Live updating smart playlists not actually updating

Apparently, this was a common complaint back in 2007. Well, I am still having this problem.
iPhone 4, iOS 4.3.3
I have a static playlist filled with music called "MUSIC". I have a smart playlist "DYNAMIC" that references "MUSIC", which filters only songs rated 3-5, and not played in the past week. These playlists are just used as a source.
I then have a smart playlist for each genre (e.g. "RAP", "ROCK"), which reference "DYNAMIC", and simply filter the appropriate genre.
All of these smart playlists have "live updating" enabled. They all work as expected in iTunes. They all work as expected on an 5.5G iPod.
However, on the iPhone, when I completely play a song in "RAP", the song is not immediately removed. I expected this, since this is the same behavior on my 5.5G iPod. However, on the iPod, I would simply exit the playlist, then re-enter, and the playlist would be regenerated, removing the played song. This does not work on the iPhone. No matter what I do, the played song is still shown, despite the fact that the DYNAMIC smart playlist should remove the song.
I also tested by playing the song directly from DYNAMIC, and it still does not update. I created a new, basic smart playlist which does nothing but reference the static playlist "MUSIC" and filter out songs played in the past day. It still does not update.
I will note that none of my smart playlists reference a playlist that is not synced on the iPhone. I know that a smart playlist referencing a non-synced playlist can turn the smart playlists static. I doubled checked that this is not the case here.
I will also note that I verified the songs are being marked as played via iTunes.
Hjalp!

Annoyed,
You might find our little Discussion of this whole Smart Playlist issue:
http://discussions.apple.com/message.jspa?messageID=1514307#1514307
interesting.
In particular, Smart Playlists containing Podcasts have yet to have their functionality restored as I have been discussing with Level 2 Support:
http://discussions.apple.com/message.jspa?messageID=1683550
http://discussions.apple.com/thread.jspa?messageID=1536677#1536677
Kind regards,
Gopha.

Similar Messages

Live Updating smart playlists not updating properly

I have been using some live-updating playlists since I first got my iPod. They had been working fine until just last month. I have a Smart Playlist set to be Live Updating, that follows the rule of playcount is 0. It used to work properly; after playing any song on that list, leaving to the menu screen, and going back to the playlist, the song will disappear from the list.
For whatever reason, this playlist will now only update when I sync my iPod with iTunes. It used to update on the fly in the iPod itself, but no longer.
I have not downloaded the updates for iTunes or the iPod, so I don't see what could have caused this change.
And just now, I synced the iPod with iTunes and while the "Yet to be Played" playlist in iTunes shows only four songs, when I go to that same list on the actual iPod, I get 15 songs. I just don't get that at all.

Annoyed,
You might find our little Discussion of this whole Smart Playlist issue:
http://discussions.apple.com/message.jspa?messageID=1514307#1514307
interesting.
In particular, Smart Playlists containing Podcasts have yet to have their functionality restored as I have been discussing with Level 2 Support:
http://discussions.apple.com/message.jspa?messageID=1683550
http://discussions.apple.com/thread.jspa?messageID=1536677#1536677
Kind regards,
Gopha.

Do Auto-Updating Smart Playlists really work?

I followed the old thread about auto-updating smart playlists not updating automatically on the iPod. Apparently the 2006-1-10 update fixes it, but some smart playlists still aren't updating for me. The simple rating-based playlists work (they update), but more complex smart playlists such as this don't work:
Match All Following Rules:
Podcast is true
Playcount is 0
Time is less than 11:00
Kind contains audio
According to this support document: http://docs.info.apple.com/article.html?artnum=301910 smart playlists should update based on any criteria, but I'm not seeing that. Am I doing something wrong? What types of smart playlists have people gotten to work?
Thanks.

I've posted a better version of this thread in the "Using the iPod with color display" forum.
APPLE DISCUSSION ADMINS: Please delete this thread. Thanks!

Smart playlists not updating live after 3.1.1 upgrade

Same discussion started back in February about the 3.0 update (http://discussions.apple.com/message.jspa?messageID=9937797)
I thought for sure live updating would work properly with such an update from 3.0 -> 3.1.1, but no luck! I guess it takes more than 7 months to fix this.
As a refresher -- if you have a smart playlist that includes a "not played in the last xx days" condition, the old OS (2.2.1) would automatically remove a played song from the smart playlist on the iPod so your playlist is always valid. However, in 3.0 and 3.1.1, the iPod does not automatically recalculate the smart playlist and you have to sync with iTunes to get the song to be removed.

I have discovered a workaround for this issue. As with most workarounds, it's not too pretty, but it gets you there.
Knowing that live updating smart playlists that refer to other playlists won't properly update on the iPod, and taking advantage of the fact that iTunes 9 now allows for nested logic in smart playlists, we can make a complex nested logic smart playlist that live updates on the iPod as long as it doesn't refer to another playlist. In place of referring to another playlist, refer to some metadata instead. The cleanest metadata tag in my opinion is "Category." It is metadata that does not by default display in playlist view (you can enable it under the View menu), and is not visible when selecting Get Info on a track. You can use the excellent "Enter Category Text for Selected v1.1" script to enter Category tags, available at http://dougscripts.com/itunes/scripts/ss.php?sp=entercategorytext . Just enter the name of the playlist the track is contained in for the Category tag.
I'll give an example of how this works. Let's say you have a long playlist named "day" containing certain tracks you like to listen to when the sun is out. You want to create an intelligent and self-updating megamix playlist of tracks only from the "day" playlist that will play songs you haven't heard, as well as songs you've heard and have rated. As an added smartness, you want to hear the tracks you've rated higher more often than the tracks with a lower rating. You want this new "day mix" playlist to live update properly on your iPod touch.
First you'll need to tag all your "day" playlist songs. Download and install the "Enter Category Text for Selected v1.1" script mentioned above. Select all the songs in the "day" playlist, run the script, and enter "day" for the Category.
Now you can make the smart playlist. In iTunes 9, create a new Smart Playlist. Using the new nested logic in iTunes 9 smart playlists, select the following conditions:
) Match any of the following rules:
) all of the following rules:
) Category contains day
) Playcount is 0
) all of the following rules:
) Category contains day
) Rating is *
) Last Played is not in the last 6 months
) all of the following rules:
) Category contains day
) Rating is **
) Last Played is not in the last 5 months
) all of the following rules:
) Category contains day
) Rating is *
) Last Played is not in the last 4 months
) all of the following rules:
) Category contains day
) Rating is **
) Last Played is not in the last 3 months
) all of the following rules:
) Category contains day
) Rating is ***
) Last Played is not in the last 2 months
) Live updating
You should find that the new "day mix" smart playlist properly live updates on your iPod touch.
As with any workaround, there are troubling aspects. One is that you'll need to constantly update your metadata tag of choice (Category, in my example) each time you add new tracks to a source regular playlist on your iPod. I'm also unsure about overloading the metadata with a number of tags in the case where tracks co-exist on multiple playlists. Also be aware that smart playlists like this tend to hang the iPod for several minutes with the "Updating Library" screen, so be prepared to be patient.
I hope this is of use to someone. Please post any streamlining suggestions for this workaround.

Smart playlists not live-updating on iPod

I use smart playlists for listening to my UNPLAYED podcasts and video podcasts. When an episode is played through completion, it should be removed from the playlist. This doesn't work live while listening to the ipod. The smart playlist only seems to update after syncing with the computer. This live-updating smart playlist feature worked fine on my second-gen nano.

As I know for current moment few parameters do not work for live updateble smart playlist. Try to remove Podcast and Video Kind from your playlist(s).
It's possible replace Podcast parametr for "Genre is Podcast"(or set your podcasts genre), and Video Kind for Kind is contains video.
Please, tell me about your progress.

Live Updating Smart Playlist... but not live updating iPod?

I have several video files that I want to convert to iPod-compatible MP4. I have a program to do the conversion in a batch mode and then add the files to my iTunes library.
I also have a live-updating Smart Playlist (for all files where the Kind includes 'video' and the playcount is 0) to catch these files as they come in. I have this playlist as one of the ones set to be automatically updated on my iPod.
However, in my test runs, the video is properly converted and added to my iTunes library, and the Smart Playlist picks it up as well. However, it does not then send the file to my iPod (which is already in its dock) unless I first eject the iPod and reconnect it.
I'd really like to get this working, as I'm hoping to do this on a somewhat regular basis--have a selection of stuff queued up when I go to bed, and then have it waiting for me on my iPod when I wake up to go to the gym. It worked for me over the weekend, when I bought an episode of Knight Rider from the music store while the iPod was connected--it was downloaded and added to the playlist, and then copied to the iPod with no intervention from me. Unless my memory is faulty or something.

Welcome to the Discussions Steavis,
As far as I know, a sync to the iPod only occurs upon the first attachment, as long as your settings are set for such action.
The iPod will only sync after the initial attachment if you initiate the sync yourself. I believe it is in a pull-down menu, and/or CTRL-Click the iPod in the source list and select "Sync".
I am not sure if that is all correct, but in my experience, if I have connected my iPod, it syncs, then I say load in a CD to iTunes, I must re-sync the iPod before they transfer.
Not knowing what you are using for this automation to get the app that converts and adds, etc, can do, I might explore a script that runs at a specific time of day and initiates a sync to any iPod connected. That should be fairly easy to do.
Beavis2084

Please help! Ipod not dynamically updating smart playlists!

I have quite a complex system of smart playlists on my 4G color ipod but I can't get any of them to update dynamically away from the computer. I have a total of 6 and here are their preferences:
SPL 1:
match ALL
1) My rating is in the range 4-5 stars
2) Last played is not in the last 1 day
3) Last skipped is not in the last 1 day
4) Playcount is less than 5
limit to 100 by most recently added
SPL 2:
match ALL
1) My rating is in the range 0-3 stars
2) Last played is not in the last 1 day
3) Last skipped is not in the last 1 day
4) Playcount is less than 4
limit to 55 songs by most recently added
SPL 3:
match ALL
1) My rating is in the range 3-5 stars
2) Last played is not in the last 1 day
3) Last skipped is not in the last 1 day
4) Playcount is greater than 5
limit to 30 songs by random
SPL 4:
match ALL
1) Last played is not in the last 1 day
2, 3, 4) Playlist is not SPL 1, SPL 2, or SPL 3
limit to 15 songs by random
Unwanted:
match ANY
1) Time is greater than 15 minutes
2) Genre is Comedy
The active playlist that I use to listen to:
match ANY
1-4) Playlist is SPL 1, SPL 2, SPL 3, or SPL 4
5) Playlist is not Unwanted
So here's the problem. When I sync with my computer, the playlists work great, everything updates as expected and I get a pretty diverse playlist every time I sync which I want. The problem is that while I'm listening to my music on the ipod away from the computer, my playlists don't dynamically update. After I listen to a song, the song's supposed to remove itself from the playlist which doesn't happen, as well as when I skip songs. Even when I rate songs that aren't rated they don't appear in any playlist. This is really frustrating and I can't find a solution anywhere and yes, I do have Live Updating selected. I also have "Match only checked items" selected on all playlists as well. If anyone has any ideas for how to fix this, I would love to know. Thanks!

I was searching this forum and found someone who says that 4th gen ipods have problems live updating smart playlists if the criteria "last skipped" is on the playlist. I took this off of all of my playlists but they still don't work. Then I tried making a playlist that is just "rating is equal to 5 stars" and it WORKS!!! But that doesn't help me out much for my other playlists so maybe it's some other criteria that's causing the problem. Any ideas?

Smart playlists not updating on iPod Touch

Smart playlists based on "Play Count" or "Last Played" don't seem to work on my iPod Touch. I've got a smart playlist setup to list the tracks of an audiobook that have a play count of 0. On my iPod Classic, I could listen to this playlist and when a track finished, it would be removed from the playlist, making it easy to get back to where I was on the audiobook. On my iPod Touch, the smart playlist doesn't update until I sync with iTunes.
Anybody else having this problem?
Scott

I have a smart playlist of podcasts syced to my iPod Touch that has worked with iOS 3 and works with iOS 4, using the settings described here: http://bit.ly/c9GoOF . The key is to check "Live updating". Once the podcast finishes playing it drops off the playlist as expected.
I had the "bright" idea of also including a playlist identical to the first but with "Live updating" not checked (see http://bit.ly/922a2L ). I did this so that I had a playlist containing the already-played podcasts in case I wanted to go back to listen to them again.
The trouble is that this playlist doesn;t sync properly with iTunes. The only fix I found was to sync twice: Sync once, right-click, edit the Smart playlist, make no changes and press OK, and sync a second time.
Has anybody seen this behavior?

Manually and quickly updating smart playlists with 'Live Updating' off?

Hi,
I have a quite large music library (13,000 songs) and use a multitude of nested smart playlists that change often because I don't want to listen to the same song every day and I want to listen to good songs more often than bad songs. I'm also splitting up by genre, because not all my friends appreciate all of my musical tastes, and I myself am not always in the mood for every genre.
The consequence of this is that from time to time, iTunes stutters when playing a new song, presumably because it's updating all the smart playlists when the previous song ended.
Now, I had hoped that turning 'Live Updating' off would cause iTunes to update the smart playlists at startup instead of updating continuously. However, it turns out that though the performance improved dramatically, turning off 'Live Updating' caused the smart playlists to never update. Obviously I don't want that, since that means all my smart playlists are static.
Is there a way to have both good performance and easy updating of the playlists? There are a bit too many playlists to manually update very day by forcing iTunes to update the playlist.
An 'Update all smart playlists now' button or a 'Update all smart playlists at startup' feature would be nice...
Any hints, tips, help, suggestions?
Thank you so much.
Greetings,
Tijl Kindt
Athlon64 3800+ 2GB RAM Windows XP iPod Nano 4GB Black

Using the SDK, you (well, I) would do something like this:
1. Get a list of all the playlists in the iTunes Library.
2. For each playlist, test if playlist is a Smart playlist (Playlist->Smart() returns a boolean)
2a. If it is a smart playlist, select it by setting a property value for the BrowserWindow object (basically BrowserWindow->SelectedPlaylist(playlist object)) (for example perl code, see http://groups.google.com/group/comp.lang.perl.misc/browse_thread/thread/1248563d 743795d8/be1a88fc6eeab0e4?lnk=gst&q=itunesperlselectedplaylist&rnum=1#be1a88fc6eeab0e4)
2b. Using keystrokes (Alt-F,G), select "File..Get Info". Then keystroke Alt-U to toggle live updating, then Enter to click OK.
2c. Repeat above, which should toggle live updating off again. (unfortunately there is no way to be sure whether the starting state was off or on -- I'm assuming it will always be off)

Smart Playlists no longer updated with iOS 4.3 on iPhone 4

I've run into an issue with the latest iOS 4.3 update: my smart playlists are no longer dynamically being updated on my iPhone 4.
All of my main playlists are smart: they exclude songs that I've played in the past week. Earlier today when I'd play a song and it went to the next one, it'd immediately remove the song from the playlist (so I was always on track 1 of XXX). With 4.3, this is no longer happening and the smart playlist only dynamically updates when I sync my phone with my computer. This is annoying because it means that I can end up hearing the same song again if I switch playlists.
Anyone else run into this? Any fixes? I tried rebooting my phone to no avail.

My results differ from yours.
With iOS 4.0x, 4.1 and 4.2x my smart playlists with live updating were broken. It would start with track 1 of 5, then 2 of 4, then 3 of 3, 4 of 2, then would generally crash the iPod app. If I left the playlist and re-entered it would have removed the entries already played, but I would find that some of the entries that should have played had actually been skipped in m playlist.
With iOS 4.3, my playlists are properly working for me again. Now they play 1 of 5, 2 of 5, 3 of 5, ... If I return to the playlist while it is playing, I see that the entries that have already played are removed, and if I leave the playlist to return later, it starts over a 1 of 2, 2 of 2...
I have posted another thread of how I have my playlists defined, so perhaps that would help you. I do recall that there were some conditions that used to cause problems if used in a smart playlist.

IPod no longer updates smart playlists after upgrade to 1.3

After upgrading my 5th Gen 30GB iPod to 1.3 I noticed immediately that the smart playlists on my iPod aren't updating any longer. Until 3 days ago my iPod had firmware version 1.2.1 and all smart playlists worked as expected.
I have many smart playlists that I have been happily using everyday for the past 2 years to play only new podcasts, shuffle my favorite tunes based on when they have been played last, and move songs in and out of My Top rated tunes based on their ratings. These no longer work on my iPod, but when I sync with iTunes they update fine. I didn't make any changes to my smart playlists before or immediately after upgrading, at least until I noticed the problem.
For the last couple of days since upgrading I have tried deleting all my smart playlists and recreating them, that didn't help. I have also tried restoring my iPod, which also didn't help. I have also tried creating a very basic smart playlist i.e.
Match all of the following rules - checked
Rating is ***
Live updating - checked
Sync'd that to my iPod and started playing a tune and changed it's rating to 5 stars. I then entered a static playlist, played a song from that and when it was done entered the new 5 star rating smart playlist and it wasn't updated.
I'm don't know what else to try, I've repeated the same test as above on my wife's 2nd Gen nano and it worked as expected. Has anyone else noticed smart playlists failing to update since the upgrade? I have searched here and on google, but only found reference to much older firmwares.

I'm having the same problem, once I've listened to a song in my 0 plays list, go out to a new menu, then back in, all the songs that have been played are still there, when a few weeks ago they were taken off and only unplayed songs were still there. Now if I switch to another playlist and back, I have to scroll all the way back to the point I was when I changed which didn't happen earlier.

3G ipod with non-updating "smart" playlists

It appears that apple managed to disable one of the most widely used features of the ipod with an update last year. Lots of folks have reported that the January firmware update fixed it... but it doesn't contain any new software for 3G (touchwheel) ipods.
Anyone have advice on how to get smart playlists to work on a 3G ipod?

I was searching this forum and found someone who says that 4th gen ipods have problems live updating smart playlists if the criteria "last skipped" is on the playlist. I took this off of all of my playlists but they still don't work. Then I tried making a playlist that is just "rating is equal to 5 stars" and it WORKS!!! But that doesn't help me out much for my other playlists so maybe it's some other criteria that's causing the problem. Any ideas?

I keep trying to update my software and restarting my computer but its not actually updating

I keep checking my computer for updates, I click install and restart and let it do it's thing, sign back in, and nothings updated. Why is it not actually updating?

Apple’s having trouble with the iTunes Store servers right now. Wait for them to resolve the issue.
(123935)

HT1296 My contacts are synching with Outlook 2007. The synch appears to complete but does not actually update the contact data.

I am having trouble with synching contacts between Outlook 2007 and iPhone5s via iTunes. The synch appears to work but data is not actually updating in either place.

The information I received gave me the courage to proceed with download to allow my handheld to sync with my new Outlook 2007 running on my laptop. It worked and I still seem to be able to sync with my Outlook 2002 version on my desktop system.
Next problem is that I have some reurring appointments on my calendar that will NOT delete. I have tried all methods I can find and nothing works. Even if I get to the point where it asks if I want to open "this occurrence or open the series" (then save and delete), the darned things seem to be lurking in the future. I have tried changing the end date or the recurrence schedule and it acts like I have entered them day by day and I can't successfully change the entire series. Any ideas?
Thanks so much for the help with the previous issue. You took a worry off my shoulders.
L
Post relates to: Tungsten E2

Smart playlist not showing all playlists

Since I updated to iTunes 10.4, I have notice that many of my smart playlists are corrupted. I am using smart playlist to group ordinary playlists. But today, while I was trying to edit one, I found that all my big smart playlist that contain more than roughly 5 playlist are showing almost all the conditional playlist as empty (a big horizontal bar).
If I go to manually re-select that one that are empty, I can't find them in the combo box that pop-ups, but I can see the playlist in the left side bar of the main window of iTunes.
In the picture below, you can see the _Jazz playlist. That one is OK, but what follows is a mess. First weird thing is that the first 3 playlist shown in the list are not within their respective folder. I have made red links in the picture to point where they come from in the main window list. After that, I should found in the pop-up window the entirity of the Alternative Pop/Rock folder, but I only see one playlist. Then after that, the list display the folders / playlist as it should.
Anybody know why are the smart playlist not allowing me to select my playlists anymore? I didn't have this problem a month ago.

Make sure that the Album column is showing for the playlist, and then click the Album header to sort by the album name.
If you just want to play specific albums, you will probably find it easier to turn on the Browser (View menu -> Show Browser). Then you can select an individual album and play all it's tracks, or select an artist and see (and optionally play) all album by that artist.
Hope this helps.

Live updating smart playlists not actually updating

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