Track Filtering

Why Track Filtering Matters

Track metadata from DJ software is often written for library management, not for audience display. Titles regularly include featured artist credits, remix version tags, catalog numbers, label watermarks, and promotional suffixes that make perfect sense inside a music library but look cluttered and unprofessional on a stream overlay.

Consider a raw title like: Somebody That I Used To Know (feat. Kimbra) [Extended Club Mix] [PROMO NP004]

That’s accurate metadata, but it’s overwhelming on screen, especially in a compact lower-third overlay where viewers have only a few seconds to read it. Track filtering gives you control over what actually appears so viewers see clean, readable information rather than raw, unformatted strings pulled directly from your files.

Common reasons to use filtering:

• Cleaner overlays. Long titles wrap awkwardly or get cut off in tight layouts. Trimming unnecessary text keeps things readable.
• Consistency. Different releases tag featured artists in different ways: feat., ft., Feat., featuring. Filtering normalizes these variations automatically.
• Brevity. Shorter titles are easier to absorb at a glance, especially in animated overlays that display the track for only a few seconds before transitioning.
• Privacy. Personal notes, internal codes, or file paths sometimes end up in track metadata. Filtering prevents these from appearing on stream.

Cleanup Modes

Track cleanup is found in Dashboard → Settings → Track Cleanup. The page heading calls it Playlist Cleanup, and it offers three modes: Off, Smart, and Custom. Changes take effect on the next track update. The current track displayed in the overlay is not retroactively updated.

Off

No filters are applied. Track titles are displayed exactly as received from your DJ software. Choose this mode if your library is already clean or you prefer to handle formatting upstream.

Smart

Smart mode applies a curated set of recommended filters automatically. Now Playing selects these filters based on what produces clean results for the majority of DJ libraries, so you do not need to configure anything. This is the recommended starting point for most users.

When Smart mode is active, the page shows which filters are included in the preset so you can see what is being applied.

Custom

Custom mode lets you build your own filter pipeline by selecting individual filters and arranging them in any order. Filters run in the order you set them, so earlier filters process the title before later ones see it.

To add a filter, click Add Filter and choose from the available options. You can drag filters to reorder them. To remove a filter, click the X on its card.

One of the available filter types is Custom Regex, which accepts a regular expression pattern. The matched portion is removed from the title. You can add multiple Custom Regex filters, each with its own pattern. Examples:

Rule (regex)	Example Input	Output
\[NP\d+\]	Track Name [NP004]	Track Name
\s*\(\d{4}\)	Track Name (2019)	Track Name
\s*-\s*\w+ Records	Track Name - Defected Records	Track Name

Note

Test your regex patterns against a few representative track titles before saving. A pattern that is too broad might accidentally remove content you want to keep.

Live Preview

The cleanup settings page includes a Preview panel on the right. Enter an artist name and track title in the input fields and the panel shows the cleaned result in real time as you adjust your mode and filters. Use this to verify your configuration before it goes live on stream.