Replace a Deleted iTunes “Recently Added” Playlist
Back on June 9th of this year I wrote an article detailing the steps for importing an audio book from CD into iTunes and making it appear in the audio book section. In those instructions I describe how to use the “Recently Added” playlist as a quick way to find the imported audio files. A recent reader unfortunately removed that default playlist and now needs to know how to complete my instructions without that playlist. The easiest way is to simply recreate the missing playlist, and here is how.
Recreate the iTunes Recently Added playlist
The default “Recently Added” playlist is a Smart Playlist, which means it’s a normal playlist except that it automatically adds music based on predefined criteria. Therefore to recreate a deleted “Recently Added” playlist, follow these steps:
- Start iTunes and then from the menu bar select File -> New Smart Playlist
- Change the condition settings to match the ones in the image shown below
- Make sure that “Match the following rule” near the top of the dialog is checked
- Also make sure that “Live updating” near the bottom of the dialog box is also checked and then click OK
The new playlist appears in the iTunes left hand sidebar. Now, just give the newly created Smartlist a name and press enter. 
That’s all there is to it. A few simple steps and the deleted “Recently Added” Smart Playlist is back in iTunes. Also, if you want to customize any of the conditions defined for the default Smart Playlists in iTunes, just right-click on the playlist title and select edit “Smart Playlist” from the pop-up menu. The conditional settings are easy to understand and if you’re not certain exactly what something does, then give it a try and see what happens. You can always delete the list if you don’t like the results and it won’t delete your music.
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Filed under: How-To & Tech Tips
Thanks so much Bret. My computer is down so I will not be able to try your suggestion right now. I will keep you posted Daniel
hey thanks! i don’t really have the luxury of time to tinker with my itunes, so i end up just leaving it as it is… really useful info…
You’re welcome. Hope the instructions help.
Bret, I was able to recreat the recently added with your help but at the top of the play list is the last chapter on the CD not chapter 1, 2 etc but rather 4,3,2,1 and they down load to the Ipod backwords like this. Why?
Hi Daniel, glad that my suggestion sort of worked. I’ll try to recreate your sorting issue and write solution instructions for Monday.
Another problem solved. Thanks for your tip. My brother somehow was messing with my computer and I lost some songs in my Itunes. Also play lists are all scattered. Will try and follow this guide you wrote. Thanks again…
Hi, Bret, I never heard from you re; the sorting issue?
My apologies Daniel. It’s been a rough week getting back into my writing schedule. I have been looking into this issue and am pulling something together for next Monday (I know, I said that before but I mean it this time). Thanks for being patient. I will have something for you on Monday.
Ice, glad the tip helped you solved a problem. Thanks for stopping by and leaving a comment.
Hi Bret,
I moved my music library to a external HD about two months ago and lost all my playlists.
Will this work for me?
How far back will I be able to recreate lost playlist?
Sorry RO, personal playlists created by you cannot be recreated this way. This article only outlines how to recreate one of the default Smartlists — “Recently Added.” I’m sorry but you are out of luck. You’ll have to recreate all of your old playlists one by one.
Thanks for stopping by and posting a question. Sorry I couldn’t be of more assistance.
Thanks so much for this. I deleted the recently added playlist years ago. I thought downloading new versions of itunes and selecting repair would fix that but it never did.
Thanks!!
Thanks for the comment Linda. Glad you found the article useful.
omg!
thank you soooo much for this, i was like freaking out that i couldn’t get the playlist back.. this helped!!
thankyou!
Thanks for the positive feedback Anne. Glad you found the post helpful.
I deleted my “recently added” playlist by accident and I didn’t know the specific rules. Thanks for the help.
P.S. My birthday is on Jume 9th =)
Thanks man…i wasn’t able to add music to my i-pod.
I need to be able to erase the recently added items in itune. I downlaoded cd’s and they are numbered 1-31, however, each cd had 31 items now I have 5-#1’s, 5-#2’s, 5-#3’s and so on. I thin if I erase them alland start over I can add and erase as I go .
I’m not sure I understand your question. Let me try and address what I think your questions might be:
The “Recently Added” is a smart playlist. It displays items recently added to iTunes that meet a certain criteria which I believe is a date range. If you don’t want certain items to appear in this playlist, you need to edit the selection criteria for this smart playlist. Deleting an item from here pretty much deletes the item from your entire library.
If recently imported CDs aren’t automatically being named correctly and you end up with track 1, track 2, etc, which leaves you with several items with the same name, you have at least 2 solutions I can think of off the top of my head.
Option 1: Even though these items have the same track name, iTunes can still tell them apart. The CD number is probably how iTunes is telling them apart. You can manually edit each item and based on the track and CD number, enter the correct name or at least a name that means something to you. This option is somewhat tedious because you’ll have to keep track of which thing you’re editing. Kind of easy to lose track and make silly mistakes.
Option 2: Remove all of these items from your library and start over (which is what I think you want to do). Then after importing each CD manually rename each track from that CD before you import the next one. This option is pretty much like option 1 but there is less of a chance you’ll make a silly mistake; however, it means you have to re-import each item previously imported.
Hope that helps. If not, please comment again with a little more detail.
Thanks a million!