iPod Touch not live updating smart playlists

[riddle_me_ree]

I've had some trouble for a while now getting my live update to work with my iPod touch. I think that I've now narrowed this down to the fact that I have a smart playlist that is based on another smart playlist. I've proved this by setting up a simple playlist as follows:

Test_Playlist_1
- Playcount = 3

Test_Playlist_2
- Playlist is "Test_Playlist_1"

So I sync my iPod, eject and play one of the tracks from Test_Playlist_2. What I would expect to happen is the track be removed from the list; however, it isn't.

I have syncing of the entire library selected, so both playlists exist on the device, and the initial rule works fine (Test_Playlist_1 updates fine - even when the track is played from Test_Playlist_2).

Can anyone tell me why this is - is it a known issue. Is there any way to get around it?

[Jesse Hollington]

Hi and welcome to iLounge.

Smart Playlists are essentially broken on iOS devices in general and have been for the past several iOS versions. If you search our forums you can find several threads discussing this, with some explanations as to which specific criteria will work and which will not work.

[Code Monkey]

Originally Posted by jhollington

If you search our forums you can find several threads discussing this, with some explanations as to which specific criteria will work and which will not work.

Although if the OP wishes to save some time, there's not much point "doing homework" if they used smartlists for anything more complex than "Rating is >= 3 stars", and since they've noticed the problem, odds are they were doing things more complex than that. There are so few criteria that still work and so much busy work that goes into making anything remotely useful (e.g. manually changing tags in the comments field between each sync).

What I've done is just gone back to essentially the same system I used back on the iPod mini when smartlist live updating was broken for over a year: Create a bunch of large, pre-filtered mix lists and just shuffle those. They update each time I sync, and by keeping them sufficiently large and overlapping, the repeats and space taken up is acceptable.

FYI, the last time smartlist updating worked was iOS 3.0.X. They broke it with 3.1 and haven't done a thing to address it since then.

[decafjava]

Well Itunes actually comes with some simple playlists already set up. 90s music, classical, most recently played, most recently added, 25 most played and top rated. I experimented Looked at the rules of the lists there- and btw started reading through Codemonkey's guide before I figured out smartplaylists still are not fixed in 4.x ( I have an iphone 4 32 GB I got in January). Just as well I was getting a bit dizzy over the whole nested playlist thing.

Well I created 3 smartplaylists, and two regular ones. I created a list called Balkan music with 188 songs, Hip hop and Latin with 91 songs and two similar smartlists pointing to them with the same criteria-25 songs limited to least often played. They don't seem to be refreshing-maybe if I made them random??

I made one smart playlist that works well "Not played yet"-given I now have over 2100 songs (16 GB) with 40% CDs in my library I ripped and the rest split between CDs and itunes purchases I have not spent that much time listening. BTW is there a forum to introduce oneself??

[Code Monkey]

Originally Posted by decafjava

They don't seem to be refreshing-maybe if I made them random??

I think you're missing out on what the subject of this thread is, as well as the basics of smartlists.

Smartlists only refresh if it contains a rule that regularly changes. Typically, this is done using a rule like "Last played is not in the past 2 days" or something like that. Otherwise, they fill once and never change without you manually clearing their contents and letting them fill again.

The problem on iOS devices is most rules, including the "Last played..." don't update their state on the i-Device itself, rendering all but something really limited like "rating is 3 stars". Of course, even if you use rules that do live update on an i-Device, if you limit the results (such as your aforementioned random) in any way, the list stops live updating as well.

It's a truly borked situation.

[decafjava]

Thanks for the clarification Code Monkey. Back to the "drawing board" as it were.