Introducing Smart Playlists

May 21, 2025

ask Dave Grohl how to write a hit song and he might tell you: 4 chords and a dream.

inspired by music, art, and a bias for simplicity, TRMNL devices are controlled by a single interface: Playlists. connect a plugin, drag it around, and decide how often it "plays."

but a few months have passed and we've heard compelling reasons to offer more granularity.

use cases

only show the weather if it's raining
hide football scores if the season is over (or: my team is losing)
don't show recipes on the kitchen TRMNL unless i'm home
remind me of upcoming movies if it's the weekend

today, all of this is possible with a suite of utilities we refer to as Smart Playlists.

Tool - Plugin "skip render" variable

for private plugins, you may now control if a screen is even rendered at all.

inside your markup, just do something like this:

{% if condition %}
  <script>
    window.TRMNL_SKIP_SCREEN_GENERATION = true;
  </script>
{% endif %}

when your plugin is evaluated by the screen generation engine, we'll check for this variable. if it's "true", TRMNL won't generate a new screen.

helpful for seasonal plugins or giving older content a chance to linger a bit longer before losing statefulness.

Tool - Playlist "skip if stale" mode

complimenting the skip variable is a new toggle in your Playlists editor:

Set a "TTL" in the Smart Playlist dropdown

with this enabled, plugins will continue to sync data and look for differences. but for information that rarely changes, now you can give yourself some time back.

this is also helpful for webhook-driven plugins whose content updates on unpredictable schedules, versus fetch based plugins that refresh on a regular interval.

Tool - API "hide playlist item" endpoint

last month we added the ability to hide a Playlist Item by simply toggling the eyeball icon.

pause/resume any playlist item in 1 click

this is an efficient way to temporarily pause a plugin without changing its ordering or needing to find it again in the Plugins marketplace.

now, it's also available via the API.

GET /api/playlist_items
PATCH /api/playlist_items/{id}

authenticate with your Account-level API Key. more details in the [beta] docs.

putting it all together

the tools above can help you build programmatic playlists that don't require babysitting the TRMNL interface.

if you're looking for more no-code options, we hear you. as TRMNL community developers test out these features, we'll extract them into buttons and switches.

next up: the ability to configure a Playlist Group by day of week. because you're not the only one who wants to ignore calendar appointments on a beautiful Saturday afternoon.

smarter playlists, fewer distractions.