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Smart Rules

There’s no separate “smart playlist” type in BitDek. Any playlist becomes smart the moment you add a rule to it. The app puts it plainly: “Rules automatically add matching tracks. Manually added tracks are always kept.”

Playlists with rules wear a small bolt badge in your lists, so you always know which ones are working for you.

Open a playlist and tap the smart rules button in the top bar. An empty playlist offers Add Smart Rules right up front.

Each rule has three parts, and the sheet walks you through them: Field, Condition, and Value.

Five fields are available:

  • Artist
  • Genre
  • Favorite Track
  • Favorite Album
  • Favorite Artist

Text fields (Artist and Genre) take these conditions: is, is not, contains, does not contain, is empty, and is not empty. The favorite fields are simpler: is true or is false, no value needed.

An Artist rule doesn’t stop at the marquee name. It matches every credit on a track: album artist, primary artist, track artists, composers, lyricists, producers, and mixers. A rule for a session player you love will find their work across your whole collection.

A Genre rule matches if any of a track’s genres fit, so multi-genre tracks are never missed. All matching ignores capitalization.

Each rule you add chooses how it joins the others: All rules must match (AND) or Any rule can match (OR). The AND/OR toggle also appears between rules in the list, so you can adjust the logic without rebuilding anything.

Rules re-evaluate when you open the Playlists screen, immediately after you add or edit a rule, on pull-to-refresh, and whenever you tap the refresh button in the Smart Rules sheet. The sheet shows when rules last ran.

Tracks that stop matching leave on their own. Tracks you added by hand are never touched. Your choices outrank the rules, every time.

A playlist can be both curated and automatic. Add tracks by hand alongside your rules and they coexist.

Remove a rule-added track and it stays gone. The rules remember and won’t re-add it. Change your mind later? Add it back by hand and it becomes a manual track.

Delete all the rules and the playlist returns to a plain, hand-built playlist.

  • Everything you’ve hearted: Favorite Track is true, OR Favorite Album is true, OR Favorite Artist is true. See Favorites.
  • A genre station: Genre is Jazz. Done.
  • The complete works: Artist contains a name, and the credits matching pulls in their productions and side work too.