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SmartPlaylist app for iPhone and iPad


4.8 ( 8608 ratings )
Music Entertainment
Developer: daenu
1.99 USD
Current version: v13.2.1, last update: 1 year ago
First release : 22 Sep 2009
App size: 1.29 Mb

SmartPlaylist is the most advanced playlist generator for iPod/iPhone/iPad with many unique features.

SmartPlaylist uses the titles stored in your Music library on your device.

There are 26 smart playlists (SmartPlaylist A-Z) which you can use and name as you wish.

In each SmartPlaylist you can combine more than 20 search rules to filter and sort your iTunes music library. These rules can be saved in iCloud.

Available search criteria:
● Text search: Genre, Grouping, Composer, Artist, Album-Artist, Album, Title, Comments, Lyrics and/or iTunes-Playlist
Search for exact matches („is equal to“), for any partial matches („contains“) or use wildcards („is like“ ?/*).
Use logical operators to unite (" OR “), intersect (" AND “) or exclude (“ NOT “) certain songs
Example: The rule "Genre contains blu OR zz" will give you all your blues and jazz songs in 1 playlist.
● Numerical search: Rating, Play Count, Skip Count, Duration, Track Number, BPM and/or Year.
● Date search: Added, Last Played, Last Skipped, Released (how many days, weeks, months or years ago)
You can search for values less than, equal to / from-to (=) or more than the limit you set
● Property search: is in compilation, is in iCloud, is music video (all/yes/no)


The titles loaded in SmartPlaylist also become the playback queue of the Music app and the now playing title is also shown in the lock screen and the control center, where you can play/pause, fast-forward, skip, etc.

There are many settings to configure, e.g. what search rules you want to use and what info you want to see in the list of titles.

General procedure:
1. Select a smart playlist (a)
2. Set the search rules (a)
3. Tap „Load titles“ (a)
4. Scroll through the list of matching titles (b)
5. Press on a title in the list to play it or tap to see all its details (c).


a) THE MAIN SCREEN: The search rules of a smart playlist (e.g. „SmartPlaylist A“)
● Use „Menu“ to open the settings and help, copy/paste rules and backup/restore with iCloud
● Use „(i)“ to open the details of a search rule (there, use „(+)“ to open the pick list for genre, artist, etc.)
● Use „All/Active“ to toggle between showing all search rules and showing only the active rules (yellow)
● Browse your music collection hierarchically by Genres > Composers > Artists > Albums > Titles
● Use list operations to add, subtract or intersect the results of SmartPlaylists
● Limit the number of titles per artist or per album, or limit the list to x minutes, hours or titles
● Sort with multiple criteria, e.g. 1. by Artist, 2. by Rating (per artist), 3. by playCount (per rating)
● With „Show only“ you can load another SmartPlaylist while the previous list is still playing in the background
● If you do not set any search rules „Load titles“ will load all titles in your music library


b) THE LIST VIEW: The list of titles matching the search rules
● Long-press on a title to play/pause
● Pinch in/out to change the row height (S-M-L) and toggle the display of the artwork
● Use quick-search to search within the loaded list or mark certain titles
● Scroll to the now playing song in the list with „Now playing“


c) THE DETAIL VIEW: All the details/infos for the selected song
● If you have selected a song which is not being played, you can scroll up and down through the title list with „^“ / „v“
● When you are in the „Now playing mode“, „^“ / „v“ will play the previous or next song, respectively.
● Enlarge the cover artwork up to full screen (tap/double-tap or pinch in/out)
● Tap on a line to open the values in a text view where you can copy the text or look up the definition of words, etc. (e.g. in the lyrics)
● Add the selected song to another smart playlist or remove it from the current one (i.e. make exceptions to the rules, which can also be edited in the corresponding search rule)
● Load all songs with the same genre, artist, year, etc. as the selected song

Pros and cons of SmartPlaylist app for iPhone and iPad

SmartPlaylist app good for

I have a lot of time and checked out a few playlist programs not one is perfect. So close with this one so close. I cant delete songs from list 2. I import songs to iPod not in iTunes libary. I would love to have these songs included .The first to incorporate this will have a good sell feature at least I think so
New release is out. It is much better with more features. First thing first: This is my defacto playlist creator as well as player and here is why. After trying out multiple apps to create playlists on-the-go from within iPod Touch/iPhone over many months, I think this playlist leapfrogs ahead of all, if you want to spend less time in creating playlists and more time listening to music. If you love Smart Playlists in iTunes – as opposed to static ones, this perhaps is the ONLY app that comes close to what iTunes could do. Of course, no playlist app could replicate iTunes’ playlist creating prowess because the rich track information available in iTunes is not transferred to iPhone during the sync process. Key phrases for this app: More time for music, less time for playlist creation, greatest flexibility to search and listen by rating, playcount, playlength, composer, comment, iTunes playlists, other than the usual artist, album, genre, title etc., great for large music library, great for casual music listener too. 1.This app is a smart playlist creator based on rules that you define, which means you could refresh the playlist at any time if you choose to just like in iTunes. 2.The fields available to search are most extensive of any playlist app. It allows to search by title, composer, comments, rating, track length, playcounts, last played on, other than the usual album, artist, genre, and iTunes playlist that most other apps provide. 3.Not only you could search, you could also sort the playlist by all of the above excepting comment and iTunes playlist. 4.You could also shuffle the list by album or title even though iPod player itself could shuffle by title only. 5.The most powerful feature of this app is “contains” clause with use of AND and OR. For example, find all music where album contains “victory” OR “march”; comment contains “2010” AND “love”; iTunes playlist contains “fast” OR “beat” OR “truth” etc. 6.This app displays the most track info compared to others, in the list (title, artist, rating, playcount, last played days, playlength, genre, composer, album cover), but also much more for the track playing (album cover, skip count, last played date, disk, track, compilation, release date, comments). The only downside is that the album cover somehow appears always grainy. 7.With this new version, now you could shrink rules page to just display entered parameters instead of all blank ones. 8.This app is not a static playlist creator to add songs one by one to a static playlists like iPlayList, which has a beautiful UI but fails to provide rule based smart playlist creation.
So far this is the best playlist maker Ive seen in app store. It does what it says - allows you to make much better customized playlists by adding different kinds of rules and filters. Some cons for which I took one star off: - interface is somewhat cluttered, its elements arent well placed or organized. Specifically: buttons at the bottom of rules menu dont look descriptive enough of what they do. Sometimes different buttons seem to do the same thing, so its confusing for a first-time user. Now playing and list menu look very cluttered because of poor use of spacing and contrast. Also not liking the different font sizes on each button in rules menu, but this is a minor problem. - occasional crashes. - only 6 playlists maximum, which you cant even rename or export into playlist menu (the latter might just not be possible on current iOS right now, I think.. But at least the first 2 things could be fixed). - rule grouping is a little iffy. For example, if I wanted to make this kind of playlist: (genre is A and artist is B) OR (genre is C and artist is D) - I dont want genre A to have artist D, or genre C to have artist B. Its POSSIBLE to make such a playlist, but the process of that is rather tedious, and you cant really save such playlist so each time youd want to listen to it - youd have to create parts of it from scratch. I suggest just making the rules menu similar to one in iTunes. iTunes way of making smart playlist is very well designed, so why reinvent the wheel? Overall despite those annoying drawbacks its a nice app. Its not the most neat and pretty one, but it does what its supposed to do, and does it much better than other apps I know of. I just hope its creators will soon address the issues I mentioned. With those issues solved it would truly become superior to other playlist makers in every way.
Smart Playlist is now my default music player in my iPod Touch. Its a must-have app for those of us who have thousands of tracks in their Library.
Keep in mind one reason, and then ypu will see other ones... When ypu need play your artiss 5 star collection, but you want to listen fresh music (like added 1 week ago), also you need to listen only some moods like comfort, happy, etc... And you have some lists, maybe like 90s, but when you walking you just think about i just need listen 90s but genre must be only rock, plays must be 5 or greater, and etc. etc. ... This app doing this and hundreds of stuff like this, amazing. Yolda giderken 90 lar listenizi dinlemeye koyuldunuz ama birdenbire icinden cikan agir parcalar modunuzu mu bozdu, evet yapmaniz gereken 90 lar listesi icinden muzik turune gore ayrim yapmak, ama bunu iphone ile yapmanizin imkani yok, her seferinde itunes ile liste olusturup o listelerin icinde kaybolmadan, istediginiz anda istediginiz kadar filtre, sanatci, sarki sozu, yildiz derecesi, eklendigi tarih, kac kez dinlendigi ve itunes da yapamayacaginiz daha fazlasi !!!
UPDATE 06/2016 Extra playlist slots added? App keeps getting better and better. All of my prior review comments still stand and Im still using it almost daily. Dont hesitate to buy!!

Some bad moments

I hate this app its ridiculous. Never spend your money on it! It makes no sense. I put in the composer and nothing comes up! I have over 800 songs and this stupid app doesnt recognize any!
Yes, it creates a good playlist similar to iTunes SmartPlaylist, but it lacks the option to save the playlist, which kind of defeats the purpose for me. I like the option of deleting songs from a playlist and the lack of this feature, as well as the confusing interface makes it almost useless for my intent.
I know my way around a pc,Mac and iOS for all devices and still this was really way too much to take in. Dont waste space on your idevices with this app
Well looks like an app for engineer with clunky user interface and i cant figure out how to play the playlist or save it. Completely worthless.