GNOME Bugzilla – Bug 540450
Add a way to avoid duplicate items in play lists
Last modified: 2020-03-17 08:23:09 UTC
Currently, playlists can contain the same track multiple times. While this does make sense for the play queue, it does not seem very useful to me for playlists. In most other players (e.g. iTunes, Rhythmbox) playlists can not contain duplicate tracks either. I would also prefer this behavior in Banshee. Steps to reproduce: - create a new playlist - drag the same track to it twice Expected behavior: the playlist contains the track only once Actual behavior: the playlist contains the track twice
I don't know, frankly I'd like my music player not to place any restrictions on me at all. Rhythmbox won't allow duplicates in the play queue (which I find annoying), but if Banshee did the same thing, someone else might be annoyed.
I would see it as a feature rather than a restriction. I use playlists as sets of related songs ('background music', 'party music', etc.), not as lists of songs to play (for that there's the play queue). My playlists are mostly created gradually over time, and it's annoying to each time check if a song was already included or not. But clearly, it's a personal preference. What about adding an option per playlist 'Ignore duplicates'?
I'd say this is a feature, not a bug. (In reply to comment #2) > But clearly, it's a personal preference. What about adding an option per > playlist 'Ignore duplicates'? That is unnecessarily complex UI clutter I think. What about a "remove duplicates" in the play list's context menu?
(In reply to comment #3) > That is unnecessarily complex UI clutter I think. What about a "remove > duplicates" in the play list's context menu? No; every time I've added some new songs to a playlist, I would then have to select the 'remove duplicates' context menu item again. Not very user-friendly. What about a global setting 'prevent duplicates in playlists'? To remain backwards compatible, the default setting would be to allow duplicates, but users can prevent that if they want. With 'prevent duplicates' enabled, dragging a song to a playlist will not add the song if the playlist already contains it.
Just for clarification, I don't think that iTunes "doesn't allow" duplicates; it just warns you and asks for confirmation if you are trying to add a song to a playlist that already has that song. I think this is an acceptable solution, especially if that warning box contains an option like "Never warn me about duplicates again."
IMO confirmation with an option "Never ask again" would be indeed the best solution. BTW, #551649 is a duplicate of this.
*** Bug 551649 has been marked as a duplicate of this bug. ***
(In reply to comment #6) > BTW, #551649 is a duplicate of this. Thanks. :)
*** Bug 615121 has been marked as a duplicate of this bug. ***
This feature is especially valuable when users create a playlist to sync to a device. They don't want a song on their device twice.
@Stefan: it won't be synced twice 'cause sync removes duplicates, but track count will differ between your playlist and that caused me to file a wrong bug #611479.
Just wanted to add my voice to say that this seriously bothers me. Everything else about banshee is fine, but when I make a playlist, I am really trying to make a collection of single tracks that are related because I want them to be. I find that I just don't even want to bother trying to create playlists because even with just 400 tracks in a playlist, I can't keep track of which tracks have been added more than once - could be there are actually only 200 tracks, with 100 of those in triplicate, which entirely throws off a) the ability of shuffle to select a random track, and b) my ability to tell which songs are in the playlist. I wouldn't mind a setting or a confirmation, but right now I just can't do anything and it's rather frustrating. :-p
*** Bug 651728 has been marked as a duplicate of this bug. ***
Hi, Just adding to #12 above, the scenario for me is that I keep a playlist for a device (very large, but still a subset of my whole library), and other smaller ones. It is *very* easy to accidentally add duplicates to a playlist unless one goes back a forth between the main library and the playlist. Not a great system. Anyways, my sense is that a "Don't allow duplicates" option in the Playlist context menu wouldn't add too much clutter but it would help greatly. Other options, like a warning, would work to, IMHO. Cheers,
+1 Having the same song listed several times in a playlist is really confusing and unintuitive and doesn't serve any purpose.
There is no use case for having a song twice in a play list. The only "use case" I can think of is wanting to play a song with higher probability during random play. But this should be implemented using ratings if at all. This is a bug which I came to file when I saw this bug.
(In reply to comment #16) > There is no use case for having a song twice in a play list. There's no use case if you assume that everyone is shuffling through their playlists. But if I create a playlist of songs that I want to listen to in order, it's not unreasonable to think that I might want to hear the same song or album multiple times. But I'm definitely not disagreeing with this report. Just pointing out that eliminating the possibility for duplicate tracks isn't the right solution because there might be a use case for having the same song multiple times.
OK, that is a use case, although it is very remote. If the developers want to accommodate it, there are two alternative solutions: 1. Show a dialog box when adding duplicates (showing all duplicates at the same time) 2. Let the user set a preference to allow duplicates to be added (default is to ignore duplicates) In the mean time, a fix would be to write an extension that removes duplicate entries (that is, ones that refer to the same audio file).
+1 If the core developping team doesn't want to integrate that option (of course as an option as said Mathijs), I'd be really happy to see a plugin allowing it !
+1 iTunes does this well in two ways and I prefer the other method not suggested here: right-click menu on a song has an item "show in playlist" which then lists playlists where the selected song is present. Illustrated here: http://www.apple.com/findouthow/music/itunes.html#tips-rightclick Use case: I find a song in my library that I feel should be in one or more playlists. With a right-click I check whether it already is and if not, then I add it to all desired playlists. Or what is even more awesome: highlight playlists where the song is present when I select the song :) Oh pretty please!
Banshee is not under active development anymore and had its last code changes more than three years ago. Its codebase has been archived. Closing this report as WONTFIX as part of Bugzilla Housekeeping to reflect reality. Please feel free to reopen this ticket (or rather transfer the project to GNOME Gitlab, as GNOME Bugzilla is being shut down) if anyone takes the responsibility for active development again. See https://gitlab.gnome.org/Infrastructure/Infrastructure/issues/264 for more info.