Navigating Unify's graphical user interface
Unify's graphical user interface (GUI) window is divided into five main regions, as shown below:
The
Header displays information about the current patch, and contains several buttons for editing it. See
Tour of the Header section below.
The Body usually contains the layer stack for the current patch, but may also contain other views
The Footer usually doesn't appear at all, but it may contain certain auxiliary views, such as the MIDI Monitor view as shown in the picture above.
The
Icon Strip along the bottom edge of the
GUI are described in the next section.
The Sidebar contains Unify's patch browser.
The Body and Footer can each contain any of several views, which are described in detail on separate pages:
The Footer can also contain several views:
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The
Transport view allows setting BPM tempo and starting/stopping Unify's
transport (internal timing system)
The Header section comprises many distinct displays and buttons:
The large patch metadata area describes the currently-loaded patch. If there are more than two lines of (white) descriptive text, you will see a small green scroll-bar at the right-hand end. You can scroll down to see the rest of the description either by dragging the scroll-bar with your mouse, or using your mouse's scroll wheel (or ball, or touch surface, or whatever scroll mechanism your mouse or trackpad offers) while the mouse pointer is anywhere inside the metadata area.
The layer button just under the Unify logo on the left opens a menu of layer operations. The following screenshot shows how this menu looks when the first sub-menu is open:
The first three items on the layer operations menu allow you to add new layers, either empty ones, or prebuilt ones chosen from various sub-menus of layer presets.
The Show/Hide Midi layers item selects whether MIDI layers (if present) are shown full-size, or shrunk down to just their titles to make more space for other layers.
To the right of the patch metadata area you'll see the library image, which indicates pictorially, which Unify library the current patch is part of.
To the right of the library image are the prev/next buttons, for switching to the previous or next patch in the current patch list (shown in the patch browser in the sidebar, if open).
Down the right-hand side of the header are four buttons:
The browse button opens and closes the sidebar
The init button clears (initializes) the current patch, for when you want to start making a new one from scratch.
The revert button re-loads the current patch from the last saved version on disk, for cases where you have made several changes, but don't want to save them.
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Icons in the Icon Strip
The Icon Strip along the bottom edge of the GUI contains three groups of icons:
The icons on the left allows you to select what appears in the Footer. From left to right:
MIDI Monitor: shows MIDI activity coming into Unify from outside
Macro Knobs: shows “macro parameter” knobs which you can link to multiple parameters
Transport: shows Unify's Transport, which controls BPM timing
The active icon will turn green; click it again to close the Footer.
The icons on the right allow you to select what appears in the Body. From left to right:
List icon: (favorite plug-ins) opens Unify's plug-in subsets view
Plug icon: opens the plug-in scanning view
Lock icon: opens the Licensing view
Gear icon: opens the Settings view
The two rightmost icons both select Unify's layer-stack view
The one on the right selects “accordion view”, where all layers will be shown, but may be squashed vertically
The one on the left selects “scrolling view”, where all layers are shown at full height, and you may need to use the scroll-bar on the right (or your mouse's scroll wheel) to bring them into view.
NOTE if you use any of the four leftmost icons, you can simply click the icon again to return to the layer-stack view
The three icons in the middle are all different:
The
question mark icon brings up Unify's
Help menu, which allows you to turn
tooltips (helpful text hints which appear when you roll your mouse pointer over various parts of the
GUI) on or off, display the
About box, or open any of several Unify-related pages in your web browser.
The operations button (two concentric circles) pops up a small menu of operations affecting Unify as a whole, e.g. changing the default window size.
The exclamation mark icon is Unify's “MIDI Panic” button. Click this to immediately silence all plug-ins.