Use of smart lists?

Trakt Questions & Help
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I’m trying to figure out smart lists.

First there’s these mandatory Target attribute.

What is “Popular” based on ? Ratings ? Activity ? On trakt or on web also ?
Is “Anticipated” a combo of “Popular” + “Not released” ?
Is “Trending” a combo of “Popular” + “Release recently” ?

It seems weird to start your smart list based on an already decided algorithm that you don’t know and have no control over. Is there no way to do from scratch ?

Or maybe is it because the available filters are not relevant enough and would end in way too many elements if applied on everything ?

Which brings me to the available filters.

  • I see the use for “Country” and “Genre”. “Rating”, sure, though makes little sense for unreleased stuff
  • I understand the “Availability” with the full switch to Trakt as a recommendation platform even if I don’t use it that way
    • But why would you look for recommendation on Trakt for what’s available on Netflix instead of Netflix’s own recommendation ?
    • I guess it would be an interesting tool to find what’s buried on Netflix, but it won’t find more than what Netflix already presents if it’s based on “Popular” or equivalent.
  • The “Runtime” filter could be used to filter shorts I guess ? But I don’t think I’ve ever seen shorts trending.
  • “Status” is different ways to say “Released”/“Not Released”, which I assume is covered by the “Anticipated”
  • “Release Date” could add some restrictions on “Popular” I guess, but it almost finds anything if the date is not recent.
  • “Certification” is meant to filter “ok for kids” I guess ?
    • But those are US ratings so the categories mean nothing anywhere else
    • And the US ratings are harder than in most countries, so they’re not equivalent

Of course it would make more sense to filter based on your data, but this disappeared everywhere (only for now I hope)

In the end it looks like most of the available filters would be rendered useless by the mandatory “Target”, so I’m curious ? What are your real use cases for Smart Lists ? I’m looking for inspiration.

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Hi,
Smart lists can be created for you to find content based on a set of saved filters. They are automatically updated based on the “Target” you choose.

“Popular” will focus on items that are popular this year(based on watches and ratings), so if you want to see older content, you will need to choose the years you want in the filters.
“Anticipated” is for unreleased content.
“Trending” will be based on the number of users who have watched that content recently.
Those are the same divisions that we have in the discover section: Trakt Web: Discover

The filters you choose will depend on what kind of content you are interest in watching.
I’ll give you an example using some of my lists:

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The first one, contains popular anime released between 1970 and 2025 with the status “Ended” since I prefer watching content after I know they are finished.
I also have lists for each decade, also filtering anime, based on popularity.
All of those lists exclude watched and watchlisted content.

So I can use them as “quick filters” for the kind of content I’m in the mood for.

In general, this is how you use the Smart Lists. You choose a set of filters you are interested in, and you can quickly look at them when you are in the mood for that content.

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OK, so this is meant for recommend things to watch only, and you’re only using the filters I expected. Thanks.