Playlist Monitor¶
The Playlist Monitor watches your favourite Spotify playlists and automatically downloads new tracks as they are added — hands-free.
How it works¶
Downtify keeps a background task running every 60 seconds. On each sweep it checks every enabled monitored playlist to see if it is due for inspection (based on its configured interval). When a playlist is due, Downtify:
- Fetches the full track list from Spotify
- Compares it against the set of tracks already downloaded
- Downloads any new tracks using the same pipeline as a manual download
- Updates the M3U file for the playlist (if M3U generation is enabled)
Tracks that were already in the playlist when you added it are skipped — only new additions are downloaded. If a track's file is later deleted from disk, it will be re-downloaded on the next check.
Adding a playlist¶
- Click the eye icon (👁️) in the navigation bar
- Paste a Spotify playlist URL
- Choose a check interval (from 15 minutes to once a month)
- Click Watch
Check intervals¶
| Label | Minutes | Best for |
|---|---|---|
| Every 15 min | 15 | Frequently updated playlists |
| Every 30 min | 30 | |
| Every hour | 60 (default) | Most playlists |
| Every 3 hours | 180 | |
| Every 6 hours | 360 | |
| Every 12 hours | 720 | |
| Every day | 1 440 | Slowly changing playlists |
| Every week | 10 080 | Playlists updated weekly |
| Every 2 weeks | 20 160 | |
| Every month | 43 200 | Archive or rarely updated playlists |
You can change the interval of an existing playlist at any time from the monitor card without removing and re-adding it.
Managing monitored playlists¶
From the Monitor page you can:
- Pause / Resume — temporarily disable a playlist without removing it
- Force check — trigger an immediate check outside the scheduled interval
- Remove — stop monitoring a playlist and delete its record (downloaded files are kept)
Per-track metadata enrichment¶
Playlist embed entries are missing the release year and use the playlist cover art instead of the per-track album cover. Downtify re-fetches each new track individually to get the correct cover and year before downloading — falling back to the playlist-level data if the per-track fetch fails.
M3U integration¶
After each sweep that downloads at least one new track, Downtify regenerates the playlist's M3U file to reflect the current on-disk state. See M3U Export for details.
Storage¶
Monitor state is stored in a SQLite database at /data/downtify_monitor.db. The database records:
- Each monitored playlist (Spotify ID, name, URL, interval, enabled state, last check time)
- Every track successfully downloaded per playlist, including the filename on disk