Clearly I am doing something wrong then, because it works nothing like that on my computer. For me, I save a preset, lets say on an album in album view, it saves just fine, I click on another album and my saved preset isn't there, then I click back on the original album and the preset is gone there too.
I do have two instances of MC, one on my laptop (my primary one), and one on my desktop (primarily for ripping and importing CD audio). The issues I have been describing have been on my laptop. My desktop, I just realized will save which columns are active and the column order but not the column width, they all go back to the default width when I switch to another album.
So on your desktop you save a custom preset, navigate about MC doing whatever, and the custom preset you saved previously still appears in the list of presets… right? Which you can then apply to other views and the column layout sticks, correct? If so, congratulations, sounds like it works on your desktop. As for column
widths reverting, that is driven by an MC setting. Go to
Options/Tree & View/List, and uncheck
Auto size columns. Resize the columns to what you want (again) and save the preset (again). You will have to select/apply the updated preset (again) to other views where you want it shown. After that, the custom columns AND widths should hold.
On your laptop though, you save a preset, and after navigating to other views, the preset just disappears from the preset list? If so, I am not sure what to tell you, Matt (an MC developer) would probably have to jump in here to figure that one out.
That said, you say you run two MC "instances" - does that mean the laptop and desktop share the same library? Or are they literally two completely independent installs with two different libraries? If they share a library, I am guessing the library is stored on your desktop, and maybe that's why the presets works there and not your laptop? I'm only speculating as I don't run multiple MC instances, but it could be that sharing a library is effectively a "client/server" and thus has the limitations discussed earlier in the thread.