Questions/Ideas

[John H]

I had a relatively long post written out yesterday and then . . .bam. . .lost power and all went poof. So trying to remember what I wrote:

• Is the playlist import/export working? When I go to the page it says the text about the box but there is no box and I can't seem to get it to do anything.
• I'm not sure you could do this given the 1K limit but it would be neat to be able to export a full list even if you can't save it in Google. My thinking is it would allow me to pull those lists into iTunes and sync with some of my other devices. I.e. I use a flash drive in my car and an old ipod elsewhere. My main use would be to migrate ratings over from Google.
• I am signed into Chrome at home but not at work since I don't want to sync stuff. I know I can disable all but my extensions for sync but even then there are a bunch I use at home not allowed at work. What happens if I have the same playlist name in both places? So far seems to work ok but I wasn't sure if the sync was name based or some internal id based.
• Does the extension have to be open to do its thing or just Google Music open and extension enabled?
• Might be useful to save off a non smart version of a list. I'm thinking if you have it set to shuffle the contents of the list based on some criteria (i.e. last played, etc) when you have a version you really like you can snap it off and save permanently while the real version keeps shuffling. 
• It would be nice to be able to adjust the order of criteria and sort. I have found my self deleting criteria I added later because I want to add an extra criteria to the earlier section purely for aesthetics. I.e. I created 3 in scope genres and then added a rating filter. Decided later I want to add another genre and in order to get them aligned next to each other I delete the ratings, add the filter, then put the ratings back.
• Took me a while to realize that if you used the 5 star system prior to it going away the 5=thumbs up and 1=thumbs down doesn't hold true. I.e. I have 1-5 in the mix. Might be worth updating the notes as I thought it wasn't working.

In the end this is a great and much needed addition to Google Music so THANKS!

[Simon Weber]

Great questions! I'll add a bunch of these answers to the FAQ I'm working on.

Responses inline:

Is the playlist import/export working?

Technically, yes, but it doesn't do what you expect. I built it to help in development and support people moving from the sideloaded extension to the web store extension -- you need to have two pages open from two separate versions of the extension, then drag between them.

I've already removed it from the next version since it's misleading. As far as exporting your autoplaylists for iTunes, I think it'd be easier to go through Google Music directly. You can probably find a script biult with https://github.com/simon-weber/gmusicapi to export to m3us or something similar.

What happens if I have the same playlist name in both places?

Ah, interesting. The sync works based on ids behind the scenes, so I'd expect it to create two separate playlists with roughly the same contents (with the one you're not using falling behind since it's not syncing).

I'm not sure there's a great solution for this situation. Maybe try leaving Chrome running on a home computer so that extension continues to do syncs while you're at work?

Does the extension have to be open to do its thing or just Google Music open and extension enabled?

Roughly the latter. This is how it works:

• the first time in a browser session you open a Music tab, the extension is initialized and begins syncing. You don't need to click the icon and open the extension for this to happen.
• it will continue to sync as long as 1) Chrome is running, and 2) your Google auth hasn't expired. This should work for a bit even after closing the Music tab, though I haven't tested for how long.

 

Might be useful to save off a non smart version of a list.

 

Ah, yeah. Since autoplaylists are just normal playlists in Google Music, you can do this in the web app (and maybe the mobile app, too):

• highlight the autoplaylist
• click the three-dot menu that appears
• click "add playlist to playlist" and select "new playlist" 

 

It would be nice to be able to adjust the order of criteria and sort.

Ah, this isn't something I've thought about. I opened https://github.com/simon-weber/Autoplaylists-for-Google-Music/issues/36 to track it.

Took me a while to realize that if you used the 5 star system prior to it going away the 5=thumbs up and 1=thumbs down doesn't hold true.

Good catch. For some reason I assumed they migrated old ratings when the lab went away. I opened https://github.com/simon-weber/Autoplaylists-for-Google-Music/issues/37 to track this.

Thanks for all the feedback! Hope these answers are useful.