iOS 13 Playlists Re-Sorted

Hold on, I was able to finally get the sort order transferred by deselecting the "Live updating" in the smart playlist rules. This clearly wasn't required before, nor was the "Copy to Play Order," with iTunes.

This sucks but works for now.

With a regular playlist, sorted on any criteria you like, you can then right click the playlist name in the side bar and click Copy to Play Order. Whether or not this also works reliably with Smart Playlists may depend, but if you cannot get it to work then regular playlists may be a workaround.

tt2

Thanks for "Copy to Play Order" which I never saw before because by default my playlist (both static and smart) transferred as sorted to my iPhone and iPad with iTunes; there was no need to "commit" the sort preference. I tested, and yes, the right click to select this option did indeed copy my sort preference of a static playlist to my IOS device. It did not work for my Smart Playlist (which is extremely important for me).

Apple, is this a bug? PLEASE allow us to sort our playlists (any and all) on IOS.

Thanks again for the question above and the answer.

I'm dealing with exactly this issue, and I'll try this workaround as soon as I get home, because this is extremely frustrating, I have a lot of smart playlists that are useless since upgrading to iOS 13.

But make no mistake, Apple, this IS a bug, and it needs to be fixed. ASAP. Even just playing a regular album messes up the order of songs, especially on multi-disc albums.

So, please fix.

Regarding smart playlists; this worked for me:

I had to both un-select "Live updating" and right click on each smart playlist to select the command "Copy to Play Order". This worked.

What didn't work: Initially I tried just clicking on Copy to Play Order, and that worked, but only for those playlists where I didn't have "Live updating" selected. So I had to go back through my smart playlists to de-select "Live updating". Because it's easy and relatively fast, I then selected "Copy to Play Order" again on each smart playlist where I had just de-selected 'Live updating'.

I have given up on Music on Catalina and have instead moved back to iTunes on Windows where everything still works. I had to transfer my playlists (static can be exported and imported, Smart needs to be recreated), which is a pain in the neck, but once back to Windows iTunes, I'm able to function again. I'm very grateful I was able to restore Sonos view of my iTunes Playlists.

I have lost count of the number of problems with the Music app, from losing Column Browser view, Search being useless, XML data gone which kills playlists rendering in Sonos, sort issues all over the place, loss of visibility on sync progress, etc.

On Windows, I'm running iTunes 12.10.0.7 and I simply will never budge from that release which I can control on Windows. I lost use of Doug's Scripts by moving off of Mac, but that is the price I'll have to pay.

Hope this helps others.

John

Btw, my sync to my iPhone is way faster, I forgot it used to be that fast. Mac to iPhone has been slow for some time with either wifi or cable.

One step forward, two steps back. And don't even get me started on the decline in design standards. Steve may have been an unlikeable human being but he understood good design.

This work around worked but do you need to turn the "Live Update" feature back on, then off each time you add a new song?

Apple,

Are you reading this?! John has to use Windows to get the basic features of his music playlists on his iPhone to work. The Apple Watch is great....so are EarPods, but don’t lose the forest through the trees. Back to basics please.

I’ve kept an eye on updates with both IOS and Catalina using a backup iPhone to see if bugs fixed and features restored, but only the major improvement has been the return of browser view. I am very, very, grateful I am also a Windows user and was able to switch back to an iTunes that still works. It seems clear that power users who manage their own libraries are not a priority for Apple, so I’m searching for longer term solution.

To switch back to Windows iTunes I exported/imported all my static playlists and recreated my smart playlists. I also suggest folks transfer ratings (and “Love/dislike” flag) to the comments field so they get stored in the metadata for preservation. I use a collection of smart playlists to manage this en masse. I use Dropbox for my music (300+ gb) so music already synced between MacOS and Windows and I don’t have to worry about either system failing or getting destroyed.

And finally, I purchase music on Amazon getting CD’s with most having Autorip enabling me to get MP3 immediately while CD’s are shipped for backup remaining shrink wrapped. This saved me the other day when an error was discovered in digital download of Sia’s Christmas album ( very good btw).

I sincerely hope this helps others.

Deselecting "Live updating" solved my problem too, thank you! (But it's less inconvenient now.)

You are a lifesaver - it worked! I thought I was going mad, thanks for this

You may find equivalents for some of Doug's scripts at http://samsoft.org.uk/iTunes/scripts.asp.

tt2

@turingtest2 THANKS!