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.

Similar Messages

Smart playlists not live updating on ipod touch (2nd gen)

Scenario:
I have a smartplaylist with live updating ticked in itunes. this playlists looks for tracks with a star rating between 4 and 5 stars and places them in the playlist. in itunes when i listen to new music with no rating and i give it a rating that meets this rule it works and places that said track in the playlist.
I then sync my ipod and the updated playlist with the new tracks that i have just rated goes on there. all good so far.
But when i rate a track on my ipod when i am away from my computer and i give it 4 or 5 stars it does not "live update" and place it on the said playlist. I have to wait untill i get home and synce with my itunes library for the newly rated tracks to go on my desired playlist.
isnt that the point of "live updating" playlists?
I should be able to rate a track and for it to go onto this playlist whilst i am "on the go"
This way of working always worked on my other ipods. just not with my touch.
any help or advice? is this a known software bug to do with the touch?
Thanks for reading, Comments and suggestions welcome.

Yes, I've had this problem several times. There seem to be certain criteria you can't use in a playlist and expect it to work on you iPod. I don't know if this will solve your problem but here's what I've figured out:
I have a 5G ipod classic. Any playlists that I've created using the criteria 'podcast is true/false' won't live update on the iPod. I've solved this by changing the criteria to 'genre contains podcast' and that works just fine.
The playlists that I've created using the 'playlist is' AND selecting one of (oh how to put this) iTunes library playlists that appear at the top of itunes (in my case "Music" and "TV Shows") (the ones with the icons), also do not live update on the ipod. For whatever reason, these default playlists seem to break live updating on the iPod, but not in iTunes. I got around it by using a whole list of genres to include/exclude to create my music playlist (there's probably a better way to do it). For my playlists that contain TV shows, I set all the TV shows I've ripped from my DVD's to have a genre of 'music and television' and use that to create a playlist. That also works.
You stated that you use the rating criteria to create your playlist, but might you also be using the default lists at the top too? of course, i'm not using an ipod touch so maybe this isn't helpful. I hope it is, because i know how crazy this was making me... good luck...

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.

How do you update smart playlists with live update turned off?

If I create a smart playlist in itunes and deselect live updating then how exactly does the smart playlist load up?
The reason I ask is that started setting up Smart Playlists for all of the artists on my computer and they're all set to live update which is consequently slowing down my itunes. I realize that I may not necessarily need that. My question is though...how exactly would I go about manually updating a smart playlist that has live updating turned off?

Well, the problem is that I have smart playlists for every artist in my library (which is literally hundreds). With every live update turned on, every time I edit tags for a new single or something it'll scan all the smart playlists for matches. The reason I'd like to have smart playlists instead of regular playlists is that I tend to add a lot of singles, and, especially in the hip hop genre, they tend to have a lot of guest appearances so I'd like the smart playlists to do tehir job.....I'd just prefer to not have it set to live update so I can avoid delays during tagging.
Apparently this is a known side efffect of having many smart playlists in your itunes. I realize my way of working with them might be slightly unconventional in comparison to how they are typically used but it's great for me. If I could leave live update on without any performance degregation then I would but it seems I have to pick.
I read somewhere that if you shut down itunes and restart that it'll refresh all your smart playlists (if live update is turned off).

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)

How to update Smart Playlists without Live Updating?

I have around 100 Smart Playlists and 25,000 songs in iTunes. Many of the Smart Playlists have interrelations and multiple nested rules.
iTunes pretty much grinds to a hault every time I do anything. It generally freezes for 10-40 seconds every time a "change" happens, including when a song finishes playing. If I drag and drop a 12 song album into iTunes, it will freeze for several minutes.
Assuming this was due to the Live Updating of the Smart Playlists, I unchecked the Live Updating from most of the playlists. This took the general performace of iTunes to an acceptable speed, but now these Smart Playlists NEVER update.
I'd like to find a solution to allow the playlists to update while iTunes runs at an acceptable speed.
Is there a way to have certain Smart Playlists update only when iTunes starts up?
Is there a file menu or button way to tell iTunes to update ALL Smart Playlists that are not Live Updating?
Thanks,
kent

I've also had a look at the available scripting commands but I can't find any that trigger smart playlist updating or that would have been a way to approach the problem.
tt2

Smart playlists with live updating not syncing right on my ipod touch??

does anyone else have this problem? the only way i can seem to make them sync properly on my ipod is to take off the live updating, but thats just creating another problem...
apple please fix this!

The book is in ibooks format. The extension is ".ibooks". I did delete it from itunes and download it again from the store a few times. I tried updating my ibooks app. I even sent it to the ipod through dropbox. I looked through all the settings I could find in itunes and ipod. So far no matter what I do, ibooks does not see this book.

Please help, simple question about Smart Playlists and Live Updating

PLEASE for some reason I've never gotten an answer on this.
I have a Smart Playlist called "Recently Played" with Live Updating. No matter how I set the parameters, the most recently played *song will ALWAYS appear on the bottom of the list when using my iPhone on the go.* I bolded that because I want you to be aware I'm not talking about on iTunes - I'm aware you can change how the list is viewed on iTunes.
When using your iPod/iPhone on the fly and Live Updating is enabled, is there any way to make the most recently played song appear at the very top???
Thanks so much

Haven't seen that problem before but try the following: in iTunes, right-click the playlist name and enable the option "Copy to Play Order." Then sync.
The normal use of "Copy to Play Order" when you have the playlist displayed in iTunes in some sort order, but you want it to display in the iPod in shuffled order (as it will actually play). Different problem than you are observing, but the same thing "might" help.... Let us know.

Podcast Smart Playlist and Live Updating - Fail

I have a simple smart playlist -
Media Kind is Podcast
Plays is 0
Live Updating ticked
Syncs to iphone no problem but after playing a podcast it is not removed from the list as happens in itunes and my ipod. Does anyone have any ideas ?
Thanks for any help

Hello Altor,
Have you had a chance to work through the solutions provided in this Apple support document? If not it would be a good place to start.
http://support.apple.com/kb/TS3044
B-rock

Smart playlists not working on my ipod touch?

my smart playlists (such as top 25 most played, recently added etc) are not working on my ipod touch 3rd gen 64gb. they are syncing the correct info on my other ipod nano, but on my ipod touch they are coming up with different songs. this is very annoying!!! please someone help me?
does anyone else have this problem?

same... please help!

Smart playlist not sorted correctly on ipod

I have a smart playlist in my iTunes 10.0, which contains all podcasts (with play count 0), sorted by release date.
Unfortunately, this playlist is NOT sorted correctly on my ipod (nano, 5th generation). After syncing with itunes, the ipod playlist has some apparently random order (not by release date, not even by name, artist or anything, it really seems random).
It's strange that, if I click on my ipod under "DEVICES" in itunes and click the playlist there, the correct order is shown (by release date). But again, on the ipod it is actually not sorted.
Message was edited by: powerbookuser99

I have a smart playlist for my podcast's and I normally sort them by the date added (oldest to newest) or by release date. No mater what I do now they only show up on my iPhone in date added order newest to oldest and I am unable to re-order them. I have a number of other playlists that work fine it is just this one smart playlist that is acting up. Any suggestions would be appreciated.

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 no longer update dynamically

I have several smart playlists that have a couple of rules... one based on rating and one based on whether or not it is present in a regular playlist. When I change the rating of a song so that it no longer meets the smart playlist's criteria, it remains in the list. It will not update until I sync with the PC. The other criteria, the "regular" playlist, isn't updated... and is present on the iPod as well in my iTunes library, so that's not the issue. I'm running the latest greatest version of iTunes and the iPod touch is a model PD721LL/A, version 8.2; it has over 15GB free, so space isn't a challenge either.
I suspect that there is some sequence of settings that will allow this to update dynamically, but I'm not sure what that would be or where to even attempt it.
Any suggestions would be greatly appreciated!
Thanks in advance,
Laura Tieri

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.

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.

Smart Playlists Not Syncing Correct CONTENT With iPhone 3G

Hi, I apologize about the length of this description, but I believe all or most of it may be relevant.
I have been having trouble synchronizing ANY of my smart playlists. I first noticed it in the playlists I had created which entailed "Most Recently Added" or "Most Recently Played" options. Now I realize that all of my smart playlists are no longer syncing their play order (some too big to determine if songs aren't making it into some of them). For instance, here is the criteria for a playlist I created just to demonstrate this problem (this is a brand new playlist just I made and synced with my iPhone):
Title: Recently Played 5
Criteria: Rating is in the range 3 stars and 5 starts
Checked Boxes-
(X)Limit to [5] items selected by most recently played
(X)Match Only Checked Songs
(X)Live Updating
Playlist as it appears in iTunes:
"Summer, Man" by Taking Back Sunday
"Sink Into Me" by Taking Back Sunday
"New Again" by Taking Back Sunday
"Error: Operator" by Taking Back Sunday
"Swing" by Taking Back Sunday
Playlist as it appears on my iPhone:
"Them Bones" by Alice In Chains
"Hands in the Sky (Big Shot)" by Straylight Run
"Lead Said (And A Paper Anchor)" by Atreyu
... etc
These playlist CLEARLY do not match and it drives me crazy because these types of playlists are what I generally listen to. I'm running iTunes 9.0.1.8 on Windows 7 OS (Dell Inspiron 6400), and OS 3.1.2 on an iPhone 3G. I just recently consolidated my library. I had a collection of over 7000 songs on my external hard drive backed up, and kept about 4000 of them on my computer stored in iTunes (i.e. only the 4000 songs were present in my iTunes library, originating from my laptop hard drive--NOT EXTERNAL). Upon switching to Windows 7, I wanted to have ALL my music on my laptop hard drive and thus copied and re-added all of the music (all 7000). I lost all my track info (ratings, plays, last played date, date added, etc) in this process until I opened the iTunes library file with iTunes(had backed up from before new OS installation) and, voila, all my playlists and track info was restored. I had to do some cleaning up of duplicate files, but nothing major.
I found this thread from Sept. 2008 which seemed to be in regards to the exact same problem under almost the exact same situation: http://discussions.apple.com/thread.jspa?messageID=8066846#8066846. Unfortunately, it's unanswered and archived. My iTunes did not crash, but I cleanly installed a new OS and had to start fresh.
I cannot for the life of me figure this issue out. I thought about restoring my device and syncing it again (which I will try again tomorrow to see if I can manage any progress), but I want to retain my app info and text messages so I plan on restoring from a backup. If anyone has any solutions or even suggestions, I'm open to try anything.
Thanks!

This looks like yet another example of the "smart playlists with live updates are broken" bug, which has been discussed at length in this forum. Two "fixes" are known to work, at least some of the time:
1) turn off live updates (yes, I know that defeats the purpose of a "recently played" list; so does the current situation, where you have apparently random tracks instead of the right content).
2) add a "playlist is Music" rule to the playlist (in addition to the ones you have now).
In my experience the "playlist is Music" fix also has the effect of turning off live updates (regardless of what the checkboxes say), but other people report no such problem. So it might work for you.

Smart playlists not live-updating on iPod

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