[Implemented] Smart Collections

Feature Suggestions
1

Continuing the discussion from Smart Collections:

Moved to Feature Suggestions

I feel like this is a great feature that could be implemented with the same logic for custom filters. Any word on this?

2

Plex pretty much did this with Smart Playlists. Would a smart collection be significantly different?

3

I guess my main beef with smart playlists over collections is that (at least from what I know; correct me if I’m wrong) smart playlists (comparing the Back to the Future collection to a smart playlist of movies from 2018):

  • Don’t have as much metadata as collections (poster, etc)

28
28825Ă—606 49.1 KB
40
40830Ă—603 32 KB

  • Can’t be edited after creation (e.g. sorting preference)
  • Can’t appear alongside other items in my library

40
40736Ă—338 20.7 KB

  • And just plain aren’t as nice looking

54
541011Ă—495 170 KB

23
23931Ă—537 114 KB

Also I feel the method of creating smart playlists isn’t very user friendly. Having to filter items and then create the playlist makes less sense to me than first creating the smart playlist and then adding rules for it. Same with a hypothetical smart collection feature.

7 Likes
4

I need this.

5

Collections are shared with your friends and family, playlists aren’t. Plus Playlists are in their own section. It’s nice to have all my collections just sitting there in my library.

4 Likes
7

Exactly! I’ve been ranting about this for years to anyone who will listen (my poor wife). If I add a new, say, Tom Hanks movie, how hard would it be to just have it auto-added to my Tom Hanks Collection. It’s such a simple and reasonable request. You could stack categories too, like 80’s Sci-Fi movies. The key is for it to auto-update on the fly to reduce the amount of work. So many possibilities. I think people with small collections don’t quite get why this would be so cool, but when you’re dealing with a large library it really helps to have creative ways to view your movies without manually adjusting it every time you add movie.

UPDATE (7/22/2021): THEY FINALLY ADDED SMART COLLECTIONS…WOO HOO

4 Likes
8

This really needs some attention, if Plex added nested collections like this it’d be an almost perfect solution for me.

9

Man, this feature NEEDS to be implemented.
Having to manually tag content into a collection is such a chore.

10

Please make this so Plex developers. I’d love to have certain genres or movies featuring specific actors go into their respective collections. Smart Playlists have a place for sure but don’t have the same clout in a library as a Collection.

1 Like
11

This needs to be in Plex! Please :pray:

12

Playlists were really designed for Music and make for a terrible browsing experience for Movies.

Being able to save custom filters as Smart Collections would be a better experience.

13

And the implementation for music isn’t that great to begin with, which is one reason why I stopped using Plex for music.

This would simplify a hefty chunk of my collections (some based on decade and others on directors).

14

With Plex Web 4.56.3 and PMS 1.22.3 you can now create smart collections from the advanced filter (same as creation of smart playlists).

Therefore closing this as “Implemented”, freeing up everybody’s votes.