smart playlist missing on iphone

A software dev cycle takes longer than 3 weeks for something that isn't high priority like a playlist bug. It isn't crashing any phones or anything major. Yes, it's annoying. Let's please keep this thread constructive for solutions rather than complaining to no avail.

Something else. On a Mac, open iTunes and click on a playlist in the window at the left to select the playlist. Then go to the File menu and select Get Info (or hit command+i keys). This will open the Smart Playlist window where you can uncheck the Live Updating box at the bottom.

An easy way to get your smart playlist on your iPhone is to create a regular playlist and copy your smart playlist contents into it. Is this the right solution? No, but if your main concern is getting your playlist on your iPhone right now, this does it.

Submit a bug report

http://www.apple.com/feedback/iphone.html

I have the same problem.

I posted my dilemma here:

http://discussions.apple.com/thread.jspa?threadID=2350912




I did as previously suggested in this Thread and unchecked "Live Updating." All my Smart Playlists are now on my iPhone 3Gs. Not the best solution, but it works for now.

I would like to add that I have been having this problem with my iPhone 3Gs since about 1-2 months after the iPhone 3Gs came out.

Message was edited by: Ro Gan

I'm experiencing this too.

My Smart Playlist is Genre based. I've ensured that all the Playlist items "Media Kind' are classified as Music, but that didn't work.

The only thing that did was taking off the Live Updating.

I also noticed that shortly after syncing (a number of times while tying different ways of trying to fix the problem) when I launched the iPod function on my iPhone I got a screen I've never seen before saying "rebuilding Library".

A tad worrying...

I've actually gotten the "Rebuilding Library" screen a few times when I synch my iPhone 3Gs. It nearly always occurs if I altered the synched library by more than quite a few songs and/or videos. If I just edited my iTunes Library for the iPhone 3Gs by a few or less songs/video the iTunes on the iPhone 3Gs loads normally when I access it on the iPhone 3Gs.

This is one of the most annoying and long-lasting bugs in iTunes. It is remarkable that Apple has yet to take it seriously. However, there is a solution, if you're ready to endure some pain.

This bug has afflicted my iphone a couple of times now and it seems to occur whenever I attempt to make changes to my iTunes library during a sync operation. A common symptom that this bug has occurred is that several random songs in the library will mysteriously lose their file associations and need to be manually re-associated. From this point on, any new smart playlists created in iTunes will not sync to the iphone. Nada. Nothing. Zip. Not even toggling the 'live updating' setting will make any difference. Sure you can create a new smart playlist and then copy the contents into a standard playlist (which will sync to the phone), but that seems to defeat the purpose of the "smart" playlist.

This bug seems to be related to some kind of corruption in the iTunes library database files. The only sure-fire way to repair it is to wipe both your phone and itunes and then restore both of them, using the following procedure.

0) Use any in-app backup options to save app data for any and all of your purchased apps.
1) Sync phone, this will create a back up of the device
2) uninstall itunes
3) rename the itunes folder under "..\my documents\my music\" to something like "itunes_old" this will disassociate the old library from itunes. THIS IS THE KEY STEP IN THE PROCESS.
4) re-install itunes.
5) import all the music, videos, podcasts, ringtones, etc from the old (now renamed) itunes folder.
6) restore the iphone from backup and then resync.
7) restore data to any apps using available in-app backup routines.

This procedure does work to fix the smart playlist problem (at least until it reappears), but it will also cause a few other problems. First, your podcasts may have to be imported again, meaning you'll probably have lost their viewing history. Second, not all apps store their data in the backup file during the sync operation or provide an in-app backup routine, so some apps may lose all stored information.

All I did was remove genre from the smart playlist criteria and it works fine.

This issue is really getting to me as well. However, after sifting through these posts I feel the need to post what I've found.

My smart playlists like many have posted, would not sync with the iphone. ALL of these playlists had references to "Genre". Once removing these references, the smart playlist synced fine. Doesn't justify the bug, but at least I made it work for me. Fix this already Apple, and I hope this gives everyone a LITTLE insight to a solution.

In another thread, a gentleman mentioned to add the criteria "Playlist is Music" and that should work as a workaround. He said simply unchecking the Live Syncing will mean you have to manually update the playlist every time.

I just did this and it worked.

This worked for me:

1. De-check playlist(s) that isn't sync'ing
2. Apply (Sync)
3. Re-check the playlist(s) you want to sync
4. Apply (Sync)