Smart Playlists are not Live Updating

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Level 6

11,161 points

Smart Playlists are not Live Updating

Just updated my 15" rMBP to OS X 10.11.4 with iTunes 12.3.3.17 and all my smart playlists refuse to update when a song's criteria changes. For example, a simple playlist that captures 5 star songs:

Rating is *****
Live Updating selected

The playlist captures all my 5 star songs just fine, but if a rating is changed the song remains in the 5 star playlist. The same is happening for criteria based on a song's Last Played criteria. The only way the playlist seems to update is to edit it in some way, then revert it back to what it was. In one case the playlist updated by exiting and restarting iTunes, but many are not.

Anyone else seeing this? Any suggestions?

MacBook Pro (Retina, 15-inch, Mid 2015), OS X El Capitan (10.11.1)

Posted on Mar 24, 2016 8:31 AM

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Answer 1

ed2345

Level 9

63,608 points

Mar 24, 2016 2:27 PM in response to rockmyplimsoul

Hi Rockmyplimsoul,

I just upgraded to 12.3.3.17 (Windows version) today, but cannot reproduce the behavior you are seeing. Changing the rating of a song in either direction (up to 5, or down from 5) caused the playlist to immediately adjust. A different playlist based on Last Played is also updating correctly.

Could be a bug in the Mac version, or something else going on.

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Answer 2

rockmyplimsoul Author

Level 6

11,161 points

Mar 24, 2016 12:11 PM in response to ed2345

Thanks for checking, I found the same on my work PC so it does sound like a Mac issue. Hopefully this is something to be resolved in the next iTunes update, sooner the better.

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Answer 3

ed2345

Level 9

63,608 points

Mar 24, 2016 5:39 PM in response to rockmyplimsoul

rockmyplimsoul wrote:

Thanks for checking, I found the same on my work PC so it does sound like a Mac issue. Hopefully this is something to be resolved in the next iTunes update, sooner the better.

Rock,

If you are inclined, you can report the problem via the iTunes Feedback page, which may accelerate the process of getting it fixed:

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

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Answer 4

rockmyplimsoul Author

Level 6

11,161 points

Mar 24, 2016 6:24 PM in response to ed2345

Yup, done that!

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Answer 5

Mar 25, 2016 1:01 PM in response to rockmyplimsoul

Yes, I am finding smart playlists such as latest downloads are not updating live. If I quit and restart iTunes, they update. Or, if I edit the smart playlist criteria, even just to re-enter the same criteria, they update.

This is such sloppy software management IMHO; releasing something with such obvious bugs.

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Answer 6

rockmyplimsoul Author

Level 6

11,161 points

Mar 25, 2016 1:41 PM in response to richardfromgeelong

Thanks, glad I'm not the only one. Re-starting iTunes does not force the update, nor does rebooting my Mac, only editing the playlist has an effect and obviously I don't want to do that all the time. If you haven't done so already, add your voice to the link above to give Apple some feedback on this.

For now, just hoping for a correction in iTunes 12.3.4 or 12.4 ...

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Answer 7

rockmyplimsoul Author

Level 6

11,161 points

Mar 28, 2016 11:16 AM in response to richardfromgeelong

Well, it seems to be a corrupted "iTunes Library.itl" file ... I Opt-Launched iTunes and created a blank library, added a few songs, then created smart playlists which behave exactly as I would expect ... so it is not iTunes 12.3.3 nor any plug-in that I thought might be the culprit.

So then I tried loading up the last .itl file saved in Time Machine right before updating to 12.3.3, but unfortunately it too is having trouble with smart playlist updating. I'll try again with a much older .itl file tonight ... hopefully I'll come across one that behaves, then I'll have to recapture library changes made since then (oh joy!)

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Answer 8

Jun 12, 2016 12:18 PM in response to rockmyplimsoul

I am having the same problem with Windows version 12.4.1.6.

My Initial thoughts are that it is probably caused by the size of the library. I have nearly 100k songs in mine :S I did a test with a smaller library and it seemed to update smart playlists.

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Answer 9

rockmyplimsoul Author

Level 6

11,161 points

Jun 12, 2016 8:27 PM in response to Big_Gav77

What ultimately seemed to help me is to reduce the complexity of my library by pruning some smart playlists that I could live without. I have many that depend on other playlists, sometimes multiple layers, so getting rid of ~10% of them helped a great deal. As I removed them one by one I could see live updating return, slowly at first and then back to a reasonable delay. So for me it seemed as though the complexity was bogging things down.

My library is about 30K items, so with a very large library like yours it may take even fewer smart playlists that depend on other playlists, so if you have some of those and can do without at least some, try deleting them to see if live updating returns.

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