Unable to edit smart playlists.

I have some smart playlists defined. However, when I try to edit them the option is not available. Any ideas why?

Well...you created them, but did you create them as Smart Playlists with rules or did you simply drag tracks into a playlist? I know of no changes in the application, and I still have both Smart and regular playlists. I am able to "Edit Smart Playlist" and change rules on them. (I am still running version 7, but, again, I've heard nothing about this changing.) Is it possible that your memory is faulty and you didn't actually create them as Smart lists?

Similar Messages

After updating all softwere I am unable to update smart playlist?

I have updated both my itunes and ipod touch to the newest versions. After doing this i am unable to sync my smart playlist and one application that I played for will not work.
ex: my recently played playlist will not update,the songs are added but they go on a random order somewhere were in the middle of the playlist. The beginning of the playlist has not changed regardless of what songs i play or how many times i have updated the ipod, it seems as if it is locked.
What i have tried doing: restarting computer, restarting ipod, restoring ipod, creating new smart playlist, when ipod is attached clicking music in the ipods tab menu and selected only the smart playlist.
Please help!

For getting podcasts to sync correctly:
http://discussions.apple.com/message.jspa?messageID=10237036#10237036
For getting smart playlists arranged by album or artist to sync correctly:
http://discussions.apple.com/message.jspa?messageID=10234242#10234242
And for smart playlists that are top 25 type playlists (although I'm not sure why there's a difference, this stuff is all really messed up) try turning off live updating in your smart playlist settings. And post here if that prevents your playlist from updating when play counts change, I don't use that list and I'm curious.
And also complain here:
http://www.apple.com/feedback

Ever since the last download, I am unable to edit my playlists on itunes. When my phone is not plugged in, my playlists that are on my phone are not on itunes but my songs are. Only the default playlists show up. How can I get all of my playlists back?

I usually create and edit playlists on itunes and then sync my phone to update my phone. Ever since the last upgrade, I can't do this. When I open itunes, my playlists are not there, only the songs and the default playlists. If I plug my phone in and click on My Phone at the top of the screen, I can see my playlists but I can't edit them. How can I get my playlists that are on my phone back on my itunes?

http://support.apple.com/kb/HT1296

Cannot view star rating when I edit smart playlists

Hi,
I am just beginning to find my way around my new iPod Nano and iTunes on my laptop. Could someone give me some help with a playlist problem please?
When I try to edit a smartplaylist the field that should display the star ratings has a black box displayed. I presume there should be 5 dots displayed and if I wanted I should be able to incease or decrease the stars like in the main database pane. I cannot get rid of this black box. Is this a graphics limitation on my laptop or a known problem?
Any advice would be appreciated.

This thread claims to have solved it:
http://discussions.apple.com/message.jspa?messageID=3789950#3789950

The 10.4 upgrade smart playlist editing has removed the ellipse as the 3rd button option along side the adding or removing a parameter. Why? And can we get it back?

I just did the iTunes update to 10.4 (80) from 10.3 on a MacPro OS X 10.6.8 . I am extremely nervous and saddened by a subtle change to the smart playlist editing features. I have 178.26gb of music, and a very extensive array of playlists and smart playlists taking full advantage of all the wonderful features and complexity someone has taken the time to develop. I have taken years of time developing my library, and this one little change will set me back substantially. The change? Removing the ellipse as the 3rd button option along side the adding or removing a parameter. The button allowed one to create levels or groups of parameters within the dialogue window that could act independently within one smart playlist. For example, songs from artist "A" needs at least 2 stars to be included, while songs from artist "B" need three stars, and they both can be in the same smart playlist which has its first level of complexity. I have lists that go dozens of layers beyond. And dozens more that cross reference. Is there any way we can get the hierarchy back, ie. Reintroduce the ellipse button? Or is there something new I do not know about? Thanks!

I would like to second this.
This subtle yet life-changing removal is a total loss for advanced users that (used to) take full advantage of "logical and hierarchical" playlists. It tremendously impairs the "smartness" of the feature, effectively removing the possibility of mixing "and" & "if" parameters—which was the real beauty of the whole concept of "smart playlists" à la iTunes.
Here's a simple example. I would like to create a playlist combining two genres (rock and electronic) with only songs that have a rating higher than 3. I cannot do that anymore. I need to create two playlists:
a first playlist (A) that displays [Rock] OR [Electronic] (note that this playlist will never be played, it's an intermediary step required for B)
then a second playlist (B) that displays [songs from playlist "A"] AND [with a rating higher than 3].
It's a pain. And it clutters up browsing lists on my iPad/iPhone a lot.
Smart playlists should get the ellipse button back!
Moreover, the possibility of creating / editing smart playlists on iOS via a nice menu would be just… awesome. I would have thought Apple was going in that "smart" direction with iTunes. In hoping it's just a delay… until iOS 5 maybe?

10.4 Smart Playlist Live Update Issue

Hi All,
Among the other challenges presented by the 10.4 series of updates (greyed out commands, disabled shortcuts that come and go for no apparent reason) the smart playlist live update function seems to be broken. I do a lot of tagging and use smart playlists to identify tracks that need particular tags. I used to be able to highlight them all, run a script and they'd all get tagged and clear out. Now it breaks down after a couple and grinds to a halt. Works fine if you turn live update off, run the script then turn it back on, but that kind of defeats the purpose right?
On the smart playlist thread, I've also encountered an issue where I can no longer edit a smart playlist: command-I doesn't work and "edit smart playlist" is greyed out in the "file" menu.
Anybody else know what the deal is, or is it just part of iTunes becoming less of a music player because it's "more than a music player?"

Thanks Leonie - issue with editing smart playlists isn't that I don't know how to do it, it's that it periodically isn't an option (i.e. command-I or file menu drop-down are greyed out & doesn't matter what or where you click). I'm running Snow Leopard 10.6.8.
Not sure how to tell what command is getting stuck, but it's definitely the interaction between the script and the live update feature because it works perfectly when live update is off (and the script is fairly simple - see below).
Thing is that it's not the smart playlists themselves that aren't working, they are all fine, issue is limited to the live update feature. I use SPs to tag particular things (ie dragging to a playlist causes it to show up in the smart playlist if it's not tagged - so I go to smart playlist & run the script to tag all of them in a batch and once they've got the tag they should disappear from the SP). Here's the script, though, slightly modified for me by the author - it's actually pretty ******* if you want to steal it. He wrote one for removing tags too (all using the grouping section):
property okflag : false
-- check if iTunes is running
tell application "Finder"
    if (get name of every process) contains "iTunes" then set okflag to true
end tell
if okflag then
    try
        tell application "iTunes"
            set selected_tracks to a reference to selection
            activate
            if selection is {} then
                display dialog "Please select songs first."
                return
            end if
            try
                display dialog "Enter group to add:" default answer ""
                set dialogInfo to result
            on error dialogError
                return
            end try
            set grouptoadd to text returned of dialogInfo
            repeat with current_track in selected_tracks
                try
                    set current_grouping to grouping of current_track
                    set group_delimiter to ", "
                    set AppleScript's text item delimiters to the group_delimiter
                    set the track_groups to every text item of current_grouping
                    if current_grouping is "" then
                        if (length of (genre of current_track as string)) is not 0 then
                            set track_groups to {}
                        end if
                    end if
                    if track_groups does not contain grouptoadd then
                        set track_groups to track_groups & grouptoadd
                    end if
                    set grouping of current_track to the track_groups as string
                on error trackErr
                    display dialog "Unable to update track \"" & name of current_track & "\"-" & trackErr
                end try
            end repeat
        end tell
        display dialog ((count of selected_tracks) as string) & " track(s) updated."
    on error myErr
        display dialog myErr
    end try
end if

Adding new albums to smart playlist PLEASE HELP

Having a little trouble adding new albums to smart playlist that already exist. Can this be done?

Having a little trouble adding new albums to smart
playlist that already exist. Can this be done?
I am trying to edit smart playlist but songs dont show up, they are in the library.

How to turn on / off live updating for all smart playlists at once?

Hello. Is there a way to turn live updating on or off for all my smart playlists at once? That would be a fantastic feature since too many smart playlists with live updating turned on brings iTunes to a crawl.
Currently, I run iTunes on Windows 7. I have over 40,000 songs, and I have hundreds of smart playlists to help organize all my songs and what's on my various iPods at any time. The problem with having so many smart playlists is that iTunes runs very slow. One thing that I do to make iTunes run slightly faster is to turn off live updating for as many smart playlists as I can stand (by going into each one and editing), but then it's hard to tell which have live updating turned on and which don't. As a result, many of my smart playlists don't get updated when I would like them to because I have to go in and manually edit each one again to turn it back on. Maybe showing which have live updating turned on or off would be useful, too?
On a related note, my iPod Classic will actually not work when I sync too many smart playlists. This has been a long-standing problem with iPods, and I'm surprised that it hasn't been fixed yet. I have not experimented to see if it makes any difference if the smart playlists have live updating turned on or off.
Thanks.

this is exactly what i was hoping to see -- but i can't get it to run right on iTunes 12, yosemite
it also doesn't seem to recognize "Home Videos" or "Audiobooks" as special and tries to turn them off -- i modified the earlier script to add those two to the lists of exclusions, but still get the same error message on the first "unspecial/real" smart playlist -- hasn't somethign changed in the object model perhaps?
thank you muchly!
=mjb
tell application "iTunes"
activate
set allPlaylists to (get every user playlist)
repeat with thisPlaylist in allPlaylists
if (thisPlaylist is smart) and name of thisPlaylist is not in {"Music", "Movies", "Podcasts", "Books", "TV Shows", "iTunes U", "Apps", "Ping", "iTunes DJ", "Genius", "Home Videos", "Audiobooks"} then
set view of browser window 1 to thisPlaylist
tell application "System Events"
tell process "iTunes"
tell menu bar 1
tell menu bar item "File"
tell menu "File"
click menu item "Edit Smart Playlist"
end tell
end tell
end tell
set theCheckbox to checkbox "Live updating" of window 1
tell theCheckbox
if (its value as boolean) then click theCheckbox
end tell
click button "OK" of window 1
end tell
end tell
end if
end repeat
end tell

Can't make an unrated smart playlist in itunes

i have 1/2 star ratings enabled on my imac. when i make a smart playlist with "ratings is 0" i get a playlist of all 1/2 star rated songs and none rated 0. i have itunes 11.
i tried it on my macbook (itunes 10.7) and it works fine. but i don't have 1/2 stars enabled on that.

I didn't think that smart playlists would work with half star ratings. However, I discovered that they do recognise the half star, but don't display it in the rule. It all depends on where you click on the star-scale. For example, if you wanted a smart playlist to show all songs you have rated four and a half stars, you click on the left side of the fifth star dot. In this example, it would show a four star rating in the rule, but show four and a half star rated songs in the actual playlist.
So, in your case, Edit Smart Playlist rule screen, click and drag from a star then to the left of the scale. It should recognise that you want all songs rated with nothing, rather than songs rated with half a star. Just make sure your click ends after being dragged past the actual scale. Confusing, I know.
Here is a screenshot of a smart playlist with the same idea of displaying all unrated songs that I created less than fifteen minutes ago.

If not live updating when DO smart playlists update?

I have so, so many smart playlists that I think my iTunes is starting to drag. So I'm starting to uncheck "Live Updating". So when do these playlists update? When I view them? Is there some trigger I don't know about? Is there a way to do a playlist update sweep?

Oh poops, I hate when people do this. I found the answer, finally, like immediately after posting. I think.
Via http://www.smartplaylists.com/ I found this thread (searching here didn't get me to it): http://discussions.apple.com/thread.jspa?threadID=1742897
I don't love the answer, but there it is.
(Open the Edit Smart Playlist window, hit OK)

Filter songs by rating (on the fly, without smart playlists)

Is there any way (3rd party app maybe) that would allow you to live filter the displayed/played songs by rating? ie. if I have an artist selected, and all 200 songs are shown by that artist -- I would like to select on the fly to only display/play songs that are rated 2 or higher.
Aperture has a similar function that does not require making smart lists -- "Display only 2 or higher" of the current album, etc. -- AND you can sort with a sub-filter in addition (in iTunes, I would show/play only 2 and higher, and maybe sub-sort by album, or shuffle it.)
The only current way to do this is to create a unique smart playlist for every artist, genre, etc. that you would want to filter by rating in that way. Alternately, you can sort by rating, so the best are at the top, but with large selection of those ratings I often want to be able to shuffle the order within that selected rating range.
This software addition would be very useful!
Thanks for any tips...

Merci beaucoup for the response. However, what you described in both cases are the workarounds that I described & that I've been using.
With sort by rating solution, the music can then only be sorted by rating -- and there will be songs of lower ratings played eventually.
Let me try to describe what I'm looking for more precisely:
Like in Aperture, there would be a small gui selection toward the top of iTunes, and you select what ratings should be shown/played -- for example, 2 & higher. Then, there will be no songs shown/played that are below 2 stars. You can then have it play on shuffle, or sorted by other data such as artist, album, etc. -- and you will never hear a song below 2 stars.
The smart playlist is the other workaround I've used, but it's also not the solution. It requires making a separate smart playlist for every possible artist/genre, etc. that you would want only (for example) 2 stars & above to play. For example, if on a whim I wanted to listen to all of my U2 music on random/shuffle -- I'd like to be able to just select Artist-->U2, and with the 2+stars GUI selection, I know I will never hear anything below 2 stars -- *without* having to take the time to make a smart playtlist for this random & rare mood. If I suddenly want a even higher selection of U2, I just click the 3stars GUI selection, and the shown & playable songs instantly update. No need to always have to create & edit smart playlists for such random selections...
This interface works extremely well in Aperture - I wish they'd migrate it over to iTunes!
I hope I'm clearer now... Thanks again

Ipad and itunes smart playlists

Hello
I made a smart playlist which includes all podcasts with a certain word in the title like "News". I also have another smart playlist which includes all items from the first playlist, with an added criterion of never having been played before, and this is called "News 0". I cannot combine both because "News" has a number of "or'd" conditions, each selecting one keyword, and I want to add just one "and" condition which is the playcount=0, however the Smart Playlist rules UI doesnt allow this.
I sync all my unplayed podcasts to my iPad, and within the music section, sync all my playlists as well.
When I select the first playlist on my ipad, I get what I expect, which is all my unplayed podcasts from the News playlist, because only those have been syncd to the iPad, and it is smart enough to not show me the ones that were on my main machine's view but not sync'd. This is nice.
However I would expect the same result when I select the second playlist "News 0". However, this has no content in it.
I can only imagine this is because a smart playlist that depends on another smart playlist is not working properly when pushed to the remote device?
Any ideas?

1. Right click the playlist > "Edit Smart Playlist"
2. Check "live updating" (or make sure it is already ticked"
3. Click "+" to add a rule.
4. Add the following rule: "Playlist" "is" "Music"
Only works if the playlist is music, obviously if it's an audiobook/podcast playlists edit the rule accordingly.
Hope this helps

How do you set up nested rules for iTunes smart playlist

How do you set up nested rules for a iTune smart playlist

Hello \"alice\",
It sounds like you want to add additional criteria to your Smart Playlists. I found an article with steps you can use to refine your Smart Playlist. Step 2 specifically has what I think you are looking for:
2. To have iTunes add songs that match specific criteria, make sure to select "Match the following rule," then make your selections from the pop-up menus.
For example, you might want iTunes to only add songs that are by a particular artist, or songs with at least a four-star rating.
To add additional matching criteria, click the Add button.
You can find the full article here:
iTunes: How to create a Smart Playlist
http://support.apple.com/kb/ht1801
The article says it is archived. In the current version of iTunes, in step 1 you will select File>New>Smart Playlist. Also, if you need to edit an existing Smart Playlist, you can right click (or hold command while you click) on it and select Edit Smart Playlist.
Thank you for using Apple Support Communities.
Best,
Sheila M.

Can't delete or clear songs in Smart Playlist

Guys,
I'm creating a smart Playlist to isolate my mini from my 20gb. I cannot for the life of me delete or clear any songs from a Smart Playlist, and it is REALLY annoying me. Can anyone please help? Everything is current versions BTW.
Thanks,
Todd

The reason you can't delete songs from smart playlists is because they are in fact "smart" playlists - whatever goes into them is totally dependant on the "rules" that you set in the "edit smart playlist" area. Smart playlists are completely automatic by these rules that you set, and songs can't be manually added or deleted in any way.
If you want to be able to manually add & delete songs from a playlist it has to be a manual playlist that you use.
Hope that clears it up a bit

Replacing tracks in Smart Playlists

Hello
I am currently re-ripping my CD's into iTunes at the Apple Plus setting (256kbps) and then deleting the previous versions.
I have two songs that are in a smart playlist, and I want to delete them and replace them with the newer larger file.
I cannot see how to do that. I can delete a song, but cannot see how to add it's replacement.
When you right select the newer version of the song, and go to the "Add to Playlist" option, smart playlists do not show up in there.
Does anyone have any ideas as to how I can accomplish my task?
I'm not a power user of smart playlist and don't want to much around with this version of the playlist I have, nor do I want to hang on to the smaller file and coded song (mp3) in my library taking up unnecesary space.
Thanks for any help

Smart playlists will update automatically, based on the smart rules set for the list.
Seelct your smart playlist, ctrl-click it, and select "Edit smart playlist" from the contextual menu.
Look at the rules, and check, if your updated songs will match the rules.
In particular, check the "Life Updating" option, if it is enabled, and if you have set the playlist to include only checked songs, make sure, your new sonngs are checked.

Unable to edit smart playlists.

Similar Messages

Maybe you are looking for