Help / Your library
How scanning works: first scan, rescan and watch folders
Vesari Stylus builds your library out of the folders you point it at. Here is what the first scan does, what a rescan does differently, and why most new music turns up on its own.
Adding a folder registers it
On the Tools tab, Add Folder ("Scan a music folder in place") opens a picker titled Select Music Folder. Pick the top folder of your collection. Two things then happen:
- The folder joins your list of library folders, and every later rescan starts from it.
- A background scan walks it from top to bottom, indexing the audio files in it and in every folder beneath.
You can keep listening while it runs. The card shows live progress and offers a Stop. Stopping is safe: a scan you stop skips the pass that drops missing files, because a half-finished walk cannot tell a deleted file from one it had not reached yet.
Add as many folders as you like; they all feed one library. See also Add your music (the first scan).
What the scan reads
For each file, the scan reads the tags saved inside it (title, artist, album, track and disc numbers, year), the audio properties (sample rate, bit depth, channels, length), and artwork, both embedded and a loose cover in the album folder. It also notices sidecar files next to your music: .cue sheets, indexed as the separate tracks they describe, and .nfo or .txt notes, which fill in album details your tags leave blank. Your files are read where they are; the scan never reorganises your folders.
What a rescan does differently
Rescan Library, also on the Tools tab, reads "Find new and changed files", and that is precisely the difference. It walks every registered folder and reconciles your library with what is on disk now:
- New files are indexed.
- Unchanged files are skipped. Each file's modified time and size are compared against what was recorded last time, so an unchanged file is not read again, which is why a rescan is far quicker than the first scan.
- Changed files are read again, so an edit made outside the app is picked up.
- Files that are gone are dropped from the library, but only when the walk of that folder finished cleanly. If a folder cannot be read, or comes back empty while the library still holds tracks for it, the entries stay put. A dropped connection must never look like a deletion.
- Folders that were offline and are reachable again are marked online, and their tracks play again. Offline tracks never leave your library, they simply cannot play until the folder is back.
One consequence: because unchanged files are skipped, a retag done with an outside tool that leaves both the modified time and the file size untouched is not noticed.
Watch folders: new music appears on its own
When the app starts, it begins watching the library folders registered at that point. Drop an album into one, or rip a CD into it, and it appears in the library a moment later with no rescan needed.
The watching is deliberately narrow:
- It waits about a second and a half after the last change, so copying in fifty files causes one small scan, not fifty.
- It rescans only the folder that changed.
- It reacts to audio files, the sidecar files above, and folders being added or removed.
- It ignores the app's own quarantine area, so tidying duplicates never re-imports them.
Two cases it does not cover. A folder you add part way through a session is not watched yet: the watch list is read once at start, so a folder added later joins it next time you open the app. And music on a network drive or NAS is not watched at all, because re-checking a share on a timer costs about as much as the rescan it saves. In both cases, press Rescan Library after you add something. Watching only runs while the app is open.
Add one folder per collection, not a parent and a child
A folder you add can be entirely separate, the same folder again, one that sits inside a folder you already added, or one that contains them. The last two are overlaps. Nothing warns you when you add one, so avoid them yourself.
An overlap means the same subtree gets indexed twice, and music indexed twice reads as copies of itself. Those copies get flagged as duplicates and hidden from your normal views. A rescan protects you from some of this: a nested folder collapses back to the outermost one, so D:\Music\Albums is skipped when D:\Music is registered, and the watcher does the same.
The habit that avoids it: register the top folder of each collection and nothing beneath. Add D:\Music, not D:\Music and D:\Music\Albums. And if the same music is reachable two ways, say a NAS mapped as Z: and also reached by its network name, register one route only, or the same files get indexed twice.
If duplicates have appeared, Library Health & finding duplicates shows how to review them and Why do I see two different "duplicate" numbers? explains the counts. If music you added is missing instead, work through I added music but the app does not see it.