Filed under: iTS, iTunes, Mac 101
Mac 101: Save a Genius playlist in iTunes
The feature of iTunes 8 that Apple wants to you notice is called "Genius." Basically, it generates playlists, either from your songs or the iTunes Store, based upon a track selected from your library. In this post, we'll look at creating and saving a Genius playlist on your Mac.First, select the target track in your library. I wanted to generate a playlist for work, so I selected a mellow track by Band of Horses. Next, click the Genius button (with the
icon) in the lower right-hand corner of the iTunes window. Presto! Your playlist is created. But there's still room for tweaking. At the top of the window, you'll see the track upon which your new playlist is based. Next to that, a drop-down menu lets you select the number of songs to include. Choose from 25, 50, 75 or 100.
Finally, you can exclude an individual song by deselecting the gray checkbox next to its title. When you're happy with the result, click "Save Playlist" in the upper right-hand corner.
Your new playlist will now appear with the others, named for the original target song.
![TUAW [Cafepress]](http://www.blogsmithmedia.com/www.tuaw.com/media/tuaw-cafepress-promo.png)
Reader Comments (Page 1 of 1)
Kronen said 6:17PM on 9-12-2008
How did you generate the Genius/spinning atoms character (last line of the 2nd paragraph)? Is there a keyboard shortcut for that character? I love it!
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ryan.Whitney said 6:23PM on 9-12-2008
It's just a little image in line with the text, not a real character.
http://www.blogsmithmedia.com/www.tuaw.com/media/2008/09/genius-icon-234899.png
VanillaSpice said 1:31AM on 9-16-2008
That spinning atoms pictograph is a visualisation of the Rutherford Model, and is often referred to by that name. It has become a standard icon for signifying nuclear activity or installations.
It is a part of the Unicode set (U+269B), but unfortunately, a rendering of the character isn't included in any of the Unicode fonts installed with OS X 10.4 (don't know about Leopard).
You could use U+2668, or the "recycling" pictographs U+2672, U+267A, U+267B, U+267C or U+267D instead - all of them look distinctive and recognisable at the end of a playlist name even if they're not the correct character.
Or you could use the Character Palette to paste in the U+269B character (which will appear as a box) and then hope that Apple updates the characters in its fonts to include the Rutherford Model pictograph - when they do, the correct character will appear automatically.
VanillaSpice said 12:30AM on 9-18-2008
OS 10.5 Leopard comes with Arial Unicode MS which is a reasonably complete Unicode font that may include a rendering of the U+269B Rutherford Atom.
If it does not, or if you are using OS 10.4 Tiger, you can still get the correct icon - search for and download the shareware font Code2000, and install it. Font Book said it was bad but I have had no problems after installing it.
Use the Character Palette to insert the U+269B character. It may initially appear as a square, but will be rendered correctly when you finish naming or re-naming the item.
This TIFF image shows what it looks like with both small and large text options: http://www.vanillabaron.com/tuaw/ruth/c2k_atom.tif
Of course, it does not work on the iPhone or iPod Touch - the icon is rendered as a square.
babyfett said 6:36PM on 9-12-2008
Is this supposed to be a tip. It's all pretty self explanatory once you boot up iTunes 8.
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pangelav said 7:45PM on 9-12-2008
Once a genius playlist is made, how do you delete it? I mistakenly deleted just the first song from the playlist and now it won't let me delete the list although it's still playable (it begins at their second suggested song). The other Genius playlists were easy to delete as long as that first song was still in the list.
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dan said 12:17PM on 12-07-2008
I'm having a similar problem. Anybody come up with a solution?
I wonder if "opting out" would fix it...
bebopredux said 8:43PM on 9-12-2008
I have to say that even a skeptic like me loves Genius so far. I have a 450GB library and it took a good 2 days to get the Genius function uploaded and then sent to me. IMO, it works very well and is bound to only get better.
Steve was absolutely correct when he said that it would help us "rediscover" our music library. I now have 10 different Genius playlists and they are spot on. I am really rediscovering my music. I think the bigger the library the more this is the case. It is with me anyway.
So, mark me down as impressed. iTunes 8 is the best yet and I've been there from the beginning.
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simplynutty said 8:14PM on 9-15-2008
@bebopredux That's a huge Library! Is that just music or does it include movies?
So far I'm a fan of Genius as well. It would be cool if I could somehow use Genius to weed out songs I don't like, listen to often etc.
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Mike said 7:05PM on 9-23-2008
In tunes to delete a genius play list, first go into the play list under "Playlists" select all the songs and click delete. Then you can right click on the playlist name and say delete
after you sync they remove from your ipod
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