Playlist folders becoming Smart Playlist Folders

Try holding down option+cmd as you launch Music. This will open it in safe mode, which should repair inconsistencies in the library, including hopefully which icon should be used for playlist folders.

tt2

I had this same problem: I have 4 playlist folders, each with a number of playlists inside them. I also have a smart playlist called "Unsorted" which used to be each have in its rules to exclude each of the 4 playlist folders. That stopped working when I migrated to Windows. I found this forum and one of the responses above mentioned changes to the "file system" used by iTunes (essentially its database), and that had me try this, which worked:

• I replaced each playlist folder with a new one (File > New > Playlist Folder), named it e.g. "Uptempo 2", and moved all the playlists which were in the original "Uptempo" playlist folder into "Uptempo 2".
• Then, I deleted the original "Uptempo" and renamed "Uptempo 2" to "Uptempo". I did that with all my playlist folders.
• Finally, I went into the rules for the "Unsorted" smart playlist, and linked the "Playlist"/"is not" rules to the new playlist folders, and it saved correctly! I hope this helps whoever comes across it

Contact Apple Support or use https://www.apple.com/feedback/ to raise the issue with Apple. I've tried and cannot reproduce it here, so I cannot offer any insights.

tt2

Was the library converted when you upgraded from Mojave(?) to Catalina, or have you imported the library to Music since upgrading? If you imported did you access the .itl file or the .xml file? Can you post a screenshot of what you see that you think is wrong? Is there an Edit Rules button at the top if you select one of these Smart Playlist Folders?

tt2

Opening the previous .itl file might have done a better job of converting the library from the iTunes format to the Music format. Although iTunes and Music both include XML export and import routines it isn't necessarily the case that an XML exported from iTunes will be interpreted properly by Music. That said there are people using XML import as a workaround when Music chokes on the .itl file. What sort of rules does the Smart Playlist (that used to be a) Folder have? E.g. Match Any, Playlist is A, Playlist is B, etc.? Does it still have a disclosure icon in the side bar to reveal the individual lists, or has that gone? I.e. is it that you have a smart playlist, rather than a playlist folder, due to some error in translating the XML.

tt2

On the first topic, yes this is still causing me problems. I agree that the problem seems to be in the creation of music folders during either upgrading to Apple Music or using the xml import from an Apple XML file (ie if you export a library with folders and reimport it to a new library)

the only solution is manually creating the folders. As I had several hundred this was a painful process but now my library is working again.

on your second topic alpfnby, all new playlists are created as Playlist view. You can create a hot key to change them to song view.

the columns that appear in the song view for a new playlist are copied from the current Songs main view (the one at the top left of your toolbar). So update that to what you like then create your playlists.

Unfortunately when you upgrade to Apple music the playlists are all updated to the default format which once again means you have to recreate everything if you want a particular view. Very painful.

Well it sounds like something weird is going on. Just for fun I exported my library as an XML file, then imported that into a new empty library. My playlist folders imported as folders.

tt2

What do you see if you click the blue text that reads Edit Rules?

tt2

I still cannot make it go wrong. Can you create before and after screenshots that show the playlist folders normally and then the smart playlists that you get after the fact. It would be interesting to see the rules that are generated by this process. Together that could form the basis of some feedback or a bug report.

tt2

I am having the same problem in February 2020.

I create a Playlist Folder, then I create a few smart folders and put them in the playlist folder. When I restart Music, the playlist folder becomes a smart folder. I then can't add more subfolders to the new smart folder. At first the new smart folder contains all the songs held in the subfolders. At some point the new smart folder has all the songs in my library. If I edit the smart folder and make changes, it still holds all the song in my library, it doesn't change anything.

If I do the above procedure, save it as an XML file, erase the original and load the XML file as a playlist, again the playlist folder becomes a smart folder that I can't add new subfolders to. However, I can move subfolders out of the original folder just not in. If I create a new playlist folder and move the subfolders to the new folder, the new playlist folder soon becomes a smart folder.

Also, my view settings change a lot. I prefer to view "as songs". I also don't need a bunch of columns like "love" and I prefer to order by artist. Music forgets all of those settings a lot. Why can't I set as default that when I create a new folder, it has the view, columns and orders I prefer? I have a lot of playlists and every time I create new ones I go through this pain in the *** resetting everything.

This is a serious bug. Please tell me Apple knows about this and is working on a fix as I write.

I am on a 2018 Mac Mini, Catalina 10.15.3

Thank You

Daniel Woodford -

This thread was started November 17, 2019, and it's probably not the first time someone noticed it, though it was what came up when I googled. It's hard to believe Apple isn't aware of the issue and haven't fixed it yet, but here we are!

I tried creating new lists and like you said they came up with the same columns as the songs list. While working on the problem I duplicated old lists and every time it came with what I guess is the default columns, and I then had to delete a few of them. I didn't notice that it worked if I created a list from scratch. Apparently it works with new playlists, though. So that seems to be a solution to that problem. Except now I have maybe 60 (not hundreds, thankfully, but bad enough) playlists to recreate.

How do I create a hotkey to change the view?