The Configuration Window

The configuration window is where most of the action happens, when it comes to customization, manual installs, and more. Here we will cover all of the different items, tabs, fields, and buttons in detail. Let's get started.

The Main Configuration Window

When you first install install PlayOnLinux/PlayOnMac and try to open the Configure window, it will be blank:

This is completely normal. It will start getting filled up after you install some software. After you install a few things, you will see more options:

(1) - Virtual Drive/Shortcut List

For each game or application that you install, they will get a virtual drive and a shortcut associated with that application. The icon next to the Virtual Drive's name is the architecture of the WINEPREFIX. It will be either 32 or 64, indicating whether it is 32-bit or 64-bit.

(2) - General tab

The general tab has a number of options available to customize the virtual drive or the actual shortcut for running the app. This will be covered more in a moment. This is the default tab that you will see when highlighting a virtual drive or a shortcut.

(3) - Wine tab

This tab gives you quite a few options for configuring Wine itself. Any configuration done here is specific to the virtual drive or virtual drive of the shortcut highlighted in the Virtual Drive List.

(4) - Install Components tabs

Install Components gives you access to a ton of dependencies need to run most applications through Wine. This includes .NET, DirectX, Microsoft Fonts, and much, much more. This list is covered in detail here.

(5) - Display tab

This is where you will be able to change to modify some of the registry entries for Wine's graphics support without actually going to the registry. Disable/Enable GLSL support, reported video memory size, etc..

(6) - Shortcut button

Clicking this button will search for .exe files in the selected virtual drive, and present you with a list of executables to create a shortcut from. You are also given an option to manually browse for an .exe.

(7) - Miscellaneous tab

Other features that do not fit into other categories. Running an .exe in the selected virtual drive, opening the POL Shell and virtual drive's directory, Mouse warp override options are found here.

(8) - Virtual Drive name

The name of the virtual drive.

(9) - Name of shortcut in virtual drive

The name of a shortcut contained within that virtual drive. You can have as many or as few as you would like. It is not uncommon to have multiple shortcuts, especially for manual installs or virtual drives with multiple apps installed.

(10) - New Virtual Drive button

This button opens a dialogue to create a new virtual drive. Useful for manual installs and testing. Please note that you will need to already have a POL-Build of Wine installed (Tools -> Manage Wine Versions) to use this function correctly.

(11) - Remove Virtual Drive button

Click to delete the highlighted virtual drive. Use this with caution, as everything that is in the virtual drive will be deleted.

(12) - Virtual Drive/Shortcut name field

Depending on what you have highlighted (either a shortcut or a virtual drive), this will show you the name of it and allow you to modify it. It is recommended not to alter the virtual drive name once created, though the shortcut name is fine to customize in most cases.

(13) - Wine Version selection

A dropdown menu containing a list of installed Wine versions available for use in this virtual drive. Whichever is listed initially is the Wine versions in use in the highlighted virtual drive. The "plus" buttons allows you to open the Manage Wine Versions dialogue directly from this tab.

(14) - Debug Flags

These are debug flags to be used when launching a POL-installed application in Debug Mode. Debug Mode is covered in more detail here:

How to Read Debug Logs Advanced Wine Topics

(15) - Virtual Drive selection

When a shortcut is highlighted, this will allow you to assign the shortcut to a virtual drive. Whatever is initially listed is the current home of that shortcut.

(16) - Arguments field

When a shortcut is highlighted, this allows you to append command-line arguments to the executable that the shortcut links to. Useful for adding commanding-line options to a game's executable to enable in-game options and things like that.