Hi all,
I have managed to create an Automator script application to ensure my Tidal playlists are updated daily.
Some users here have already reported the annoying static state of the Tidal playlists once they are synced to Roon and, like others, I have a playlists that is updated daily.
I run the core on a MacMini and created an Automator script that quits Roon, deletes the Tidal cache files, then re-launches Roon and using a calendar event to trigger the Automator script every morning at 1am (unlikely that I’ll be using Roon at that time)
Steps to create the Automator script yourself:
I could send you the script, but for security, you should create one yourself
- launch Automator (command+space and type ‘autom’ to quickly find it)
- create a new Application, using File > New
- then choose the ‘Application’ type, and save somewhere on your system (maybe your user’s Documents folder) remember where you save it. I called mine ‘relaunch-roon’
- in the Automator select the ‘Library’ item in the ‘Actions’ panel
- choose the ‘Quit Application’ action and drag it into the workflow, scroll down or type ‘quit’ in the search
- in the Quit workflow item, open the pop-out menu and select ‘other’ and browse to and select the Roon app.
- (I untick the ‘Ask to save changes’ as I wont be monitoring the action anyway, and what is there to save anyways)
- in the Quit workflow’s ‘Options’ menu, I have set it to "Ignore this action`s input’
- then find and drag a ‘Pause’ action into the workflow
- I set it to 5 minutes, just in case Roon struggles to quit
- then drag a ‘Run AppleScript’ action into the workflow
- then write the following code there, adjust the path to match your user location
tell application "Finder"
delete (every item of folder "Macintosh HD:Users:your-user-name:Library:Roon:Cache")
end tell
MAKE SURE TO ADJUST THE PATH BEFORE RUNNING THIS SCRIPT
- then find and add ‘Launch Application’ and again open the pop-out menu and select ‘other’ and navigate to and select the Roon app.
You can stop here, but if you leave the MacMini un-attended for longer periods, you may want to add the ‘empty trash’ script and keep the trash from building up every evening. - optional trash cleanup, drag another ‘Run AppleScript’ action into your workflow
- add the following script
tell application "Finder"
set warns before emptying of trash to false
empty trash
end tell
remember that this will also empty anything else you may have placed there
That’s it for the Automator part, now we need to call that script via the main MacOS Calendar app.
- launch Calendar (command+space and type ‘cal’ to quickly find it)
- double click on tomorrow and create a new event.
- give it some title, i.e. ‘run Automator script’
- select the time of day you’d like to run it
- repeat as often as you’d like (mine is daily 1am)
- set ‘end repeat’ to ‘Never’
- click the ‘alert’ pop-out menu and select ‘Custom’
- then instead of ‘Message with sound’, select ‘Open file’
- then instead of ‘Calendar’, select ‘Other’ and browser to and select your Automator workflow, and click ‘Ok’
That’s it, now your Automator script will run every time the calendar event is triggered 
and fingers crossed, your Tidal playlists will also get updated.
Hope this helps more other Roon lovers.
Regards,
Robert
btw: my daily updating Tidal playlist is one I scrape from the Australian ‘DoubleJ’ station playlist and convert to Tidal. If you’d like to give their programming a listen, below is the Tidal playlist. I cannot guarantee exactly what time of the day it is updated, but it usually matches about 6 hours worth of music, and the title changes with the date
https://tidal.com/browse/playlist/8c136483-d276-4e21-a6f5-b8ca66cf3342