How To Make Genius Playlists On iPhone 2.1

UPDATED: The Genius playlist function on iPhone is a brilliant addition to the 2.1 update. In order to use the "Genius" playlist function on iPhone all you need to do is activate Genius in iTunes 8 first, sync your iPhone and you're ready to create Genius playlists on the fly. Unless you perform a sync following installation of the 2.1 software the Genius feature will not appear on your iPhone. Resyncing is key. You'll see the Genius tag and icon in Playlists after you launch iPod on your device.

Make sure you activate Genius in your iTunes library first which may take up to ten minutes or longer to complete depending on the size of your library. Once you've completed this step you're good-to- go. If the Genius function on iTunes is not activated first, it will not be activated on your iPhone. This will drive you crazy unless you know, like it did for me.

The next steps are simple; launch iPod and select Playlists. You'll see Genius at the top of the page. Select Genius and your iPhone will open to Songs. You can either select a Song that Genius will use to build a playlist from or you can select Artists at the bottom of your window and make a playlist based on the Artist. * Either way your playlist is built off of the song you choose. [updated]

The sample playlists that I included (below) from my iPhone show Jack Johnson which is a Genius playlist I created using Jack Johnson as the Artist. The playlist that begins with Robbie Williams "Angels" was built based on that one song. You can determine what led the creation of the list by the Genius icon found on the right. Once a Genius list is built, you'll notice it's starts playing automatically which will can come in handy when you're on-the-go. It's annoying if you're not.

The playlist that I downloaded to my iPhone from iTunes called "Vulnerable" (pictured at top of page) can be identified easily as a Genius playlist by the icon on the right. I found the Genuis playlist function for iPhone to be very fast and simple. For the most part, I was happy with the song and artist selections. There were a few tweakers but nothing I considered a major buzzkill.

You can refresh your Genius playlist anytime by tapping the refresh button to have songs updated in the list or make a new list on the fly. A very cool function of Genius playlisting on iPhone. The more songs and variety of artists you have, the better your Genius playlists will be.

It appears that a Genius playlist created in iPhone is limited to 25 songs, which is fine since you can refresh it as often as you choose. I could not find anything to change 25 in iPod settings. Though I will have to dig in more to understand the limitations of Genius playlisting on iPhone and in iTunes. iTunes allows Genius playlists up to 100 songs deep.

For now these basic tips should help you get started and hopefully keep you from massive frustration. Also, Apple has posted an iTunes 8 tutorial page that you may find useful. From now on, just like me, you can start telling everyone, "My friggin playlists are genius!"

 

*See Tom's correction in comments below now updated in this post.

Comments

[Tim R]

I just want something that I can create a playlist of any length with songs I have picked myself. I'm pretty astonished that this functionality doesn't come with the iPhone especially as I'm fairly certain it was possible in earlier iPods. For that matter the ability to add or remove songs one at a time without resyncing the entire bl***y device and/or resorting to 3rd party software (which is what I ended up doing) was also available. Also syncing software that doesn't threaten to freeze my PC every time I use it would be good. Apple's new slogan should be "Apple - step backwards to move forwards, we know it's frustrating but we like it that way".

[june]

when i say i need playlists, i mean a list for say 25 classical and another list for say 25 country, etc. this does not seem to work. i have the latest 3gs and thought that this would hve been updated to do such a thing.

[spektrum]

how do i up the limit of songs on my iphone to more then 25 in genius. thanks

[BuddhaJ]

Actually, you can enable genius when you manually manage music.

Enable Genius on itunes
Under playlists, Drag the "Genius" one to your iphone, it will sync and add the genius functionality WITHOUT affecting your music already on your iphone! Hope that helps!

[blluescoot]

to increase genius playlist size there is a button on the top to increase list size (25, 50, 75, 100)

[Goobi]

Genius can be initiated after you have started the track, which for some reason this article mentions. Just tap once to bring up the HUD. Then tap the genius button and your genius playlist is created with the currently playing track continuing to play at the top.

[mare]

Unfortunately the Genius does NOT work on the iPhone if you manually manage your music. My Library on iTunes on my Mac is different than the one on the iPhone since I have all my music on several external hardrives and much more music on there than will fit my iPhone. So I move my music to and from my iPods and iPhone manually. Enabling Genius still sends all my music info to Apple (now that is Genius, from a marketing perspective) but it won't sync that info with the iPhone.

Genius is enabled in iTunes and on my iPhone. But when I click on the Genius icon it says: "Genius playlists are not enabled. Use iTunes to enable Genius Playlists."
(What they mean is "Use iTunes on your computer". iTunes is also an application on the iPhone, just to make things confusing.)

Just for your information.

[John V. Keogh]

Only ten minutes? Mine took over half an hour, maybe an hour - I didn't stick around. Genius still does not have suggestions for most of my more obscure music.

[Tom]

Great article, but one correction: A Genius playlist is always based on a single song.

You can select the song from the song list or, as you noted, via the artist. But in either case you still have to pick a song before the playlist is created, and it's always based on the song you selected, not the actual artist.

I thought Genius would be just another recommendation system, and in fact the recommendation sidebar is all some people dwell on. But I've shut the sidebar off, while the Genius playlists are very well done, surprisingly "accurate", and I'll be keeping Genius activated for that feature.

[Russ Parker]

This post is Genius (pun intended). I have been tearing my hair out. That said, I found that I had to turn Genius off then on again (as you suggested), but then I had to create a Genius Playlist on iTunes and copy it to my iPhone then Sync before the Genius functions would appear.
Working perfectly now, so thanks for paving the way.
RJ

[K]

Thank you! I've been trying to figure this out all day.