Apple Music smart playlists: what happened to them and the best alternative

If you used iTunes back in the day, you probably remember smart playlists — rule-based playlists that filled themselves. Songs rated 4+ stars, added in the last month, under 120 BPM, genre is Jazz… set the rules once and the playlist looked after itself.

What happened to smart playlists?

They never really made the jump to Apple Music. Smart playlists still exist in the Music app on Mac (and in iTunes on Windows), but there's no way to create or edit one on iPhone, iPad, or the web — and anything you build on Mac only syncs across if it survives the trip, which it often doesn't.

For a service that lives on your phone, that's a strange gap. The place you actually listen is the one place you can't automate a playlist.

What you can still do on Mac

Open the Music app on your Mac.
Go to File → New → Smart Playlist.
Set your rules — genre, BPM, rating, play count, date added, and more.
Tick "Live updating" so it refreshes as your library changes.

It works — as long as you're at your desk. But there's a deeper limitation: even a perfect smart playlist is just a filter. It decides which songs, not which order.

Filtering isn't the same as flow

"All my upbeat songs" is a filter. But a great workout, party, or wind-down playlist isn't a pile of matching songs — it's a sequence. A warm-up that builds. A peak at the right moment. A landing that brings you down gently. No smart playlist rule can do that, because rules don't understand energy or time.

That's the bit people actually wanted from smart playlists all along: not just automation, but a playlist that goes somewhere.

The modern alternative

My Flowlist works like the smart playlist Apple Music never got — on your iPhone, where it belongs. Pick an occasion (workout, run, party, focus, wind-down) and a duration, and it scans your Apple Music library, scores every track for real BPM and energy, then builds and orders the playlist along a curve that fits the moment. It saves straight back into Apple Music as a normal playlist.

No Mac required. No rules to configure. No manual ordering. Just a playlist that's ready for the next 30 minutes, hour, or three of your life.

Download on the App Store Browse templates

No iPhone? Use My Flowlist in your browser.