How syncing works

Playlistation reads your Liked Songs, runs each playlist's filters over them, and makes the Spotify playlist match the result. This page describes that loop and its limits.

What is read

Your Liked Songs, with the date you liked each track, and nothing else: not your listening history, not your other playlists. A track that is not in your Liked Songs can never appear in a smart playlist. Where each filter gets its data is on its page under All filters.

Which tracks are monitored

Each plan monitors a fixed number of your most recently liked tracks:

If your library is bigger than that, older tracks are not seen and cannot land in a playlist; the app shows a warning on the Playlists page and on each playlist page. New likes are always inside the window; it is the old tracks that fall out. See Plans and billing.

How new likes and unlikes propagate

Every update of a playlist fetches your monitored Liked Songs, evaluates the filters on each one (this also feeds the "why does this track match" detail on the playlist page), then removes from the Spotify playlist the tracks that no longer match and adds the ones that now do. Tracks that still match are left alone.

So a new like shows up in every playlist whose filters it passes, and an unliked track leaves them, at each playlist's next update. Spotify does not tell Playlistation when you like something; the app looks on a schedule, and it fetches your Liked Songs at most once an hour per account. A change can therefore take up to an hour to be noticed, plus the wait for the next refresh.

Refresh interval per plan

A background job runs every minute and picks the playlists that have waited longest, so that each one is refreshed about this often:

These are targets, not exact timers: load or Spotify's rate limits can push a playlist back a little. Creating a playlist, or editing it in the app (a filter, its name or its description), queues an update right away.

The Spotify limit of 10,000 tracks

Spotify does not let a playlist hold more than 10,000 tracks. When more of your liked tracks match than fit, Playlistation keeps the 10,000 most recently liked ones and the playlist page shows a warning with the number left out. Narrow the filters if you want everything to fit.

Playlist statuses

A playlist is in one of four statuses. Only the first one is updated.

Active. The normal state: the playlist is in the refresh rotation.

Disabled. The playlist is over your plan's quota, after a downgrade or when a paid plan ends: the oldest playlists keep their slots, the newest are disabled. A disabled playlist is not updated and cannot be opened in the app, but it still exists on Spotify with the tracks it had. It comes back on its own as soon as a slot frees up, when you delete another playlist or move to a larger plan.

Error. Parked for something only you can clear:

• none of its filters can be evaluated on your plan, typically a playlist whose only filter is a premium one after a move to Free (with no usable filter it would be filled with your whole library, so it is stopped instead; a playlist with no filter at all is a different case, see Combining filters);
• a filter has a value the engine rejects;
• your Spotify authorization stopped working, for instance after you removed Playlistation from your Spotify apps. Every active playlist is then parked and you are signed out.

A parked playlist still counts against your quota and still shows in the app. Edit it in the app, a filter or even its name, and it goes back to Active with an update queued; there is no save button, every edit is saved at once. An upgrade that makes its filters usable also unparks it; signing in again after a lost authorization unparks them all.

Archived. Gone from your Spotify library. See When you delete a playlist in Spotify.

In the playlists grid, a Disabled or Error playlist is dimmed and carries an orange "not updating" icon (a circle with a slash) next to its name; Archived playlists are not listed. Symptom by symptom: Troubleshooting.

The sync pill

The pill shows the progress of one update, not the playlist's status. On the playlist page and in the grid it reads Waiting for first sync while the first job is queued, First sync… or Syncing… while one runs, and Auto-updating in between, with the time of the last update. It updates live.

Edits made in Spotify

Cover image: kept. Playlistation never uploads a cover. Set one in Spotify and the app shows it; without one, Spotify's mosaic of the first tracks is used.

Public or private: kept. Playlists are created private. Make one public in Spotify and it stays public.

Tracks: overwritten. A track you add by hand is removed at the next update because it does not match; a matching track you remove by hand is added back. Duplicates are cleaned up too.

Name and description: not kept. A rename made in Spotify is not picked up by Playlistation, and the next time you edit the playlist in the app (a filter, the name or the description), the app's name and description are written back to Spotify. Rename it in the app instead.

Deleting a playlist

At the top of the playlist page, click Delete. The dialog, titled Delete playlist, asks what should happen to it:

• Remove from Playlistation: it stays on Spotify with its current tracks, as an ordinary playlist that is no longer updated.
• Delete everywhere: it is removed from Playlistation and from your Spotify library.

Confirm with Delete playlist. The pre-selected choice is the Default choice setting under Settings, Playlists (see Settings). Deleting frees a slot, so a Disabled playlist, if you have one, becomes Active again.

When you delete a playlist in Spotify

You can delete a smart playlist from Spotify like any other. Once a day, Playlistation compares its list with your Spotify library and archives the playlists that are no longer there; an update that finds one gone archives it at once. An archived playlist disappears from the app, no longer counts against your quota, and is not recreated.