The power of SmartPlaylist rules

The rules in SmartPlaylist are really flexible and powerful. They could also be called "search criteria", "search conditions" or "filter". They tell SmartPlaylist which titles you WANT, discarding all the rest. It will give you only those songs that meet ALL the rules.

Example 1:
Let's say we want all the blues songs we have --> we will specify the rule "Genre contains 'Blues'":

Knowing that the other genres we have are 'Rumba', 'Jazz' and 'Tango', we could just say "Genre contains 'bl'", or also "Genre contains 's'" - because only 'Blues' contains 'bl' or 's' (the search is case-insensitive). It's like saying "Genre = *bl*", where * could be anything.

Example 2:
Here we have 4 rules, so only the following songs are returned:

IF

1) artist contains 'alasd'

AND IF

2) genre contains 'folk' OR 'altern'

AND IF

3) the song is in a playlist containing 'new' (e.g. 'New stuff')

AND IF

4) the song has 0, 3, 4, or 5 stars

 Some remarks on rule 2:

• "contains 'altern'" is like "*altern*", so you get e.g. "Alternative"
• here "OR" was used to get folk and alternative songs together
• if you had used "folk AND altern", the result list would (most likely) have been empty, since no song has a genre containing both 'folk' and 'altern' at the same time (unless you have songs with genre e.g. 'Folk / Alternative')
• the logical operators " OR " and " AND " must always be written in capital letters
• you can also use "NOT " --> e.g. if you want all songs which are NOT blues
• you can also use " BUT NOT " which is logically the same as " AND NOT " --> example: "Artist contains 'john BUT NOT cash'" returns all songs from artists named "John", "Johnny", etc., but not those from "Johnny Cash"

Feature reminder: Enlarge cover artwork

You can tap on the cover artwork to enlarge it to the main screen (single tap) or to full screen (with a double tap):

The artwork is synced to the iPhone / iPod Touch with only 320x320 pixels. Artwork which is not quadratic is made to fit within 320x320 pixels, adding black bands (which SmartPlaylists cuts off) - so it can look blurry when enlarging it.

UPDATE: With iOS 5 the cover artwork is synced to the device in full size. With SmartPlaylist v5.4 you can also use the pinch gesture to enlarge the artwork.

Some reviews from around the world

Best music iphone app ever!  *****

I can't understand why this isn't the most popular iphone music app ever, its absolutely awesome. Its by far the best music application I've ever used. So many of the smart playlists that you used to have to create on the computer can now be made, changed and updated whenever you want, directly on your iphone or ito. This app has allowed me to access my music collection in so many great ways!

(from the App Store Australia)

This is now my defacto Player  *****

First thing first: This is my defacto playlist creator as well as player and here is why. After trying out multiple apps to create playlists on-the-go from within iPod Touch/iPhone over many months, I think this playlist leapfrogs ahead of all, if you want to spend less time in creating playlists and more time listening to music. If you love Smart Playlists in iTunes – as opposed to static ones, this perhaps is the ONLY app that comes close to what iTunes could do. Of course, no playlist app could replicate iTunes’ playlist creating prowess because the rich track information available in iTunes is not transferred to iPhone during the sync process.

(from the App Store Canada)

Feines Programm  *****

Der Beschreibung braucht man nichts hinzuzufügen. Ohne viel Aufwand lassen sich Spiellisten in unterschiedlichsten Varianten zusammen"basteln". Zudem liefert das Programm Daten und Infos ins iPhone, die sonst allenfalls auf dem Mac zur Verfügung stehen.

(from the App Store Germany)

And now a review from somebody who was rather lost:

Mauvais (Bad) *

Ne fonctionne pas du tout (Does not work at all)

(from the App Store France)

SmartPlaylist is and always has been stable

We have not received any crash reports or user complaints about SmartPlaylist - it is stable.

As one user has written:
"One thing that I must add here that this app has always been very stable in all versions compared to crashes that I encountered with many playlist apps."

New feature in v4.2: Refresh display of list

You can update the play count, last played and the rating (if it was changed in iPod) by tapping in the middle of the navigation bar at the top of the list.

Reminder: When you tapp the status bar right at the top, the list jumps to the top of the list (this is a standard behaviour of the iPhone OS, that has been there since the beginning).

New Feature in v4.1: Show all rules / Show only active rules

You can now show or hide inactive rules (empty rules that are not used in the search) by simply tapping on the middle of the toolbar at the bottom of the rules page, or by invoking the tools "Show all rules" / "Show only active rules".