Why do all song edits in Music shift view on sort by date added?

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Level 1

54 points

Why do all song edits in Music shift view on sort by date added?

This happened in iTunes, but it seems to have become certainty in Music on the Mac. I have a playlist for anything added in X months, so I can tag for equalizer setting, rating, and grouping. The view for this playlist includes Date Added, so I can do the oldest additions first; that's what I sort the view on.

Any change triggers a shift in the view, often twice—like it jumps and then jumps again. I expect editing the Date Added field would do that (not tested, but edits to the current sorted field should do). Sometimes the current song moves to the bottom, sometimes the top, sometimes the middle, mostly off view. Why?

The only thing I can do is Go To Current Song every time I edit any field of the current song (same thing happens if I edit not the current song).

Is Music secretly live-sorting every field all the time (that would be seriously poor coding)? If so, is there a way to prevent this?

iMac 27″, macOS 12.5

Posted on Sep 23, 2022 7:17 PM

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Answer 1

Best reply

Lovecross

Level 2

185 points

Sep 23, 2022 8:30 PM in response to Scott Paine

Another thing you could try... View the playlist as songs (sounds like you already do), ensure that it is sorted by date added, with oldest at the top (as you do), then click the three dots to the right, just above the list of songs and select "copy to play order". This alone may help, but after doing that step, click in the header column for the playlist order (the one that is furthest to the left, with the numbers from 1 to however many tracks are in the playlist) to sort by the playlist order. This should keep the order the same, if it reverses it, click the header again to reverse the order. It is now sorted by playlist order, and anything newly added will be added to the bottom of that playlist. With any sort of luck, whatever bug is messing with the "date added" sorting, won't affect the playlist order.

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Answer 2

Scott Paine Author

Level 1

54 points

Sep 23, 2022 8:07 PM in response to Lovecross

Thanks for pointing out it's a smart playlist; I forgot that detail. The criteria are:

Location on this computer
Any of:
1. Date Added in the last X months
2. Rating is empty
no limit (unchecked)
only checked items (checked)
live updating (checked)

For fun, I unchecked live updating and made some edits. Same problem; the view jumps after every edit. So, that's even weirder…

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Answer 3

Lovecross

Level 2

185 points

Sep 23, 2022 7:58 PM in response to Scott Paine

That's weird... It's probably not the case, and you may have already checked, but it's worth looking at the smart playlist settings you have for that playlist, to be sure you haven't limited the number of tracks it contains based on date modified.

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Why do all song edits in Music shift view on sort by date added?

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