guys!

I have the same problem. Creating or managing playlist has nothing to do with this. In earlier WMP versions, I used to have my WMP setup to start cold in the "Now Playing" mode, which has now also been changed to open in the Library. Why? At least, this should be optional.

As I see it, my library is the hard drive & I access it through the Windows Explorer. Drag & drop music, videos etc onto the WMP Now Playing list & double clicking in the list to fire them up. I still want the option of having "Now Playing" to show since it just speeds up switching between multiple files. To constantly hide the list seems very unintuitive to me. I do not have any use of the WMP library since for me it only complicates matters & slows the process of playing files quickly down. I'm not even going into the fact that the player & library seem to be two separate entities, making windows resizing etc necessary when trying to ceep a consistent look.

To start WMP in the Now Playing Tab you have to edit your WMP shortcuts, for us on Windows 7 64-bit it works like this:

Default -> "%ProgramFiles(x86)%\Windows Media Player\wmplayer.exe" /prefetch:1

Changed to -> "%ProgramFiles(x86)%\Windows Media Player\wmplayer.exe" /Task NowPlaying

That does the trick. Now, if we could also manage to actually keep the "Now Playing" list open when opening a new file, that would most certainly be a step forward.

It all boils down to this: I think most of us users basicly want any user interface elements (of any application for that matter) to stay the way we set it up until we ourselves decide to change it. As it stands now, WMP decides what parts of the UI it wants to hide & show for me & where. To illustrate a clear example of a UI inconsistency in WMP, look at the buttons to switch between the library & the player: while in the library, the button "Switch to Now Playing" is in the bottom right corner of the window while the button "Switch to Library" in the player is in the top right corner. If it's some type of modern humour, I sure laughed a little when I first tried to use it. Does a variable UI with "moving" buttons like this actually make sense to any usability testers out there?

Thank you for your answer Vijay but as h4rl3qu1n said: Play List has nothing to do with my question.

I'd like the "List Pane" to be always displayed, even if I open a new file or when the player switch from a video to another.

Thanks

_____!

Thanks for your answer freesky2 .

Got to find another player so :/