Playlists — Overview

The Playlists panel has five tabs: All, Classic, Smart, Genius, and Savant. Each serves a different purpose.

What each tab does

Tab	Purpose	Syncs as
All	View, create, delete, and export all playlists. See tracks in any playlist.	—
Classic	Hand-pick the songs yourself, in the order you want them. Up to 500 songs.	.m3u
Smart	Create rule-based playlists (genre, artist, album) with a track limit.	.m3u or tagnavi¹
Genius	Create playlists from Rockbox playback history (Most Played, Hidden Gems, Top Genre, etc.).	.m3u
Savant	AI-generated playlists from mood. Requires OpenRouter API key. Uses harmonic data when available.	.m3u

¹ Smart playlists write as live tagnavi queries when Rockbox smart playlists (tagnavi) is enabled on the device profile. Classic, Genius, and Savant are always .m3u because they are static track selections — see why.

When to use which

• Classic — When you know exactly which songs you want. See Classic Playlists.
• Smart — When you want a fixed set of rules (e.g. "Rock genre, 50 tracks").
• Genius — When you want playlists based on what you actually listen to. Connect a device, load/recheck playback log, then generate.
• Savant — When you want a playlist that matches a mood or intent ("chill evening", "workout mix"). The AI picks tracks and can order them harmonically.

Playlists stay in sync with your library

You never have to clean up after deleting music. After every library scan — and after removing a library folder — every playlist is reconciled automatically:

• Songs whose files no longer exist are removed from every playlist, and the remaining track numbers are closed up.
• Smart playlists are re-resolved from their rules, so they also pick up newly scanned tracks that match. Their saved track limit is preserved.
• Classic, Genius, and Savant playlists are pruned only. Their contents were hand-picked or generated from a snapshot, so there is nothing to recompute — adding songs back is up to you.

The scan summary tells you what changed ("Playlists updated automatically — removed 3 missing songs from 2 playlists"). If the library scan finds no tracks at all — usually a failed scan or an unplugged drive — reconciliation is skipped rather than emptying every playlist.

The manual Repair button is still there for anything that goes wrong outside a scan.

How to work with it

1. Start with All to see existing playlists and create new ones.
2. For Classic, just pick your songs — no setup needed beyond a scanned library.
3. For Genius, add a device and enable playback log. Load from database or recheck the device before generating.
4. For Savant, add your OpenRouter API key in Settings first. Enable harmonic extraction in Library for better key-aware mixing.

Rocksy

Rocksy can create and triage playlists from the chat:

• "Make me a playlist with Song A, Song B and Song C" → library_search_tracks then playlist_create_classic
• "Add Song D to my Road Trip playlist" → playlist_update_classic (asks you to confirm first)
• "Make a Smart playlist of my 4-star Rock tracks" → playlist_create_smart
• "Build a Genius playlist from my most played, 25 tracks" → playlist_create_genius
• "Which playlists have missing songs?" → playlist_list_broken
• "Repair that playlist" → playlist_repair
• "Delete the Workout playlist" → playlist_delete (asks you to confirm first)

Creation and repair run immediately; deleting a playlist and editing a Classic playlist's tracks pause for a Confirm / Cancel prompt — editing replaces the whole track list, so it gets the same gate as a delete. Rocksy creates playlists through the same backend as the Playlists panel (the legacy <SMART_PLAYLIST> / <GENIUS_PLAYLIST> tags remain as a fallback). Savant playlists are not created via Rocksy — use the Savant tab.