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ios 13 shortcuts to play a specific song, Music not playing the correct song - just starting Music playing with whatever is in the queue

I have tried to create a shortcut for Music on my iPhone to play a song, but all it does is start playing whatever is already in the queue or the first song in my library. I have selected Add Action...Play Music..Music->(+) song/album/playlist added from my Library (none works, tried them all) .. Done. But when I tap the shortcut it just starts Music player with the existing song - does not switch to the shortcut song. Can't see anything else I can do? I sync my Music library to my Mac and have iCloud music switched OFF, also have Siri switched off. Don't know if thats the problem, but I don't want them on. Just seems that Shortcuts does not work as it just cannot switch songs.

iPhone XR

Posted on Sep 20, 2019 2:43 AM

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Posted on Oct 4, 2019 8:23 AM

Sorry i should have updated the discussion. I studied one of the example scripts and discovered you need an action to select the SONGs in a playlist then hand that to the play music one. thus:

MUSIC Get songs in <select your playlist>

MUSIC Play <leave default “playlist” here>


why there’s never any manual, just Google, for Apple stuff is so tiresome. This could be a reasonably powerful scripting language if only it was explained !

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Question marked as Top-ranking reply

Oct 4, 2019 8:23 AM in response to rmadisonwi

Sorry i should have updated the discussion. I studied one of the example scripts and discovered you need an action to select the SONGs in a playlist then hand that to the play music one. thus:

MUSIC Get songs in <select your playlist>

MUSIC Play <leave default “playlist” here>


why there’s never any manual, just Google, for Apple stuff is so tiresome. This could be a reasonably powerful scripting language if only it was explained !

Oct 4, 2019 7:51 AM in response to davidjmlewis

I have a similar issue, and surprised there hasn't been a response with anything yet.


The first time I tried it, it would just play whatever was in the queue. Then I deleted and recreated it a couple of times, and I got it to work (I don't know how). Then I tried to create a second shortcut for different music, and it just goes back to playing whatever is in the queue, though the first shortcut still works.


Very frustrating.

Oct 4, 2019 2:05 PM in response to davidjmlewis

Thanks for the follow up. However, I'm still a bit lost and guess I will be. I don't think I did any sort of "Get" or select action in the shortcuts that worked. Looking at the shortcuts, they all say "1 action," yet I got a couple of them to work, and the rest don't. And I can't figure out what I did differently for the two that worked. The shortcuts all have Play [Song Title] as their action, and if I tap on the song title, I can scroll to another song title, or the same one, but it doesn't consistently work regardless of what else I try.


Agree that the lack of useful instructions is frustrating.

ios 13 shortcuts to play a specific song, Music not playing the correct song - just starting Music playing with whatever is in the queue

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