What are Smart Crates, and how to use them?

Smart Crates in Crates allow you to automatically organize your music library using flexible, rule-based filters. With Smart Crates, you can create dynamic playlists or views that adapt as your library grows.

Here’s how to use them:

Creating a Smart Crate

1. Create a Smart Crate:
   Navigate to your Crates library through the left-side tree, right-click at the Crate that you want to insert a Smart Crate under, and select “New Smart Crate.”
   
   
   
   
2. Define the filters:
   Use the supported filters below, to define which tunes should be included.
   Here’s a loaded example:
   
   in:Collection  bpm>100  bpm<105  genre:bass  tags:vinyl  grouping:primetime  discovered>2024-10-01
   
   This query creates a Smart Crate that will contain tunes that:
   • Are under the crate named “Collection”
   • Have BPM between 100 and 105
   • Have genre “bass”
   • Are tagged with tag “vinyl”
   • Have grouping “primetime”
   • Were discovered after October 1, 2024
     

All fields in the example above are combined using AND (which can be included or omitted), meaning all criteria must be met for a tune to be included.

Operators & Syntax notes

Crates also supports advanced query syntax to create more complex filters:

• Wildcards:
  Use * to match multiple characters and ? to match a single character.
  Example: genre:*hop will match any genre ending with “hop” (e.g., trip hop, glitch hop, hip hop).
• Quotation Marks:
  Use quotation marks " for exact matches or when string values contain spaces.
  Example: genre:"uk garage"
• “OR” and parentheses for nesting logic:
  Use parentheses () to group multiple conditions. This allows you to combine AND and OR operations.
  Example: (genre:house OR genre:"uk garage") bpm>128 bpm<136 tags:boatparty
• “NOT” Operator:
  Use ! to exclude specific terms.
  Example: genre:dub !genre:techno matches all dub tunes but will exclude the ones with genre “dub techno”

Supported Fields for Smart Crate Rules

Other Notes

• Additional text fields supported: label, composer, remixer, albumartist, filename
• text fields will have * appended by default to return incomplete terms e.g title:circl will return “circle” as well. 
• Please mind the spaces between fields and operators.  bpm>100 is correct , "bpm > 100" is not valid
• To test your queries you can use them in Search as well 

More examples 

• To make a smart crate of tunes that have not been added to “DJ Playlists” and match genres “jazz”: !in:"DJ Playlists" genre:jazz
• (genre:ambient or tags:chill or grouping:chill) bpm>60 bpm<200 rating>5 added>2020-12-01