Personal Auto Playlist app for iPhone and iPad

Copyright © 2017, John Powers

Personal Auto Playlist creates a randomized playlist from your Apple Music library based on the star ratings of songs in your library. Tap the "Start Personal Playlist" button to begin listening to randomly selected songs in the Apple Music app. You can then open the Apple Music app to see the songs queued Up Next and to control play back.

The first time you run this app, it reports that the random playlist contains 0 (zero) songs. Only after you approve the privacy request to access your Apple Music library can it build an auto playlist. After allowing access to your music library, you can press the "Start Personal Playlist" button to create and begin playing a random selection of music.

The main screen in PersonalAutoPlaylist lets you configure how often you want to hear songs based on star ratings. You may want to hear highly rated songs more often, so set the time to hear 5-star songs to play again after, say, 8 days. You may not want to hear from low rated songs for a long time, so set the time to hear 2-star songs to play again after, say, 6 months.

You decide the maximum number of songs that will be chosen for each star rating. Songs that are eligible to play again after the replay time limit are shuffled, then the number of songs imposed by your maximum are added to the auto playlist.

Finally, because of the random nature of picking songs, some songs do not get heard for a very long time regardless of their rating. The last selection criterion picks up least recently played songs up to, say, 1 hour of total duration. You can configure total cumulative song duration and lowest star rating to include.

This app does not tamper with your playlists, nor does it add any new playlists to your library. It creates a temporary playlist which is sent to the Up Next queue in the Apple Music app.