Smart Playlists

A smart playlist is a saved query instead of a fixed track list. You describe the tracks you want — loved, but not played in 90 days; five stars, added this month — and your Navidrome server re-evaluates those rules to a live set that stays current as your library and listening change. Nokkvi builds and edits them in a keyboard-first rules editor with a live, server-evaluated preview.

For manual playlists — the kind you fill by hand — see Playlists. This page covers the smart kind.

Needs a recent Navidrome

Smart playlists are a server feature: they require Navidrome 0.61+. On an older server — or one whose version Nokkvi can’t read — the smart entries stay hidden and the Playlists + is a plain New Playlist button. A handful of advanced rule fields need a newer server still; see the rules reference.

Creating one

On a capable server the Playlists header + becomes a small create menu:

Entry	What it does
New Playlist	A manual playlist you fill yourself — drops into the track editor
New Smart Playlist	Opens the rules editor on a fresh smart playlist
Import .nsp File	Creates a smart playlist from a rules file — see Importing rules

Shift + N (New Smart Playlist) opens the editor from anywhere, without reaching for the menu.

If Nokkvi couldn’t read the server version, the menu shows a dimmed Smart playlists unavailable — select to retry row instead of the smart entries; selecting it re-checks the server.

Editing an existing one

Smart playlists you own can be re-opened on their rules:

• E on the centered playlist row (Edit Centered Playlist) — routes a smart playlist to the rules editor and a manual one to the track editor.
• Right-click → Edit Rules… on the row (this replaces Edit Playlist, which smart rows don’t offer).
• The pencil on the Queue’s now-playing playlist banner — same smart-vs-manual routing as E.

You can only edit the rules of a playlist you own; opening someone else’s smart playlist reports Only the playlist’s owner can edit its rules. Smart rows carry a small sparkles badge in the Playlists view (tooltip Smart playlist — updates itself from rules).

The rules editor

The editor is two panes side by side, with an edit bar across the top:

• Left — the preview. The tracks your rules currently match, evaluated on the server. See Preview.
• Right — the rule form. Where you author the rules, keyboard-first.
• Edit bar. Name, comment, a public/private toggle, the cover, and the Preview, Save, Save as new…, and Discard actions.

A brand-new smart playlist opens on an empty-state list first — pick a starting point before the form appears:

• Start empty — build the rules from scratch.
• Import from .nsp file… — load rules from a file on disk into this session (see below).
• One of five presets — ready-made starting points you then edit freely.

Presets

Each preset seeds a complete rule set — a real starting point, not a fixed template. Edit it however you like before saving.

Preset	What it seeds
Never Played	Everything with zero plays, oldest additions first
Heavy Rotation	Your most-played tracks
Forgotten Loves	Loved tracks you haven’t played in 90 days
Comeback Queue	High-rated tracks on a per-tier cooldown — higher ratings recur sooner
Recently Added	The newest additions to the library

The rules reference lists the exact rules, sort, and limit each one lays down.

Building rules

The top of the form reads Match [All / Any] of the following — All means every rule must hold, Any means at least one. Below it, each rule is a row of three parts: a field, an operator, and a value (for example rating · is · 5 stars, or last played · not in the last · 90 days).

Almost nothing here is free-typed — you pick from lists so a rule can’t miss on a typo or a wrong case:

Value kind	How you set it
Field	A searchable picker — the ~18 most-used fields first, the rest behind More fields…
Operator	Only the operators valid for that field are offered
Genre / tag / artist	Picked from your library’s actual values (server matching is case-sensitive, so an exact pick matters); or commit a typed value with the Use ”…” row
Rating	A fixed 0–5 star picker (Unrated, 1 star … 5 stars)
Date	A themed month-grid calendar — no hand-typed YYYY-MM-DD
Playlist (in/not in playlist)	A picker of your other playlists
On/Off (loved, compilation, …)	A toggle

Below the rules you can add one or more sort keys (each ascending or descending, reorderable with Shift + ↑ / Shift + ↓, plus a random option) and a limit — a track count or a percentage of the library, with an optional offset.

Rules can be grouped one level deep to mix All and Any — say rating is 5 and (genre is Jazz or genre is Blues). Anything nested deeper is shown read-only and edited through the raw-JSON escape hatch.

Edit as JSON

Edit as JSON… at the bottom of the form opens the rules as raw JSON — the same format Navidrome stores and .nsp files carry. It round-trips cleanly (Escape re-parses it back into the form) and is the way to hand-edit deeply nested groups or paste rules from elsewhere.

The full list of fields, operators, and value shapes lives in the Smart Playlist Rules reference.

Live validation

Rules are checked as you edit. Errors show in the danger color and block both Preview and Save until fixed; warnings show in amber and never block. Common blockers: no rules yet, an empty group, an empty name, a bad date, a range on a multi-valued field like genre, or a rule that points at the playlist itself. An amber warning is just a heads-up — for example, a genre the server doesn’t recognize (the playlist saves, it just won’t match anything).

Preview

Preview (the chip, or Ctrl + Enter) evaluates the current rules on the server and fills the left pane with the tracks they match, headed by a running count and an evaluated HH:MM freshness stamp. Every press re-evaluates from scratch, so you can tweak a rule and immediately see the set shift. Press Enter on a preview row to play the evaluated list from there — tweak, preview, listen, in one loop.

A stray “nokkvi draft” playlist is harmless

To preview without touching anything real, Nokkvi evaluates through a private throwaway playlist named nokkvi draft (safe to ignore). It’s cleaned up automatically, and any strays self-delete at your next login — so if one flashes past in another client mid-session, that’s the preview at work, not a mess to tidy.

Saving

Save writes the rules to the playlist. Save as new… forks a separate copy — the same rules under the original’s name with (copy) appended — leaving the original untouched, handy for spinning a variant off a preset.

If the playlist changed on the server while you were editing, Save shows a conflict banner (reload the server’s rules, or overwrite anyway) rather than silently clobbering it. If it was deleted out from under you, Save offers to re-create it as a new playlist.

Once saved, the smart row shows an evaluated … timestamp — when the server last refreshed its matches.

What smart playlists can’t do

The server owns a smart playlist’s track list, so it’s read-only in Nokkvi — you shape it through rules, never by hand. That has a few knock-on effects:

• Smart playlists never appear as an add target: not in the right-click Add to Playlist dialog, not in the Ctrl + S save-queue overwrite/append dialog, and not in the Default Playlist picker.
• If your default playlist is smart, Quick Add refuses to append and asks you to pick a target instead.
• Expanded smart-playlist tracks have no Remove from Playlist action, and smart rows drop Set as Default Playlist.

Rename and Delete still work normally.

File-backed playlists

If a smart playlist is backed by an .nsp/.m3u file on the server, Nokkvi is honest about the file: deleting the playlist warns it will return on the next scan unless that file is removed, and a still-synced file keeps overwriting rule edits every scan. Renaming in Nokkvi is durable, but it won’t rename the server-side file.

Importing .nsp files

A .nsp file is a Navidrome smart-playlist rules file — JSON holding the rules plus an optional name, comment, and visibility. Nokkvi imports one two ways:

• Playlists + → Import .nsp File writes a real playlist straight away. If the name is free it’s created immediately; if it collides with a smart playlist you already own, a dialog offers Update (replace just its rules) / Create new (a separate playlist) / Cancel. A collision with a manual or someone else’s playlist offers create-only.
• The rules editor’s empty state → Import from .nsp file… loads the file’s rules into the open session like a preset — nothing is written until you Save.

Files are capped at 100 KB and may carry // and /* */ comments. A bad file reports Not a valid smart-playlist file — with the reason (too large, unparseable JSON, or no rules found). The exact envelope fields are in the rules reference.

Keyboard

The editor is built to run entirely from the keyboard — navigating rows, opening pickers, previewing, and saving without the mouse. The full key map, including the calendar and picker keys, is in Keyboard Shortcuts → Smart playlist rules editor.