SmartPlaylist v13 dark mode

Soon SmartPlaylist v13 for iOS 13(.1) will be ready. Here is how it will look in dark mode:

Search criteria and rules (active rules are marked in purple):



Note here:

• The music browser/navigator Genre>Composer>Artist>Title ... (remember: navigation levels can be configured) is now opened by tapping the text/row and no longer with "(i)".
• Rating is now a "normal" numeric field, so you can enter e.g. "<3", "=2-4", "=4,3,0", ">2".

The result list (songs with 5 stars are marked in purple, according to the quick search):




The detail view:




The settings page:

Have to remove cover artwork from App Store screenshots, again

This year is SmartPlaylist's tenth year in the App Store!

If you search for "SmartPlaylist" in the App Store, will SmartPlaylist appear on top of the list? No, it is buried under tons of other better selling apps with completely different names.

And now, just like four years ago, they ask me to remove cover artwork from my App Store screenshots, for copyright reasons. Pfff ...

See some screenshots on this blog.

iOS 11: Problems with play count / last played, rating not syncing

Some users observe that when they have played a song in SmartPlaylist the play count / last played date are not updated. Some also say that the rating they do in SmartPlaylist is not synced to iTunes.

In all these cases it is iOS 11 which causes those problems. It is the Music app in the background which sets (or should set ...) the play count and last played date. But sometimes this does just not happen. SmartPlaylist can only read the values from the Music app. Also, if the rating does not sync to iTunes, it is a iOS 11 problem, since SmartPlaylist has nothing to do with the syncing process.

Personally, I had the play count and last played date problems only at the very beginning of iOS 11. After a while it got okay again, but I don't know when/why exactly. Make sure you update to the latest version of iOS 11.

Small update (v10.2)

This update of SmartPlaylist lets you easily rate the app itself after you use "Rate this title ..." in the detail view:

This is an Apple component (SKStoreReviewController). I hope it will not annoy you but rather make you give a high rating ... (thanks!)

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)

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 ...

SmartPlaylist 7.3

Additional features in "Search" (quick search):

• "❲Filter❳": Apply the quick search to the current list. Only the matching titles remain in the list. The results are loaded into the playback queue of the Music player (playback is very briefly interrupted).
• "Mark": The matching titles are marked in yellow. The list and the playback queue remain the same, the playback is not interrupted.
• "Search next ⇣": Scrolls to the next matching title. Back in the list you can jump to the next directly using "Next".
• "Reset": Back to the original, unfiltered list (also removes highlights)

(Here shown without the keyboard, which usually is always displayed)

Additional quick search criteria:

• Quick search by play count: Add for example „>10x“ (= played more than 10 times).
• Quick search by last played: Use for example „<10d“ (= played less than 10 days ago). „d“ = days, „w“ = weeks, „m“ = months, „y“ = years. [1]
• Quick search by rating: Instead of minimum number of *, use for example „=4*“ („***“ is the same as „>2*“).

Example:

1. Load list "A" without any search rules. Now you have all titles in the list.
2. Filter "A" with quick search "class". Now you only see your Classical titles (depends on your titles, of course)
3. Filter "❲A❳" with "bach". Now you only have Classical titles by Bach. You could use "C:bach" to only search by Composer, instead of searching all tags (artist, title, etc.)
4. Enter quick search "****" and tap "Mark". Now all Classical titles by Bach with 4 stars or more are marked in yellow.
5. "Search next ⇣  for "sarab" will scroll to the next "Sarabande" in your list (highlighted in orange). Titles with 4 or 5 stars are still marked in yellow. Now you can use "Next" to jump to the next and so on.

[1] Auf Deutsch: „T“ = Tage, „W“ = Wochen, „M“ = Monaten, „J“ = Jahre.

      En français: „j“ = jours, „s“ = semaines, „m“ = mois, „a“ = ans.

New feature: Quick Search in list

The next version of SmartPlaylist (v7.1) will feature a quick search in the list view similar to the one in iTunes:

SmartPlaylist searches the following text fields: genre, composer, grouping, artist album-artist, album-name, title and comments.
It also uses the given amount of "*" to filter by minimum rating.
In the above example the original list W was filtered with "alasd ***", leaving 44 songs (out of the complete list) with at least 3 stars and with "alasd" in one of the text fields.

Another example: "boar key" will find songs with "Keyboard" in the title or album-name, etc.

In SmartPlaylist's help (Menu > Help) you can learn about some additional features:
If only 1 specific text field should be used for the search, prefix "G:" (genre), „C:“ (composer), „GR:“ (grouping), „A:“ (artist), "AA:“ (album-artist), "AT:" (album-title), "T:" (title) or „CM:" (comments).
Example: "G:jaz ***" gets all items with a rating of at least 3, whose genre contains "jaz".


By the way: You can now load all your songs with "Load" without entering any rules (before there was a message "Please enter search rules").

v5.4: More concise list-view

As you can see, the list-view now shows only the most important infos at a glance:
Artwork, title, artist and composer (in []). On the iPad you also get the album's name.

Plus: 3 graphical playback indicators on the left for each song.

The 1. indicator on top shows the rating (0-5):
"-" no rating

"▮"  ★····

"▮▮"  ★★···

"▮▮▮"  ★★★··

"▮▮▮▮"  ★★★★·

"▮▮▮▮▮"  ★★★★★

The 2. indicator in the middle shows the play count as graphical bars:
"-" never played
"▮" played 1-3 times
"▮▮" played 4-6 times
"▮▮▮" played 7-12 times
"▮▮▮▮" played 13-24 times
"▮▮▮▮▮" played more than 24 times

The bars at the bottom (3.) show how long ago the song was last played:

"-" never played

"▮" last played 1-6 days ago ("some days ago")

"▮▮" last played 7-30 days ago ("some weeks ago")

"▮▮▮" last played 31-180 days ago ("some months ago")

"▮▮▮▮" last played 181-365 days ago ("more than half a year ago")

"▮▮▮▮▮" last played more than 365 days ago ("more than a year ago")

Hope you like it.

Remember: Some handy hidden functions

If you have studied this blog and read all release notes, then you should already be familiar with these tricks:

1. In all list views (in all apps, by the way): Tap on the status bar at the very top of the screen (e.g. on the time) to scroll to the top of the list.
2. On the main rules screen of SmartPlaylist: Tap on "X: N rules" (e.g. "A: 3 rules") at the very bottom to show / hide inactive rules (same as "Show only active rules" / "Show all rules" in the tools menu "⌘")
3. In SmartPlaylist's result list: Tap on "SmartPlaylist X: N" (e.g. "SmartPlaylist B: 39") at the top of the list to refresh the display of play count and last played (or the rating, after having changed it in the built-in music app) -- in most cases this happens automatically, but with this trick you can enforce screen refresh.
4. On the "Now Playing" screen: Tap on the time already played on the left or on the time remaining on the right of the playback time slider to pause / play the current song.

So now you know.

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).