Looking for playlists in sub-directories

[Frankenpod]

I have a very large number of playlists.  (They are created and exported from my media manager and copied to the ipod).

It would be useful if they could be organised in a folder structure. e.g. some consist of tracks associated with a certain artist (not necessarily _by_ that artist), some share a common 'theme' or 'mood', some are cover versions of the same song.  So it would be nice to have folders within the playlist folder called 'songs' or 'moods' or 'artist' etc, with the playlists of each type within each folder.  The media manager can export playlists with such a structure.

I can do that as it is, but only if I only access playlists via the file browser.

The drawback is that when the ipod works out the 'playlist catalogue', it only looks in the playlists folder top level, and won't search any sub-directories.

Is there any way that could be amended so when compiling the playlist catalogue rockbox would look into subfolders?  Even if it went just one level down.  Ideally the playlist catalogue browser would include the subfolder name as a prefix for the playlist name when listing playlists.

This doesn't seem like a huge change, but it's probably beyond me to do it myself.

[sunrize777]

I can do that as it is, but only if I only access playlists via the file browser.

If you are using an iPod 6th or 7th gen, (like I am,) I recommend using the Apple OS for music and videos, then using Rockbox for Apps for photos for Games and Gameboy/Gameboy color emulation. I use the iPod as my regular device because I don’t have anything else at all. If I am desperate to listen to Music on Rockbox I access the music via the file browser. I also don’t think that there is any shuffling options on Rockbox.

[bluebrother]

Shuffle is even described in the manual: https://download.rockbox.org/daily/manual/rockbox-ipod6g/rockbox-buildch7.html#x9-1190007.1

As for the original question: that should be simple to add, but would make the Playlist Catalogue more of a Playlist Browser, which is somewhat different.

[tgmondalf]

I also have a massive amount of playlists that in iTunes I could easily sort in groups with subcatagories.  Since Rockbox doesn't allow subfolders in the Playlists directory I've had to just create a naming scheme to sort them such as:
Genre-SubGenre1.m3u
Genre-SubGenre2.m3u
...but it's messy with such a LONG list without the ability to add subfolders in the Playlists folder. I really wish I knew how to open it up so that subfolders could be visible to categorize playlists.

[bluebrother]

Since Rockbox doesn't allow subfolders in the Playlists directory I've had to just create a naming scheme to sort them such as:

This is not completely correct. You can use subfolders in the "Playlist" folder. If you browse that folder using the File Browser things work just fine, assuming you have the file browser show supported files (or playlists only). However, the Playlist Catalogue won't show subfolders, and will always only show playlists (regardless of the file browser setting.)

So unless using the file browser is a no-go for you (or you require an incompatible setting for that -- but why?) you can get that functionality, just using a slightly different approach. The original post was referring to the Playlist Catalogue and having to use the file browser, but doing it that way you can get your folder structure.