The new Smart collections are amazing, with one fatal flaw that makes them unusable for me. They are not collections. They do not add the collection tag to the movies and therefore do not respect the Library collection mode or the mode set in the advanced section of the collection. They simply don’t behave as collections. Proven by the fact they don’t allow the new custom order (drag and drop collection feature).
This means I cant use the smart collections to clean up my Library view.
Please make smart collections, collections so we can have all these great features powered by the advanced search to automatically manage them. I was so excited until I couldn’t do half of the things that makes collections great.
Smart collections are supposed to be sorted through the sort configuration set when editing the filters.
As for their display mode… smart collections will never hide their items – however they respect the display with regards if an individual smart collection is listed in-line of your main library or hidden (=only visible in the collections tab). Plex have commented that the Advanced tab of those smart collections has yet to obtain a clean-up (=remove the sort field, only offer display mode parameters that actually apply to smart collections).
There’s a very recent suggestion to support filtering by smart collections:
I dont really get the point you are making. I understand they have said this is not how smart collections work but I just dont understand why the smart collections don’t just automatically apply the Collection Tag to everything caught in the advanced filter thus making them into a real collection.
All this feature appears to do is save a filter that appears in the library and allows me to add some poster art, what the feature should do is create a collection so I have the flexibility normal collections give me, like hiding the items from my library inside it and dragging to reorder. With the added power that I dont have to manually filter and add mass collection tags every time I add some content.
If you looked at Smart Collections as a completely separate function, and not as something that you want to use to facilitate creating normal collations - you’d be less frustrated.
As I don’t think plex intends to merger the two, at least not for a good while.
Beyond that, take a look at Plex-Metadata-Manager. If you are interested in using Smart Collection, or regulars collections, or a combination of the two - and being able to hide content from the library and such, this will do it and help automated the process
I think of smart collections as smart playlists that can be added to the library, suggestions, and home. If they behaved as regular collections, and started hiding movies in the collection, it would be frustrating for how I use them. If smart playlists could be added to home, etc. I would just use those instead. I have a python script that automatically adds the most popular movies from my library (via IMDB popularity) to a smart collection so I can view that list on my home screen. Nothing can do this better than smart collections, but I don’t want to hide those movies (or unhide if they are in another collection) automatically like my other collections do.
Anyone have any solutions about having the smart collection show up in the homepage slider where plex will shuffle the movies shown each time it reloads? For example, if I have 400 action movies and I put the collection onto the homepage, kind of useless if they’re always alphabetized and showing up in the same order. If it’s going to do that, might as well just go into the collection page and look through.
I’d REALLY like it if shuffled what’s displayed when you add it to the homepage, otherwise that feature is pretty useless.
During the creation of the filter, you can set the ordering to “shuffled”. The smart collection will inherit that setting.
It works best if you additionally restrict the number of items in that hub.
According to the first reply, you can go into ‘edit filters’ (not just at creation) and change the sort order there, and that sort order will persist.
I just tested it on a collection that was shuffling itself any time I changed metadata because I didn’t know it kept the ‘random’ order, and now it’s set to a standard order while I’m in maintenance mode. So the reverse should work for you, and you should be able to change it at any time.
I missed that, thanks! Would still be great to be able to add collections to recommend screens. also be nice if the recommend tags populated from genres or tags instead of whatever its pulling from
Now I’m upset that Smart Collections don’t show up in other libraries (‘shows also in [identically named collection]’) and I’m grieving the hour I wasted. Smart Collections are looking pretty dumb.
I’ve only found the feature to add them to the home screen. I have found nothing that allows me to do anything at all with the recommend screens.
Though thanks @chadm for posting that link. The language is ambiguous and “Library” sounds like it would just be placed in the library tab, not the recommend tab.
It seems you already found both…
If you use the command via the collection’s context menu (⋮ > Visible on), Home means the collection will be displayed as a hub on the actual home screen while Library refers to the library “home screen” (=Recommended tab).
Use Settings > [Server Name] > Manage > Libraries to review / change / remove published collections alongside the other hubs / recommendations.
This was the best thing said so far. One thing that made me upset was that the smart collections had the option to hide from library but it doesn’t work. So I would create an smart collection then have to select 1by1 then add them to a normal collection. I was getting just as frustrated as abbyssalSmoke. I still think that if they are going to treat them as seperate entities then they should put them under a different header and change the name to autofilter. Then add “export as Collection” feature instead of using a 3rd party github to have to do it. It is kinda why Jellyfin is working its way to blow plex out of the water. I love plex’s matching system slightly better or I would have given up on plex on this one.
My only beef with Smart Collections is how they behave on the Library screen. If you select Hide Items in Collections in the Library settings, that doesn’t apply to movies in Smart Collections. I have three major groups of Smart Collections (by decades, by directors, and by genres), and I would like those collections to appear on the main library screen.
As the others say Smart Collections would make most sense if the option to hide items in those Smart collection worked (because everybody instantly believes they are Collections due to the name of the feature). I too wondered if the feature was completely broken because items were still being displayed in Library view which is contrary to the option that allows hiding them.
The concept of a Smart Collection is amazing but only if it has the features that work with static Collections, otherwise it really should be renamed to Smart Filters. Making them use the features available to Collections would be everybody’s preference.
