Spotify Playlist Folders

Update: This method is no longer required. As of August 2010 Spotify now has it’s own Playlist Folders feature.

Ok, so you can’t currently (June 2009) have Playlist Folders in Spotify, but this is the next best thing. I promise. I will also sprinkle sugar on it by showing you how to make the left column wider than the allowed maximum.

I use empty playlists as separators to create crude containers for my growing number of playlists. When Spotify does introduct playlist folders it will be simple to drag and drop across into the newly created folder.

I have several separators along the lines of:

---- Playlists ----

A selection of self created or discovered playlists that I like. Usually up to 10 of them.

---- To Try ----

Albums and playlists that I haven’t decided to keep yet. A place to put stuff on trial. I can then more it into a permanent place or delete it after a few plays.

---- New ----

Anything I only recently added and want to find easily

---- a ----

through to

---- z ----

A separator for each letter of the alphabet. Helps easy finding of artist / album

---- bucket ----

Always at the bottom, a place to quickly add new playlists that I will file later when I have a minute

Method

Spotify playlist foldersTo set up your containers, just create a few new playlists using the +New playlist link at the bottom of Spotify’s left column. I always surround the containers text with 4 dashes to make it easy to spot when scrolling.

Once you have your basic containers set up you can quickly drag your existing playlists / albums into the gaps between the container names.

To quick create a playlist with the name Artist – Album, you can drag any link in Spotify over to the +New playlist link. It will be added to the bucket section ready for you to file.

Left column width

Ok. So if you have a screen wider than 13″ you will probably want to make the left column a little wider so you can see all your playlist names in full. You can do this (on a mac) with a little plain text file editing of /application support/spotify/users/yourusername-user/guistate

Just close Spotify, open the file above in a plain text editor, find the text side_bar_width: and change the number to whatever you like. When you start Spotify next time, the left column width should be whatever you set it to.

This change will likely be reset by Spotify when it updates, and will jump back to the set maximum if you try and make it larger or smaller with your mouse. You may have to do these steps every few weeks.

This method is also likely to work in Windows too, although you will have to find the appropriate file to edit yourself. It should contain the text side_bar_width however.

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8 Replies to “Spotify Playlist Folders”

  1. Do you got another sollution as spotify doesn’t show in my application support. It is driving me nuts as a friend of mine set the left column width to about 1,5cm by accident and I cannot reset it.

  2. deap I suggest you reinstall Spotify.
    Uninstall first, then install again.

    All your playlists and preferences are stored on the Spotify servers so they should be safe.

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