That focus screen is a composite image that details many focus sub-windows, it’s a mock up just to show what is possible.
To gain access those features use the gray buttons on the right hand side of the focus window (on a small screen you may have to scroll right to see them.
Playlists are definitely my biggest complaint with Roon. I tried the Focus feature but I find it awkward to use. I want to be able to create a dynamic playlist from a single screen. With Focus you have to jump around from screen to screen to accomplish your objectives. The graphics are nice but to be honest I don’t really care about them. I found it to be somewhat awkward to use. I still maintain that JRiver Smartlists are the target Roon should be shooting for. Maybe I’m not using Focus correctly but since Roon provides virtually no proper documentation there isn’t a lot I can do about that. Seriously, we paid for this software. Is it too much to ask for a proper user manual? I have the same complaint with JRiver.
The other issue I have with creating playlists in Roon is interpreting genres. Roon has its own set of genres and if you’re just letting Roon do it’s thing that’s perfectly fine but if I’m creating a playlist for myself I want to be able to access my own metadata (genres in particular). I found that very difficult to do. Tried using the genre mapping but it didn’t seem to work the way I wanted it to. In the end I just gave up. I use Roon to play albums mostly. I love the rich curatory content, the discovery features and the seamless integration with Tidal. For playlists I’m going to stick with JRiver unless a future version of Roon addresses my issues.
The importance of simplicity. Because Roon is coming late to the playlist game, the reality is that almost everyone posting here has previously developed a “favorite,” whether that favorite is JRiver, iTunes, spotify or something else. Each of those, have themselves evolved and improved their playlist functionalities over time, but that doesn’t make it easy if you have been using iTunes to suddenly be good with playlists in JRiver. Making a switch is like learning a new language because you forget how much you have gradually learned about the player you are used to.
The trick for Roon will therefore be a) how do you make it easy to get started for those who come from another platform and have “learned that language;” b) how do you make it easy to copy or recreate playlists from elsewhere into the Roon environment; and c) how do you then add the extra Roon functionalities that those not familiar with how to use “Focus” can learn the Focus language and appreciate its power.
Below is what I posted in feature requests and after finding this thread feels more appropriate here.
After spending an extraordinary 3 hours at a The Cure 2016 tour concert I have created playlists from the concert and 4 encores set lists. Is there anyway or could there be to customize the playlists artwork like radio stations in the internet radio module. I got some good shots
I skimmed all the many great ideas on this list and didn’t see this. If it’s there, please disregard.
For classical (and for jazz in many situations) it would be great to be able to choose all the performances of the same piece with a single click. So, in my playlist for “French Summer Music,” I have Satie’s “Danses de travers” chosen. It would be great to automatically include all of the versions by performers in my collection. That playlist would go from, say, 100 selections to 400 or more and I’d get to hear more performance variety.
Admittedly, a really low priority request. But would be awesome if possible.
Ability to group select and then move items in the queue.
? 
I had a suggestion yesterday in feature requests. It also applied to album management which is related to playlists. Right now if I add a new version of a CD ( in my case I’d ripped many things many years ago to mp3 and and am reripping to lossless as time allows ). You have to then manually go delete stuff from a playlist and re-add. In general, when you have multiple versions of an album, the playlist should pick a default, possibly based on bit rate etc, but allow you to change. In fact this could be a global setting on a playlist - If I’m playing to a particular device that supports DSD256 and want to use that then the playlist should be allowed to pick my DSD versions of an album, but if I’m playing to a device that only has PCM then I may wish to use the PCM version to avoid DSD to pcm etc. In general it seems that playlist management is divorced from album management and both album and playlist management are divorced from playback choices.
I really would like to see the ability to make a Playlist based on a watched folder. So adding a song to the folder would add the song to the playlist.
Also please show Track Artist in stead of Album Artist and Track Cover Art.
You can that by using a bookmarked focus.
Agree about track artist … Roon are aware.
Ah, you’re right. Thanks!
To add to John B’s response on Deleting from a playlist:
In the Windows app, I right click on the song to see the top banner with the delete function.
Apologies if this has already been suggested but I’ve lost track of this thread over the last months.
It’s great that room can import external playlists. I have playlists going back 10 years - they’re like mix tapes and should be cherished(!)
So, I’d like to be able to export playlists that I creat in roon. Better still, I’d prefer that there as no distinction between imported and internally-generated playlists. I.e. they should all be in an industry standard format and homed in a directory of my choice.
At the moment I am stuck in a situation where it is not allowed to edit imported playlists for some reason. So, when my brother and I got together for a listening session, we were unable to add to the ever growing playlist that we"vet been cultivating over a couple of years because it has been started in media monkey, then imported into Jriver and finally into roon, where unfortunately it becomes read only. Yes, I could make a local copy but then I would be stuck not being able to share or export it.
Have been using manual playlists quite a bit this week for something specific, whereas previously I used them very little.
The biggest issue for me has been reordering things - on the iPad it’s pretty tedious in a longish list. Would be great if you could select multiple items and send to front/back of list, or group together, or bump up and down. Having to drag-slide each individually is, well, I gave up after a while and just stuck with what I had.
Really need some track/album artwork in there for sure, and if it didn’t break the UI design overall, a bit less line spacing to make better use of screenspace. The header and footer take up at least a third of useable screen too.
Really need custom/manual artwork for the playlist itself. And an export to file of some sort.
Here’s an unusual use of iTunes playlist - but a massively important one for me.
I divide my music files into a small bunch of super-genres.
By dragging one of these folders onto the iTunes window I create a playlist, not of songs, but thousands of albums.
This is how I mentally divide music in my mind - I’ll have a preference for one type of music, and it helps with browsing when it’s all together. Typically I’ll order in iTunes by Release Year/descending, or Artist.
Right now all my music types are mixed in Roon, and it’s painful for me! Tags are a much more low level means of dividing. So in iTunes I’m using Playlists to broadly group ‘like music’ as a starting point to browse.
The wonderful ‘Focus’ feature is helping group music broadly, but lacks the control I’m seeking. I DO like how you overlay my Comments field over the cover art (label info is so important).
My other ‘hacked’ use case for Playlists is to ring-fence albums that need tags/tidying. Everything in the super-genre folders I can guarantee is beautifully organised. But I’ll drag NEW music files into ‘fix’ folders - untagged it’s super messy, but Playlists help keep the good/bad files separate. I have these Playlists optimised to edit files, viewed in ‘song’ list mode, with critical fields set out in columns.
By importing the iTunes library, Roon mixes my tagged/organised with my not-yet-fixed files, which does my OCD head in 
All this is not a case for Playlists - it’s a case for better music management features!!! Includes categorisation (control and flexibility) for browsing, and editing (speed and efficiency) for us tidy and orderly freaks.
The only time I use Playlists for the reason they were invented is for radio shows and the odd party at home, but they have little value after use, and tend to get deleted quickly. Playlists are for listening to the same music again and again. Most of the time I’d rather discover new, and be listening to full albums.
Thanks.
Hi Matthew,
Good feedback however, I can’t help but thinking that most of what you do here can be achieved using Roon’s focus feature and then bookmarking them for easy-ish (there room for improvement here) recall.
I don’t use iTunes, so for me and new imports I use a different watched folder (actually it’s an organised folder) in Roon then once I’m happy with the new albums(s) I move them in my main watched folder. Before Roon I used to tag them as “to fix” and then just filter by that tag.
Anyway have fun with Roon and keep the feedback coming.
Excellent! I’m still in discovery mode (14d trial) with Roon, so will follow up on your recommendations. The multiple watched folder approach sounds powerful - I’ll have a play. Feedback will keep coming 
I really rate what you’re doing, and I’ve had enough years of frustration (18+ years since the digital collection started) waiting for the software to catch up.
Playists work well for me except in organization. I have about 80. I’d really like options to organize!
Ideas include:
and maybe the ability to rename the playlists once imported from Tidal…if possible.
Just adding my support for sharing playlists in roon. This has been asked I think when going through this topic.
I use playlists in Spotify and Tidal to discover new music and this is where the men gets seperated from the boys. Tidal blows in that respect compared to Spotify.
But I am sure that we as roon can have better playlists even. Specially what I am missing is the older hidden gems of the 60-70 rock era. Looking at the knowledge and taste from the users, I think this will be amazing.
Such a playlist would be first looking if you also own that track and play from your local library. In case a track is not available locally, roon would try to use a streaming service. Or maybe even an option to buy the missing track/album from one of the online sources.
Navigating through all of the album art when trying to construct a playlist is slow and frustrating. If you could provide a simple list view with either very small album art or none at all would significantly improve the playlist creation experience. I realize that one of the primary goals of Roon is to provide a rich user experience, but when trying to construct a playlist the low density of album or track display impedes the process.
Please create a simple list view.
