# Preferences - General

Auto save files on close, causes modified files to automatically be saved whenever they are closed. By default, Yate asks you whether you want to save the changes.

Automatically check for updates, when checked, will let you know when updates are available without you having to manually check.

Yate will allow the reading of data from saved system caches when accesing data on the web. This tends to speed up requests that are issued more than once. This is typically not an issue unless the data on the remote server has changed. You can disable this functionality by checking the Disable cached replies option.

You can automatically open databases when Yate starts by using the Open sticky databases on startup option. Databases are made sticky by holding down the Shift key while selecting them in the File>Open Recent menu. If the Option key is depressed when Yate starts this option will be ignored.

If you use the Finder alternative Path Finder, you can activate support via Support Path Finder. Support entails a Show in Path Finder menu item when appropriate.

Audio previews persist until they are finished, the Preview window is closed or the Preview function is selected while a Preview is playing. You can choose to have the preview file change if the selection is changed by selecting the Update Preview on selection changes option. When the option is enabled, a preview will switch to a new track if the selection is changed. This setting applies to changing the selection in the main window file list, the File Browser and track databases. More information can be found in Previewing Tracks and Other Files.

Various menus which have special key sequences display a How to Use this Menu... item. These items will pop up a small help window when selected. Other menus have How to use this Menu... items which provide standard help viewing for the current menu. You can choose to hide these menu items by enabling the Hide 'How to Use this Menu' items option.

You can elect to allow document windows to become Full Screen (where supported) or not. The Allow document windows to become Full Screen setting affects the behaviour of Action Editor windows and Database Viewer windows.

By default, Yate's online help is displayed in your Mac's default browser. Certain browsers do not always force newly opened pages to the forefront. If this annoys you, you can force the opening of online help in Safari which does force the opened pages to the front. Note that this setting only modifies the behaviour when opening embedded content.

Each time Yate is started it creates a backup of the application preferences. These backups are stored in the ~/Library/Application Support/Yate folder. A backup can be restored via the Yate menu's Import Preferences from Backup... item. The number of files retained is configurable to any value in the range of 10 through 1000. Note that while these automatic backups may help you, they are no substitute for periodically backing up your preferences via the Yate>Export Preferences... menu item.

You can configure how notifications are handled via the the Configure Notifications button.

Yate implements an algorithm to modify text to Title Case. You can configure the algorithm via the Configure Title Case button.

If your Mac is running OS 10.12 (Sierra) or greater, you can control how Yate's windows get combined into single tabbed windows. You can modify the tabbed window settings the Configure Window Tabbing button.

When renaming files certain replacements are hard coded. Currently only : and / are always replaced. These hard coded from patterns are always replaced with the possibly empty pattern specified in the Invalid character substitution. field. If for any reason you want a different to pattern for each of the hard coded values, create standard replacement items for each of the hard coded values. See Replacements for more information.

There is a mechanism to automatically sync preferences between instances of Yate running on different Macs. This is done by by using the preference import/export system. A file is designated to be the auto import/export preferences file. This file is kept in a location accessible to every copy of Yate. This can be a shared drive or a Dropbox folder. The feature is enabled by selecting the Auto import/export preferences fie option and then by choosing a file. See Syncing Preferences Between Multiple Copies of Yate for more information. You can also select what metadata gets synced via the Configure button.