iOS 14.3 slows down search -- fixed in iOS 15

Installed iOS 14.3, now "Load list" takes ten times as long as before.

The problem is caused by some new bug in iOS:

[SDKPlayback] SYNC-WATCHDOG-1: Attempting to wake up the remote process

[SDKPlayback] SYNC-WATCHDOG-2: Tearing down connection

UPDATE: With iOS 15 the problem is gone.

Broken by iOS 13.4

UPDATE: Fixed with SmartPlaylist v13.1.3.

Dear SmartPlaylist users

iOS 13.4 breaks the mechanism for loading a new list (back to Problems continue with iOS 11.4 ...).

I will try to find a solution.

Problems continue with iOS 11.4

With iOS 11.3 and 11.4  some of the most basic operations do no longer work as before when (re)loading a list:

• after loading the playback queue iOS 11 now always starts playing the first song in the list - only with new tricks is it possible to tell iOS 11 to use the previously playing song for playback 
• it is no longer possible to restore the previous playback position of the song that was playing before

With the last update I tried to make the (re)loading seamless without interruption of the playback of the now playing song. But this meant that the new list was not actually loaded as playback queue, as could be verified in the Music app. Surprisingly, no one has complained about that ...

To ensure the correct loading of a SmartPlaylist with the mentioned problems in iOS 11 all I can offer at the moment is this (and even this took a lot of trial and error):

• Stop playback
• Set the previously playing song for playback at position 00:00 (but not play it, because this would be a terrible experience when the song was playing before)

Sometimes even this fails and iOS insists on playing the first song in the list!

SmartPlaylist and iOS 11.3

iOS 11.3 has fortunately corrected some of the iOS 11 problems described in previous posts.

But is has also introduced the following problems in the music player:

• The current playback rate can no longer be used and changed. This means SmartPlaylist can no longer slow down or speed up the playback (Playback options: Tempo +/- 0.2). This feature will therefore be removed in the next version of SmartPlaylist  until it works again. But I doubt this will ever come back, just like the "shuffle by album" feature has not come back (see here)
• The previous playback position is (sometimes) ignored when starting to play a song after having reloaded the list. Luckily there is a hack which should make this work again in the next version of SmartPlaylist. (UPDATE: Fixed in SmartPlaylist v11.1.2)

More iOS 11 problems

I experience three types of problems with SmartPlaylist in iOS 11 (since 11.2):

1. The app as a whole, like many other apps as well, is very often restarted after having used another app. Before you used to be back in SmartPlaylist where/how you had left it.
2. Loading titles and saving the playlist now takes much longer than before.
3. The user interface freezes up to 8 seconds (!) when you press on another song to play or even just pause/play a song. This has been reported by other developers in the Apple developer forum as well - but no fix from Apple yet ...

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 ...

Bug in iOS 8.4: "Shuffle: albums" behaves like "Shuffle: titles"

Unfortunately "Shuffle: albums" now behaves like "Shuffle: titles" in iOS 8.4.

UPDATE: Still not fixed in iOS 9.0...

Hopefully Apple will fix this bug soon. As the built-in Music player does not offer this shuffle option, I'm afraid they don't care much about this.

Also coming: Search by Date Added !!!

Seems like there now is a way to get a song's Date Added! Will offer this as a rule (Added x days/weeks/months/years ago).

Finally!

Dilemma

With the arrival of iOS 6 & iPhone 5 I can

1. either keep supporting iOS 4.1 and iPodTouch 2 (2nd generation) -- but without full support for iPhone 5
2. or abandon iPodTouch 2, only support iOS 4.3 or greater -- with full support for iPhone 5

(Apple gives me no other options)

I chose 2. Sorry, no more updates for the iPodTouch 2nd generation -- i.e. DON'T update to the next version  of SmartPlaylist (v6.0) if you have an iPodTouch 2 or a device still with iOS 4.1!

The program code of SmartPlaylist has no problem with iOS 4.1 / iPodTouch 2, it's only Apple's development and distribution tools which force me to cut off support for older devices.

The way it looks now I can only support the following hardware (with iOS 4.3 or higher):

• iPhone 3GS
• iPhone 4, iPhone 4S
• iPhone 5
• 3rd and 4th generation iPodTouch
• All iPads

(I do not own all these devices, so I can test only a few of them: iPhone 4, iPad 1, iPodTouch 4)

v5.3: More Release Dates

So far SmartPlaylist could only support Release Dates after 2001, because Apple's programming framework only provided NULL/nil/nada/nothing for older dates (there was no life before the iPod, was there?). Now I have found a second way to also extract older Release Dates.
As this takes a bit of time, searching or sorting by Release Date is a bit slow at first. SmartPlaylist puts the extracted values in a cash to speed up sorting and searching the next time. This cache is emptied with "Empty cache after sync" (see other posts).

General problems with lyrics, syncing and iTunes (Match)

UPDATE (iOS 8 / iTunes 12):
Today I purchased some songs on the iPhone and later added the lyrics in iTunes - but the lyrics did not show up on the iPhone after syncing back to it -- this is the known problem.
But then I simply deleted the songs on the iPhone and then synced again from iTunes - after the second sync the lyrics were on the iPhone. Maybe this is the way to solve this problem.
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With iCloud, iTunes Match and downloads directly to the iPhone it really get's complicated. You are no longer master of your own songs. When you add lyrics in iTunes on the mac and sync back to the iPhone, the lyrics don't show up! In other cases the old lyrics before the change show up!?

It is a problem with iOS 5. All this iCloud and Match stuff is even confusing Apple, it seems.

Deleting the song on the iPhone and then sync it back from the computer does not help.
What you have to do:

1. Copy the song from iTunes to your desktop (or any other folder) -- the lyrics are contained within this file
2. Delete the song in iTunes (with "move to trash")
3. Delete the song on the device (in the built-in music app, with a swipe gesture)
4. Sync from computer to device by cable
5. Add the song back to iTunes
6. Sync again

--- Now the song will display the lyrics both in the music app and in SmartPlaylist (in SmartPlaylist you must empty the cache with the new ⌘-command "Empty cache after sync" or do a complete restart)

Like that you will loose the Rating, Play Count and Skip Count and get a new Date Added. It is a pain.

Maybe it's better to download songs from Amazon, after all. Then you don't have those troubles.

Search in lyrics, read lyrics

Finally. I have found a way to search for songs by looking for search patterns in their lyrics!
Examples:
Lyrics contain "slavery AND cruel"
Lyrics like "* neighb*r *"

As usual, you can combine this with any other rule in SmartPlaylist.
And as usual, you can copy from the lyrics to paste into mails, messages or notes.

This works only for songs actually stored on the device (it doesn't work for songs in the cloud of iTunes Match). For certain protected songs (DRM) it might also not work.
The lyrics must be stored inside the song (you can do that in iTunes) --- SmartPlaylist will not look up lyrics for you in the internet.

iTunes Match

SmartPlaylist relies completely on the MediaLibrary present on the device and has not been adapted to iTunes Match, if this is possible at all. Other developers are also struggling with this.

Accessing a song up in the cloud (iTunes Match) seems to change something in the MediaLibrary. Unfortunately I cannot distinguish between these Match-changes and real library changes after synching. Maybe I just have to ignore changes and people have to restart SmartPlaylist after synching, like before. Alas, Apple does not make it easy.

Sorting of playlist very slow with iOS 4.3

The sorting of playlists with iOS 4.3.3 on an iPhone 3GS is now 5 times slower than on an iPod 2 with iOS 4.1! And there is nothing I can do about it in SmartPlaylist.

Save a SmartPlaylist to the iPod playlists?

Sorry, not possible: the MPMediaLibrary is read-only. That's why it is also not possible to modify the rating in SmartPlaylist.

Next version: v4.0 - only for iOS 4

The next version number of SmartPlaylist will jump from v2.8 to v4.0 to make clear that it is only for iOS 4 and NOT for iPhone OS 3.x - so don't upgrade to v4.0 unless you have updated your iPhone or iPod Touch to iOS 4 (to be released on 21. June 2010).

New feature: Yet more info about songs: skipCount, disc #, track #, releaseDate, albumArtist, isCompilation and comments.

For later versions it is planned to offer searching in comments (e.g. comments contain "wild!") and filtering by release date (e.g. release date before / in / after "1974").

New in version 2.7

To get consistent results as quickly as possible, the search methods had to be adapted. Unfortunately, it was not possible to satisfy all requirements at the same time, as there are some frustrating limitations in the iPhone OS.

Search results are now generally faster. Especially when you have just 1 rule like "Genre contains 'blue' OR 'jazz'".
Now SmartPlaylist always finds all duplicate titles (songs with the same name).

To achieve this, music videos had to be excluded. We hope this is not a problem to our users. (If it is, please write to support.smartplaylist@gmail.com)


Other improvements:
"Play this" is now instant, i.e. there is no more foolish skipping (the solution was so simple).
There is now an option to turn off the badge on the application icon (to display the number of songs in the current smart playlist).
Another new option can be used to turn off repeated playback.

"Year" and "Date added" as search criteria

Many users have asked to include "Year" and "Date added" as search rules.

Unfortunately, these information are not available on the iPhone/iPod Touch, they simply do not exist in the programming interface. There is no way to include them in SmartPlaylist  :-(

Workaround for "Year":  UPDATE: With v5.2 Year can be used to search and sort
Add the year in brackets to all your titles (e.g. "Hell Hound On My Trail [1937]"), then you can use it as a search rule on Title (e.g. Title contains "hell AND [1937]"). Or create a playlist in iTunes for every year ...

Workaround for "Date added": UPDATE: With v7.1 (iOS 7) you can search and sort by date added.
Create smart playlists in iTunes according to the date added, e.g. "Added last 7 days", "Added last 30 days", and so on, then you can use a search rule on Playlist containing e.g. "7".

The workarounds are a pain, of course, but there is nothing we can do about it at the moment. We have reported a feature request to Apple.