Preserving existing columns in Media Library?

It depends on the state of your current column settings.
When you install our plugin for the first time, the default columns should always available by default. So there should be no situation that there are no columns at all. When do you have this use case where no default columns are available?

When activating the plugin, the default columns were displaying without problem.
But I wanted to add only the Filesize column in Media Library and then saved.
After that, all other default columns disappeared.

So, I concluded that I have to add the default columns in the plugin before adding anything else and saving, right?

That could sound quite logic but it’s not evident when using the plugin for the first time because I thought that it will just “add” columns but it seems that it “recreates” the whole layout if I’m not wrong.

That should not be happening.
The only thing that could happen is that the original columns were not stored already by our plugin. This happens normally when you visit the media overview page. Maybe you did not visit the media overview page before going to our settings page. This is something that we changed in our upcoming release though, so I think you just got unlucky. You can, of course, re-add the columns again and it should not happen again after that.

That might be the case then but I really don’t know what is the media overview page…
I run this on test site so there is no damage, only trying to understand how to setup.
I deactivated and everything is back to normal but I still don’t know what this media overview page is so I’ll wait next release I think.

Thanks.

The media overview page is (our) synonym for the Media Library page when you see the table. You can still use our plugin and make everything as it was before. There is a ‘restore columns’ button on our settings page that will reset all the columns to the default ones. After that, adding a new one should work for sure

Sorry, I find all this a bit confusing and still don’t understand what you mean. There are no synonyms in WP and I don’t see any table when going to Media Library.

I simply visited the Media Library, after I added a new column with your plugin and all other columns disappeared and I ended up with a single column. That’s all and I don’t find that way very user friendly.

And the system messages I receive when clicking on some links are even more confusing. When I click on Restore Columns I get this ultra confusing warning:

Warning! The “Media” columns data will be deleted. This cannot be undone. “OK” to delete, “Cancel” to stop.

Which Media columns will be deleted? I only created a Filesize column…

1) The media library has 2 views-> 1 that shows all media items with thumbnails in a big list and one overview which has a table as an overview. You can switch between these two views by clicking the square buttons in the white bar on top of the page. Our plugin allows you to add columns for the table overview.

2) When you visit the table view in the Media Library and go to our settings page to manage the columns for the media table overview, it should not remove the default columns. I still figuring out why this happened on your environment, but I expect that you never visited the media table at all, which is the only use case in our plugin where I can imagine that it could happen.

3) The restore columns button stores the table overview to its default columns, the ones that the media library shows by default. In other words, our settings for the media library will be deleted and you will fall back to the WordPress defaults. In your case, the filesize column will be deleted and you will have back your default media library page.

OK, well noted, thanks.
I visited several times the Media Library table view before running the plugin but I’ll try at another site, no problem.

I understand the restore button function but you should review the message users get in there because it is misleading.

Should not be:
The “Media” columns data will be deleted.

but rather:
The “Media” columns data that has been added with this plugin will be deleted.

You are not deleting all columns but only those added!