Application Settings
Media Sort provides a built-in Settings dialog that lets you customize the appearance, behavior, language, and shortcut keys of the application.
To open the settings dialog, click the Open button under Settings in the left sidebar navigation panel.
General Settings
Section titled “General Settings”The General settings tab covers configuration options for directory behavior, updates, theme customisation, and operating system integrations.
Appearance
Section titled “Appearance”Media Sort includes pre-configured visual themes to customize the interface. Selecting a theme immediately updates the colors of all UI components:
- Auto (default): follows your operating system’s light/dark appearance preference and updates live when the system theme changes.
- Available options: Dark, Light, Dracula, Nord, Solarized (Light/Dark), Gruvbox (Light/Dark), Catppuccin (Latte/Frappe/Macchiato/Mocha), Tokyo Night, Kanagawa, Moonfly, Nightfly, Oxocarbon, Ferra, and more.
Reopen last opened folder on startup
Section titled “Reopen last opened folder on startup”- Behavior: When enabled, the application automatically re-opens the directory you were working on when you last closed the application. If disabled, Media Sort starts with your system Pictures directory.
Reopen last selected media on startup
Section titled “Reopen last selected media on startup”- Behavior: When enabled, the application automatically restores the last selected media item in the reopened folder on startup. If the last selected media is no longer present in the folder, the first media item will be selected instead. This option only takes effect if Reopen last opened folder on startup is also enabled.
Animated GIFs
Section titled “Animated GIFs”Play animated gifs
Section titled “Play animated gifs”- Behavior: Toggles whether GIF animations are active in the previewer and image grid panels. Disabling this displays a static first frame, which can optimize rendering performance on folder loads. A single toggle controls both the preview and grid behavior.
Pinned folders
Section titled “Pinned folders”Keep pinned folders per-session
Section titled “Keep pinned folders per-session”- Behavior: When enabled, pinned folders are treated as per-session state: this window neither adopts pinned folders from other running instances nor shares its own with them. Off by default, so pinned folders stay in sync across all running instances (see Configuration File for the
session_pinned_folderskey).
Updates
Section titled “Updates”Check for updates on startup
Section titled “Check for updates on startup”- Behavior: Automatically checks the GitHub repository releases upon launching the application. If a new version is discovered, a dialog prompts you to apply the update.
Install prerelease builds
Section titled “Install prerelease builds”- Behavior: Includes pre-release (beta/alpha) builds in the update checker. Enable this option if you want to test and participate in verifying experimental features.
Integration with Windows (Windows Only)
Section titled “Integration with Windows (Windows Only)”Explorer Context Menu
Section titled “Explorer Context Menu”- Behavior: Integrates a context menu item into Windows Explorer. When right-clicking any folder in Windows, you can choose “Open in Media Sort” to launch the program directly in that workspace.
Language
Section titled “Language”Language Selection
Section titled “Language Selection”- Behavior: Allows you to select the interface language from all supported localizations. By default, Media Sort auto-detects your operating system’s active language at launch and falls back to English if the system language is not supported.
Advanced Settings
Section titled “Advanced Settings”The Advanced tab covers options for advanced users that affect media decoding performance.
Disable hardware video decoding
Section titled “Disable hardware video decoding”- Behavior: By default, Media Sort uses hardware-accelerated video decoding (mpv’s
hwdec=auto-copymode) and renders video frames at their native resolution. If a video fails to decode or renders incorrectly, enable this option to force software decoding (hwdec=no); frames are then rendered at a capped resolution (960×540) to keep CPU decoding fast. The change takes effect immediately.
Keybindings
Section titled “Keybindings”The Key bindings tab lets you remap all keyboard shortcuts. See the Custom Keybindings page for details on how to use the GUI remapping editor and the Configuration File page for the TOML schema.
Undo & Redo
Section titled “Undo & Redo”Media Sort uses non-destructive file operations to support instant undo and redo of all sorting actions. Deleted files are moved to your system trash, not permanently removed. See the Undo & Redo page for a full explanation of how the history system works, including trash behavior and restoration limits.