dougscripts.com

May 16 2018 - 8:45 am

Remove Currently Playing from Current Playlist

It actually takes more words to explain what this script does than words used in the script itself.

You might be listening to a playlist when you hear a song that doesn't belong in that playlist—a Frank Zappa track ended up in a Frank Sinatra playlist, for example. You could: right-click on the iTunes LCD and click the "Remove From Playlist" item. If you haven't disabled it, you'll see a confirmation dialog asking if you realy want to remove the current track from the playlist.

That's three clicks so far. And then, after the track is removed from the playlist, iTunes stops. And to resume, you'll either hit space bar to play the next track (which will be selected) or spend some time looking for a track to play next.

That's a lot of business.

So here's a script that will delete the the currently playing track from the current playlist and start playing the next track* automatically:

tell application "iTunes"

if special kind of current playlist is not none then return

set deleteThis to current track

next track

try

delete deleteThis

end try

end tell

Open this in Script Editor by clicking the little little script icon above. Save it named whatever you like with the Format "Script" (.scpt) in your ~/Library/iTunes/Scripts/ folder so that it will be listed in the iTunes Script menu. Follow the instructions on this page to add a keyboard shortcut.

Oh yes. A keyboard shortcut.

The first line ensures you don't run this on a track playing from a media library playlist, because deleting a track from one of those deletes the track from the library. Then it stores a reference to the currently playing track, then plays the next track. Finally, the former current track is deleted from the playlist. The try block is used so that if the track can't be deleted for some reason the script will fail gracefully.

*The Next Track is a terrific podcast I co-host.

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