Smart playlist rules¶
A smart playlist is a list of conditions evaluated against every active track. Build one in the playlist editor.
Combining conditions¶
- Up to 128 conditions in one flat list. There is no nesting.
- all conditions: every condition must be true.
- any condition: at least one must be true.
- OR group: tick OR group on two or more conditions under all conditions. The flagged conditions then form one alternative group: at least one flagged condition must be true, and every unflagged condition must still be true. A single flagged condition has no effect.
- An empty list matches nothing.
- Every rule is evaluated. An error in any rule fails the whole list. It is never hidden by an earlier match.
Fields¶
Friendly names and raw ids
The field picker lists friendly labels for the common fields and raw identifiers for the rest. Both are valid.
Text: Title, Artist, Album, Album artist, genre, comment, grouping, label, remixer, mix, producer, composer, lyricist, Key, location, fileType, isrc, catalogNumber, extra1, extra2.
Number: BPM, duration, year, Energy (0 to 10), rating (0 to 5), Bitrate (kbps), Size (bytes), sampleRate, trackNumber, Cue count, Tempo marker count.
Date: Date added, Library modified, releaseDate (only complete YYYY-MM-DD tags count; year-only values stay unknown).
Yes/no: archived, incoming, waveform, IsAnalyzed, CustomFileMissing, Embedded artwork, and whether the genre is a protected cleanup genre.
Other: color, tags and categories (custom tags), cues, tempos, playlist (membership), Any text field, Every text field, native audio fields such as audio.codec, audio.sample_rate, audio.channels, audio.bits_per_sample, and any other embedded metadata CueRithm discovers.
Unavailable: popularity, happiness, streamingService and cloud-upload fields are greyed out with No local source is available for this service field. Plays, last played and danceability are deliberately not offered anywhere.
Key, BPM and energy come from CueRithm's own analysis, never from file tags.
Operators¶
| Kind | Operators |
|---|---|
| Text | contains; does not contain; is; is not; starts with; does not start with; ends with; does not end with; matches regular expression; does not match regular expression |
| Number | equals; does not equal; is greater than; is at least; is less than; is at most; is between |
| Date | is on; is not on; is on or after; is before; is in the last (days, weeks, months); is not in the last; is between dates |
| Colour | is color; is not color |
| Yes/no | is true; is false |
| Tags | includes every selected tag; includes none of the selected tags; includes any selected tag; has exactly the selected tags |
| Categories | has no tags in selected categories; has a tag in any selected category; has a tag in every selected category |
| Existence | has a value; has no value |
| Tempo | all tempo markers have the same BPM; tempo markers have different BPM; is a whole BPM; is not a whole BPM |
| Membership | is in playlist; is not in playlist; is in playlist folder; is not in playlist folder; is in smart playlist; is not in smart playlist |
| Cues | any cue label contains; any cue has color; no cue label contains; no cue has color; has a loop; has no loop; has an active loop; has no active loop; has a memory cue; has no memory cue |
| Key | is compatible with key (1A to 12B) |
How comparisons behave¶
- Text is compared lower-cased and trimmed on the track value. Spaces you type in the query are significant. The maximum value is 1,048,576 characters.
- Numbers: a missing value compares as 0, except for is between. BPM compares after rounding to two decimals.
- Dates are calendar days in your library time zone, set in Settings > Library preferences. Is on or after includes the chosen day and is before excludes it. Relative rules such as in the last 14 days refresh at least once a minute.
- Key compatibility has two modes, Harmonic (same number, or one step either way on the same letter, or the relative major or minor) and Fuzzy (same number or one step either way, whichever letter), chosen in Library preferences. Key text accepts Camelot, Open Key and musical names.
- Cues: loops, active loops and memory cues are explicit facts, never inferred from names. CueRithm's generated cues are hot cues and never invent memory cues.
- Membership rules may not form cycles. CueRithm rejects them on save.
Regular expressions¶
Text rules can use matches regular expression. Enter /pattern/flags or a bare pattern. The flavour is ECMAScript (JavaScript). Valid flags are d g i m s u v y; duplicates, or u with v, are errors; y requires a match at the start. Use i for case-insensitive matching.
Limits: the pattern is at most 100 characters, the tested value at most 1 MiB, and a work budget of one million steps. Exceeding the budget is an error, never a silent non-match. An invalid pattern is reported when you validate.
Preview, evaluation and refresh¶
- You must Preview matches successfully before Create or Save changes. An expired preview says Preview expired. Preview matches again before saving.
- Smart playlists refresh automatically after preparation, metadata or cleanup changes and playlist edits. A background service checks every second, and relative-date and file-dependent rules re-evaluate at least every minute.
- If evaluation fails, the playlist keeps its last good membership and shows an error banner.
- Archived tracks are excluded unless a rule says Archived is true; incoming tracks unless Incoming is true.