Avoid an iPhone self-updating Smart Playlist bug

May 01, '09 07:30:00AM

Contributed by: magir

The current version of the iPod.app on the iPhone and the iPod touch has a strange bug which prevents updating Smart Playlists based on criteria which change when playing from the playlist.

That sounds a little bit complicated, but there's an often-used and simple example: a playlist based on play count (e.g. Play Count -- equals -- zero). When you play titles from the playlist on the iPhone, they should disappear automatically after playing, which currently isn't the case.

The workaround, as described in this post on Apple's Discussions site, is to create a second Smart Playlist. For the second Smart Playlist, set the criteria to simply this: Playlist -- is -- [the troublesome Smart Playlist]. When you now play titles from this new Smart Playlist, the criteria change properly, and both playlists change accordingly.

[robg adds: I can confirm that my iPhone 3G exhibits this problem -- I have a Play Once smart playlist, and the number of songs in it remains constant even after a given song plays through.]

Comments (5)


Mac OS X Hints
http://hints.macworld.com/article.php?story=20090501004601280