# Usage Tips

PinballY aims to be easy enough to use that you don't need a manual, so anything I have to write down here is kind of a failure on that score. My hope is that you'll be able to find everything yourself by exploring the UI. But it's worth mentioning a few things that might not jump out at you the first few times you use the program.

## Arranging windows

You can arrange all of the PinballY windows just like any other Windows program's windows. Just drag them where you want them and resize them as needed. Right-click in a window to hide it entirely, or to switch to full-screen mode or "borderless" mode (which hides all of the normal Windows caption and border controls).

## Main menu

When you're browsing games, you can access the Main Menu at any time by pressing the Start button (the "1" key by default, but you can of course change this in the options). The Main Menu has commands to launch the game in its pinball player program, view the game's full details, show the game's instruction cards and promotional flyers, give the game a "star" rating, add it to your favorites, and select various "filters".

## Right-click menus

Some of the more frequently accessed window layout and setup options are available as right-click menu options. Try right-clicking in each window to see the available commands.

## Game list filters

The Main Menu provides options for a whole bunch of filters, which let you select a subset of games to display in the wheel. This can make it easier to find games if you have a large collection. The filters let you select games by era, manufacturer, player system, star ratings, how long it's been since you last played them, how long it's been since you installed them, and by any category tags you create yourself.

## Operator menu

PinballY makes many of the basic game setup functions and global program options available through the "Operator Menu", which you can access by pressing the "Service Enter" button on your coin door service button panel, if you have one. If you don't, you can access this menu via the Exit menu, which you can reach by pressing the Exit/Cancel button. See Operator Menu for more details.

## Categories

The Operator Menu lets you set up categories, which are essentially "tags" that you can apply to each game. Edit a game's categories by going to the Operator Menu > Game Setup > Select Categories. You can add your own categories from there via the Edit Category Names command. You can assign any number of categories to each game. Once you've set up a category, it'll appear under the category filter menu, which you can reach from the Main Menu via the Filter by Category command.

If you're migrating from PinballX, you might have been using PinballX's "Lists" feature to create ad hoc groupings of games. PinballX handled "Lists" by grouping games into separate XML database files; each "List" was a separate XML file. PinballY recognizes that method of organizing the XML files and automatically translates each "List" entry into a Category. So you should find that your games are already tagged with your existing list names if you're using XML files you created with PinballX. If you're accustomed to using PinballX to "filter by list", you can use "filter by category" in PinballY to do the same thing. The Categories feature gives you some additional flexibility, too: you can assign any number of categories to a single game, and you can do it through the wheel UI, without the need to edit the XML files or switch to a separate editor program.

## Unconfigured table files

By default, the list of games shown in the "wheel" includes all table files that PinballY finds in the "tables" folders for your installed systems, even if they haven't been set up with titles, media, and other details yet. You'll be able to spot these easily because they'll be shown with default background images, and the raw filename will be used in place of a title.

This notion of including configured and unconfigured games side-by-side probably won't appeal to everyone's tastes. I like it because it makes it easy to see everything on my cab. I don't have to go hunting through my table folders to see what's there and what needs my attention. And giving it the needed attention is easy: just select Game Setup from the Operator Menu and you can enter details, download media, and capture videos, right from the keyboard menus. Setting up new games was a bit of a chore in the older systems; I find this new way to be a lot easier and faster. But if you think this is stupid, no problem. Open up the Options dialog; go to the Game Wheel page; check the box for "Hide unconfigured games".

You probably have some tables that you never intend to add to the game list, such as backup copies or test games. Don't worry - you can easily kick these out of the list. Just bring up the Operator Menu and select "Hide Game". That will relegate the game to a separate Hidden list that will never show up - unless you specifically ask to see the hidden games by selecting "Show Hidden Games" from the Operator Menu.

## Startup audio/video

You can make PinballY play a custom video and/or audio file each time the program starts up. See Startup Audio/Video for details.

## Admin mode

A lot of pin cab users are accustomed to running some or all of their software in "Administrator Mode". You really shouldn't do this, since it makes your system more vulnerable to damage by malware, or even by bugs in otherwise benign software, but some pin cab people do it anyway.

Most people who run everything in Admin Mode do it because someone told them they should. In most cases, that's bad advice that people on the forums hand out because they don't know what else to try, and you even find it repeated in a number of FAQs and setup guides. If that's the only reason you're using Admin Mode - because someone told you to - my advice would be to stop it. You should only use Admin Mode if you have a special situation that really requires it. Those special situations are increasingly rare, because they were mostly caused by bugs that have been getting fixed as time goes on. Most of the software in the pin cab ecosystem that formerly required Admin Mode has been fixed at this point, so even if you can articulate the exact reason you needed Admin Mode at some point in the past, you might want to check again, since that problem might have been fixed in a recent update.

If you're unfortunate enough to have a real need for Admin Mode for a particular program, you should still try to minimize Admin Mode usage by restricting it to the particular program or combination of programs that are causing problems. PinballY has some features can help, which you can read about in Admin Mode.

The big thing that you shouldn't do with PinballY is to run the main PinballY.exe program in Admin mode. You might be used to doing that with other front ends, but there's a better way with PinballY. Instead of running PinballY.exe in Admin Mode, run the separate PinballY Admin Mode.exe program. That program identifies itself to Windows as requiring Admin privileges, so you don't have to explicitly set the "Run as Admin" checkbox in the properties, and you don't have to use the "Run as Admin" command from the desktop. Just run it like a normal program and it'll automatically use Admin mode. (You'll still see the usual User Access Control [UAC] warning from Windows asking for your permission to do this.) When you use this approach, PinballY will be able to launch games that don't need Admin Mode in regular user mode, rather than being forced to launch everything in Admin Mode, which is what happens when you run the whole front end in Admin Mode. Only the minimal set of programs that you designate as actually needing Admin Mode will be launched in Admin Mode.