Playlist views/Categories

There have been some previous specific suggestions/requests about Playlist views and currently a TV based Playlist is basically pretty useless, but it seems to me there needs to be a consistent way to deal with this. Some users just want to see a single list of items, others want music grouped by album etc. My suggestion is as follows:-

Leave Playlists as they are, but introduce an additional way to filter that would provide all the often requested options and call this new feature something like ‘Categories’. So Playlists remain as they are, a single list for playing selected items in sequence. However, Categories could also be created from custom (Smart) filters, named as desired and these would provide all the possible layout options of the parent Library, but simply with the items filtered according to the specified criteria.

I think this is a better way to deal with it as ‘Playlist’ is not really the correct word for this usage. Playlists and Categories would provide different functionality for different uses, but could be created in exactly the same way. So saving a custom filter would offer 3 options - Static Playlist, Smart Playlist or Category.

I suggest that these Categories would be best displayed underneath their Library entry in the left hand list of Libraries. Not just statically and therefore sometimes in the way, but like lists (in MacOS and other GUIs) that can be expanded or closed. So any Library that has any such Categories defined would be displayed with an arrow, on which a click/tap etc would expand in the main list to show the Categories defined for that Library. Other Libraries (with at least 1 defined Category) could also be expanded and/or closed independently of how any other Library is displayed.

This is THE standard way to display such groupings and every user will be immediately familiar. It doesn’t affect Playlists, just uses some of the same techniques (and code) to create the Category’s filter and every Library can benefit from the ability to have multiple filtered views, easily displayed (or not) and selected and each with all the layout options of the parent Library (List, Grid, Summary etc).

That would DEFINITELY work for me and I’m sure for others as well. Why would it not.

I also cannot see it being too hard to implement as it would simply inherit the parent Library’s display, in its entirety, just with some SQL filters applied to the data retrieval, the code for which already exists for creating Smart Playlists. So really all it needs is some work on the Library list panel code to provide for the expandability required to display the Categories.

Simples! :grinning:

6 posts were merged into an existing topic: [Feature Request] - Pin/Save Filters