Comments on: Trick Out Your iPhone with These Smart Playlists

By: Kypdurron5

Kypdurron5 — Sun, 04 Jan 2009 19:08:57 +0000

Good article, and I'm currently using it….only there's one hole in your playlist logic. The final playlist, the one you're going to sync…”iPhone Master” will pick any song/video in your library up to 7GB and ignore everything else. Why? Because you're matching “any” of the criteria, meaning anything in your entire library not on the “Death Row” playlist will sync including audiobooks, podcasts, etc….. “Any” criteria is an OR operand, and each statement is evaluated independently. I wish you could mix and match so that the first 3 were OR criteria and the last 1 was AND (not). The way around this is to make 2 playlists instead of this one- an “ANY” playlist named Top 3 Playlists that contains the first 3 criteria, and THEN make a Master iPod “ALL” playlist with the last one (not Death Row), and Playlist is Top 3 Playlists. Might I also suggest making all these playlists with something like “Sort- ” at the beginning, that way they won't get mixed in with the other iTunes playlists and won't risk being deleted if you forget which playlists are used in the chain. Otherwise, great article, thanks a lot! The funny thing is that this could all be avoided if Apple would just include a checkbox for “If full, sync random subset up to device capacity.” I would actually be happy with that.

By: Trejkaz

Trejkaz — Fri, 11 Jul 2008 11:14:05 +0000

I noticed that too. I ended up nuking it and configuring similar versions of the other three playlists, but mixing in a “Not Music” playlist with it so that I can configure that separately. Then I added the three useful playlists directly to the sync list.

The main upshot is that when you have a bit of time where you know you will have your hands free, you can go directly into Unrated Tracks and start filling in the gaps.

By: Travis Hulsey

Travis Hulsey — Mon, 28 Apr 2008 14:56:08 +0000

Just noticed that the last item in the last image almost cancels out everything that has gone before – by allowing it to match ‘any’ of the following, it really does just that, so when it finds something that is ‘NOT’ in the ‘Death Row’ playlist it gets to go inside and play with all the other stuff.

The only reason I discovered this was because I wanted a playlist with no videos, audiobooks, etc… and suddenly all of the above were showing up. Removing the ‘Not in ”Death Row” ‘ rule removed them.

Perhaps that playlist is unnecessary?

By: links for 2008-03-19 at Swerdloff Dot Com

links for 2008-03-19 at Swerdloff Dot Com — Wed, 19 Mar 2008 05:21:24 +0000

[...] Trick Out Your iPhone with These Smart Playlists I plan to do this to the music that I’ve got on my Mac Mini. (tags: Blogs howto LifeHacks tips iphone itunes playlists) [...]

By: danconley.net » Blog Archive » Smart Playlists are nifty

danconley.net » Blog Archive » Smart Playlists are nifty — Mon, 17 Mar 2008 15:17:06 +0000

[...] I’ve been trying to get back into the ‘Using nifty programs and such’ mode, which included reading Lifehacker again (I generally scroll through their GTD and productivity posts, but there are some gems). The most recent podcast linked to the Cranking Widgets Blog, which has a great piece on using smart playlists to fill your iPhone with new music each time you sync. [...]

By: Creativityist » lazy saturday links - 03.07.08 (special friday pm edition)

Creativityist » lazy saturday links - 03.07.08 (special friday pm edition) — Sat, 08 Mar 2008 03:16:16 +0000

[...] Trick Out Your iPhone with These Smart Playlists (The Cranking Widgets Blog) – some handy playlists for squeezing your most valued tunage into 8gb or (gasp) 4gb [...]

By: Rachel Murphy

Rachel Murphy — Tue, 04 Mar 2008 14:55:22 +0000

Brilliant! I seem to listen to the same stuff over and over again on my iPhone. I’m going to give this a go.

By: Jay Kelly

Jay Kelly — Sat, 01 Mar 2008 19:23:13 +0000

I use a ‘Music Only’ playlist that keeps comedy, podcasts, etc. out of the mix. Then I build all my smart playlists (like the ones you list) around that.

That keeps me from having to include ‘not audiobooks,’ etc in ever list.

By: Scott Elias

Scott Elias — Fri, 29 Feb 2008 17:57:35 +0000

I’ve got some similar lists, but I like the “meta” list that includes songs from any of your other lists. I’ll give these a try!!

By: brett

brett — Fri, 29 Feb 2008 15:31:53 +0000

@Kells

I assume you’re affiliated with FixTunes in some way? I’ve never used FixTunes, though I’m aware of what it is and does.

I think that since Apple added the ability to get album artwork into iTunes (and it does a pretty damn good job, to be honest), apps like FixTunes aren’t as useful as they once were. And I think most of the people who are as OCD about their music (like I am) would probably be pretty careful about keeping metadata and artwork up to date and in order