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Add “AND NOT” Logic to Playlist Auto-Populate Rules 🧠🎯

LaunchBox for Windows

📋Summary

Improve the playlist auto-populate feature by allowing users to combine include and exclude conditions using AND logic instead of only OR. This would make dynamic playlists much more precise and reduce the need for manual cleanup or static conversion.

❗Problem

Currently, LaunchBox evaluates each auto-populate rule independently using OR logic. This means if a user sets a rule like “Title contains Sonic” and another rule “Title does not contain Wings,” both rules are treated separately. As a result, LaunchBox may include games that match only one condition—leading to false positives like Sonic Wings appearing in a Sonic the Hedgehog playlist, or even including nearly the entire library unintentionally.

This limitation forces users to either tolerate irrelevant entries or convert dynamic playlists to static ones, which breaks the usefulness of auto-population for future additions.

💡Proposal

Add support for AND NOT logic in the auto-populate filter options, so users can create compound rules like:

  • Title contains “Sonic”

  • AND Title does not contain “Wings”

This would ensure that only games meeting all conditions simultaneously are included—offering far more control and eliminating the need to manually clean up or manage static lists.

✅Benefits

  • Allows more accurate, dynamic playlist creation

  • Reduces reliance on static lists and manual game removal

  • Prevents unwanted matches in keyword-based collections

  • Keeps playlists automatically updated as new games are added, without risk of irrelevant entries

Posted by mrzombiechicken ·
Status: Open To Community4 comments

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Comments4

  • AstroBob changed status to Open To Community
    Team•

    Apr 17, 2025

    Pinned

    Hi there!

    Thanks so much for submitting this request and for taking the time to explain your use-case — that context is always super helpful. I’ve gone ahead and fleshed out the main idea using the info you provided, and I’m opening it up to the community for further discussion and feedback.

    Feel free to chime in with any extra thoughts, examples, or edge cases you think might be relevant!

    Cheers,
    The LaunchBox team

  • mrzombiechicken

    •

    Apr 25, 2025

    I was wondering why the post was held as “pending” for so long. That is quite a writeup AstroBob. Thanks for making it more organized and coherent. :)

    I was initially going to suggest what gboava suggested but figured it would be a much harder to implement. It would give the most flexibility though and that would be great. For now I would be happy with the ability to only eliminate certain things from the autopopulate list.

    Thanks again for giving me a hand with this.

    Cheers

  • mrzombiechicken

    •

    Apr 17, 2025

    For playlist autopopulate add the option to use an "and statement" to exclude games

    Hi. I love the autopopulate feature in playlists. It has enabled me to create game collections like Mario, Golden Axe…etc based on a keyword in the title. The only downside to how it works now is that each line of criteria is completely separate from the rest of the criteria. So, for example, when I try to create a playlist for Sonic the Hedgehog games and use the criteria “Title contains Sonic”, I get Sonic Wings in addition to all the Sonic the Hedgehog games. If I add a second criteria that says “title does not include Wings”, then it literally selects almost all games in my library because Launchbox looks at each criterion independently (using the “or” logic).

    It would be fantastic if there is -at least- one more option that says “and does not contain” that takes the other rules in consideration. That way, instead of having to convert my autopopulate list to a static list, and manually remove the sonic wings game, I can keep it dynamic. This allows appropriate games to automatically be added to it in the future.

    Thanks so much for your consideration.

    • gboava

      •

      Apr 23, 2025

      Hi, guys!

      Few years ago, I suggested a complete AND, OR and NOT logic, allowing groups and subgroups and so on (the groups acting like an expression between brackets in logic notation). I know some apps that do this in a visual format, which can inspire us on how to implement this in LaunchBox. For instance, you can see how Moodle manage this when add a restriction in a resource. The logic for the restrictions is a full logic implementation.

      Best regards,