Smart Playlist filter: "Not played in X days" — Library Rediscovery

[remon1496]

Summary

Add a "Not played in the last X days/weeks/months" filter to the Smart Playlists plugin. This would exclude tracks that have been played within a configurable time window, surfacing music from your library that you haven't heard in a while.

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Why this is different from "No repeat within"

The existing No repeat within option (under Advanced) prevents the same track from appearing in consecutive evaluations of the same playlist. It's a session/queue-level deduplication tool.

The proposed filter is different in intent and scope:

	No repeat within	Not played in X days
Scope	Per-playlist, tracks played recently in that playlist	Global play history across all sources
Goal	Avoid hearing the same song twice in a row	Surface genuinely unplayed/forgotten tracks
Time window	Hours (1–8760 h)	Days / weeks / months
Use case	Shuffle variety	Library rediscovery

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Use case

Anyone with a large library knows the problem: you keep playing the same familiar tracks because they're top of mind. A huge portion of your collection sits unplayed for months or years.

A "not played in X days" filter would let you create a Library Rediscovery playlist:

• Smart Playlist (Dynamic)
• Filter: Not played in the last 60 days
• Optional: combined with a genre or year-range filter for more focus

Every time you play it, it exclusively draws from the forgotten corners of your library. No skipping to what you already know — it's simply not in the list.

This is one of the most-loved features of Plex's dynamic playlists ("Unplayed" / "Last played before date") and is frequently requested on other self-hosted music platforms for exactly this reason.

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Proposed implementation

Add a new option in the Filters section (or as a companion to the existing No repeat within slider in Advanced):

Not played in the last [___] days (off by default)

A simple numeric input or stepped slider (e.g. 7 / 14 / 30 / 60 / 90 / 180 / 365 days, or free input) would cover most use cases.

The filter would rely on the same play-history data that already powers No repeat within — so no new data collection should be needed, just a different filtering threshold applied at rule evaluation time.

Edge cases to consider:

• Tracks with no play history at all should be included (they qualify as "not played recently" by definition — these are prime rediscovery candidates).
• The filter should combine cleanly with AND/OR rule logic like all other filters.
• For the Fixed (one-time) mode, the threshold is evaluated at creation time.

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Prior art

• Plex — dynamic playlist conditions: Unplayed, Last played before [date], Play count is 0
• Beets / Navidrome smart playlists — lastplayed field comparisons
• iTunes / Music.app — smart playlist rule: Last played → is not in the last → X days

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Impact

This is a low-friction, high-reward feature. It requires no new metadata, turns MA into a genuine library exploration tool, and is the kind of thing that makes people actually listen to the music they spent years collecting. 🎵

[nothingspecial]

I'd like this feature too.

However, I don't just use Music Assistant to play my music. The lastplayed/playcount/date played information isn't synced from my provider (Emby) into the Music Assistant database only the other way around, from MA to Emby. Therefore a smart playlist based on last played (before) is meaningless.

Do the providers you mention (navidrome, plex) sync their playcounts/last played statistics with the Music Assistant database? If so, I will request this as a feature in the Emby provider.

Thanks

[remon1496]

I'd like this feature too.

However, I don't just use Music Assistant to play my music. The lastplayed/playcount/date played information isn't synced from my provider (Emby) into the Music Assistant database only the other way around, from MA to Emby. Therefore a smart playlist based on last played (before) is meaningless.

Do the providers you mention (navidrome, plex) sync their playcounts/last played statistics with the Music Assistant database? If so, I will request this as a feature in the Emby provider.

Thanks

Yeah, server definitely needs to keep history in database for these kinds of features. Currently non of the providers communicate that in a way its integrated in ma database afaik.

[carlhye]

Great writeup — the distinction from "No repeat within" is well explained, and you're right that the data foundation is already there. MA tracks last_played per track (used for scrobbling), so this filter wouldn't require new data collection, just exposing it as a rule condition in the Smart Playlists plugin.

The main question is whether the plugin's rule engine supports timestamp comparisons today, or whether that needs to be added. I can flag this for the team to assess feasibility on the plugin side.

Anyone else using this pattern in Plex or Navidrome and missing it here? More use cases help us prioritise.

[remon1496]

Thank you for commenting. Seems like not a lot of people are missing this feature in here. So could be low prio I suppose.
Would be a nice quick-ish win if all data is there though, if new datapoints are needed, I think putting it on backlog would be fine. Its really QoL, but not an absolute necessity.

Wrote the feature request with a bit of ai help because I didn't really could put it into words myself. Did a good job with some guidance, but don't want to look 'lazy'. :)