I’ve created a Smart Playlist now that we can nest rules and it works great except for one thing. The playlist is always in alphabetical order. All of my rule groups are time bounded but that doesn’t change anything.
This means that I can’t limit the playlist to X items and I have to use random so that I don’t end up playing the same things over and over. That works but it means I can’t use Downloads to have an ever changing set of music on my phone. And therefore I end up using a ton of data on my phone.
I tried sorting by Date Added but that’s just when the track appeared in my library, not when it was added to the playlist.
You can specify the order when you create or edit the filter criteria (using the same sort options as when sorting your library).
Though it seems you already noticed that… in which case I’m not sure I understand the problem…
if you have no sort, that’s when Plexamp will choose a random sample, so the key is to make a smart play,it’s without explicit sort. otherwise, post plexamp logs so we can see what’s going on.
How do I tell if has an explicit sort or not? I don’t believe I set one but I might have accidentally when I was testing.
Can you clarify what you mean when you say that Plexamp will choose a random sample? Are you saying it will play in shuffle automatically? Do I need to start the playlist form the Downloads menu?
I believe you can make a smart playlist inside Plexamp with the default title sorting and it’ll remove it for you so it’s “unsorted”. I thought you could also do that in the web app but I’m not 100% sure.
You can currently only CREATE them in any of the categories with green check marks. Just find the 3-line icon which symbolizes FILTER. You can’t EDIT them, unless you’re on the web UI.
Thanks for the info. Never knew that was there and googling hadn’t helped.
Unfortunately, after creating the playlist on plexamp, looking at it on the web it appears to have the same title sort as the playlist I created on the web originally.
AFAICT, there doesn’t seem to be a way to create an unsorted playlist.
The track mode can also be sorted via the table view’s column headers – though there’s no dedicated Random option.
However… not sure if/how this matters as playlists will consist of only tracks (independent if you create that playlist from artist, album or track mode.
Example: create an advanced filter (1) with some track-based filter criteria (2); configure it to sort randomly (3); save as regular/smart playlist (4).
Similarly in Plexamp (as pointed out be elan): filter the tracks to your liking (1) and select the view’s order to be random (2); then save the resulting selection and its order as a new playlist (3).
Gotcha. As I mentioned previously, I normally only use plexamp to select a playlist to play.
I tried what you suggested and it provided an interesting result. When I pull it up on plexamp it’s randomly sorted whereas my original version is sorted by title. But when I look at it on the web, they are both sorted by title.
I’m not sure how this will affect Downloads or if I make changes on the web.
Well, that’s odd. The playlist is definitely saved in random order, but whether I click on the Play or Shuffle buttons I get the songs in a completely different random order. AFAICT, the only difference between clicking the Play and Shuffle buttons is whether or not the Shuffle icon ends up highlighted.
If I click Play on my original playlist, it plays the songs in the sorted Title order. If I click on Shuffle, it plays the songs in random order.
I use the Plex app exclusively for building the smart playlists.
Thought I would contribute and comment on what I have experienced. I am not sure what criteria you are basing your Smart Playlist on, but I am using the Track Mood variable to add my own “tag” to create searchable criteria. Initially I filtered by tracks, then enabled the "Plays column, and sorted by “Plays” so all of the unplayed songs would be at the top. I also added a Track last played filter of 1 month in attempts to keep the playlist fresh once all tracks were greater than zero plays. That worked for the most part, and the playlist on Plexamp mobile would update the playlist periodically as tracks were played and the “track last played” were updated. I decided I would try a different scheme to see how it would work.
My filters are looking for my Track Mood and Track Last Played is not in the last month, as seen in the picture. I decided to sort by Albums, which provides a sort choice of randomly. Even though I chose Albums, only the songs that fit the filters on those albums show up. I keep my limit to 50 tracks as that is several hours of music and keeps the access snappy. Each time I enter the playlist, it is randomized on the fly. When I hit play, it randomizes again before starting. I have a few like this that I have downloaded to my phone, and each time I refresh the downloaded playlist, it pretty much replaces every track with another that is eligible for playing. After playing, I won’t see that song for a month.
Yes, it did take time and effort to tag a lot of tracks but I can now use that tagging for my own use. Maybe you can use some of this info to create some clever dynamic playlists. Looking forward to see what you come up with.
My playlist is basically a set of “Track is X Stars and not played in Y time” rules where Y gets longer as X goes down.
My current solution of using Shuffle to play my playlist works, but it makes it so that Downloads doesn’t really work and I end up using a lot of data. That’s why I’m trying to get my playlists unsorted so that I can just hit play and have it only work through the Download tracks.
I realized recently that I can start a downloaded playlist from Android Auto so I’ve been able to get it to work where it’s not using my data.
However, the problem becomes that because it’s still in Title order, even if I shuffle, I’m only getting number, A, and B songs. The 24h limit isn’t enough to even get 10% of the way through the playlist.
