How can I delete smart playlists on iPhone?

Question

How can I delete smart playlists on iPhone?

Today I was browsing playlists on my iPhone 3G and to my surprise I found that several playlists are listed twice, which confused me. I scrolled through all my playlists in iTunes library and didn't find the same playlist name somewhere else. Finally I opened that little triangle in front of the iPhone icon in iTunes sidebar and found that iPhone has smart playlists and regular playlists with the same names.
What I can guess is that when I bought my iPhone I synced it with several iTunes smart playlists, then I found that I have no space left on iPhone (I keep most of my CDs in iTunes library in Apple Lossless format), therefore I created AAC versions and created normal playlists to sync with the iPhone. Probably during this early stage those smart playlists were copied also to the iPhone, but now I can't get rid of them. Any ideas how?

MacBook Pro 17" 2.33GHz 2GB RAM, Mac OS X (10.5.6), 320GB HDD, SD-DL, BT, AirPort, L2 cache 4 MB

Posted on Mar 26, 2009 1:41 AM

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Answer 1

Damon M.

Level 4

3,705 points

Mar 30, 2009 8:57 AM in response to Guntis Bukalders

One thing that might help out.

If you have your iphone set to manually manage, you should be able to delete the contents directly off the iphone.
http://support.apple.com/kb/HT1535
to do this, connect the iphone to itunes.
When the iphone shows up under the devices section of itunes, click on the triangle to the left, just like you did previously.
Now click on the items you want to delete and the the delete key on the key board.

Hope this helps.

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Answer 2

Apr 25, 2009 1:34 PM in response to Damon M.

That doesn't solve my problem. When I connect the iPhone to my Mac, I do see smart playlists in iPhone, and I cannot delete them! The show up empty. There is no contextual menu command to delete them either. I think I synced smart playlists with the same name smart playlists in iTunes library previously, then made normal playlists for iPhone and removed checkboxes from the smart playlists in the Music tab in iTunes. But once those smart playlists were created in iPhone, they are kept, event if I don't sync with them anymore. I tried to disable music syncing completely, iTunes deleted all music from my iPhone. Smart playlists in iPhone also disappeared. I was happy. But the same smart playlists still were listed in the iPhone content in iTunes (in the Devices section). And it's impossible to delete them! Strange. Then I enabled syncing again, synced only normal playlists, but those smart playlists were copied again to my iPhone, even if the smart playlists with the same name in my iTunes library were not checked to be synced with. How can I get rid of them in iPhone?…

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Answer 3

Apr 25, 2009 3:30 PM in response to Guntis Bukalders

OK, here's one drastic solution I just found:
Connect iPhone to your Mac. Open PhoneView application, open its preferences, enable "Show Entire Disk (Advanced Disk Mode)", close preferences.
In the PhoneView application's sidebar you'll see "Disk" (blue folder icon) - click on it. Open iTunes_Control/iTunes folder and delete all files inside it. Then delete the content of the Music folder - all those multiple numbered folders. Disconnect iPhone from yor Mac. I even restarted my iPhone. Then connect iPhone to your Mac again, open iTunes on Mac and try to sync - iTunes will ask to reset everything and start as with the new iPhone. Agree. Actually it didn't copy all apps all over again, but only music. Congratulations! All smart playlists are gone.

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