Rating songs in iOS 10? Yes, with SmartPlaylist v10.1

The latest Music app no longer offers a way to see or modify the song rating (0-5), which is so important to many of us.

UPDATE: With SmartPlaylist v10.1 you can rate songs directly in SmartPlaylist and it syncs back to iTunes. (Like this you can also rate songs which are not playing at the moment)

iOS 10 Music app and iTunes syncing woes

It seems to get worse and worse ...

With the latest iTunes 12.5.3 not all lyrics (which now are marked as "custom lyrics") are synced to the iPhone. Many are, some are not ...

Some songs spontaneously got the lyrics "{{instrumental}}" ... ??? ...

Un-ticking a song used to delete it from the iPhone with the next sync (with the corresponding option set to true) -- but that does not happen any more, all songs seem to stay on the device ...

(I do not use Apple Music, nor iTunes Match)

SmartPlaylist with iOS 10

The good news: The current version of SmartPlaylist (v.9.4) works also with iOS 10. There are just a few minor problems which I'm working on to make an update in the next few weeks. Please report the bugs you find to Smartplaylist Support.

Please don't forget to allow SmartPlaylist to access your media library. You should find this setting in Apple's Settings app under SmartPlaylist. Without this permission SmartPlaylist cannot do anything for you.

The bad news: The Music app in iOS 10!
- You can no longer rate a song with stars
- You can no longer view the lyrics which you added to a song in iTunes

SmartPlaylist still shows you the star rating and the lyrics and you can still use them to search/filter, as before.
However, I have not yet found a way to access this new silly heart/love/like/dislike rating, which is now the only type of rating possible on the device.

Let's see what Apple next decides for us ...

Some more afterthoughts ...

Thought I could improve (change, anyway) a few things in SmartPlaylist for the next version 9.4:

Now there are 26 smart playlists (SmartPlaylist A-Z) at your disposition:

• Open list overview with all 26 SmartPlaylists to pick from ("≔")
• Jump back to the now playing SmartPlaylist ("▷")
• Scroll up/down to previous/next SmartPlaylist ("^" / "v")

All 26 smart playlists can be used in the list operations Add / Subtract / Intersect (Was called "Fusion" before - Please re-define your operations with the new pick-list)

There is now a play button in the Detail view (long press for play/pause still works). "Add./Rem." and "Same" now appear in the info list.

New in v9.3: Backup/Restore to/from iCloud

SmartPlaylist v9.3 will offer the following new commands:

• Save settings to iCloud
• Restore settings from iCloud
• Save search rules to iCloud (per list A, B, C, ...)
• Restore search rules from iCloud (per list A, B, C, ...)

The settings/rules are first stored locally on the device (that is why those new commands work so quickly) and then later synced to iCloud. So, even if you are not online or not logged in to iCloud you can backup/retore your settings/rules (on the current device only).

  

You can use this feature e.g. to

• Save the rules of a list before changing them, so that you can restore them later
• Save the settings before experimenting with new settings - you can always restore the previous settings if something goes wrong
• Move your settings/rules to another device

New in v9.3: Support for iPad split view

With the next release you can use SmartPlaylist side-by-side with other apps on iPad in split view (drag panel from the right and select app, e.g. SmartPlayList).

Notes:

• Older iPad models do not support split view
• Tested (only) on iPad Air 2

Some problems with Apple Music

Users have reported some problems when using Apple Music songs in SmartPlaylist:

• Songs are synced to the device even though they are not ticked (i.e. they should be excluded from syncing)
• Some songs appear as blank lines in the smart playlist and cannot be played / viewed

At the moment I have no remedy for those problems. Let's hope Apple fixes them soon.

Some new features in the next version

UPDATE: Released with v9.2

In the next few weeks I plan to deliver some new features for SmartPlaylist:

• Add a title / name / description for each smart playlist. It is stored together with the rules when you load the list. You can show or hide this in Menu > Settings, General Options.
• Search for media type: All (music and music videos), only music or only music videos. You can show or hide this rule in Menu > Settings, Show / hide rules
• Order the playlist by album artist
• Select only x titles per album artist