Smart Playlists Not Sorting Properly When Sync'ed to iPhone

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Level 1

5 points

Smart Playlists Not Sorting Properly When Sync'ed to iPhone

I don't subscribe to Apple Music. I have my music in the iTunes-like Apple Music App on my M1 Mac Studio and iPhone 15 Pro Max.

My Smart Playlists on my iPhone [iOS 18.0.1] are in a different order than on my Mac. My Mac Studio [Sequoia 15.0.1], for instance, may have a Smart Playlist for songs downloaded after a certain date, sorted by Date Added, or a Smart Playlist for top-rated songs sorted by Rating.

The Smart Playlists seemed to sync over to the iPhone but has those playlists' songs in a different order.

I have them sorted by "Playlist Order" (see screenshot), but the order they are in on the iPhone is not the same as on the Mac.

Syncing all playlists doesn't fix it. I have also tried unckecking them, syncing, then re-checking them to sync and re-syncing them, but there is no change.

I called Tech Support and spoke with a 'senior advisor.' The advisor told me that the iPhone setting for Smart Playlists called "Playlist Order" (see screenshot below) has nothing to do with the order defined by the rules of the Smart Playlist on the Mac. He said there is no predictability to how "Playlist Order" works. He couldn't tell me what it means other than that selecting "Playlist Order" on the iPhone is likely to add things to the playlist and put the songs in whatever order they were downloaded or sync'ed. (However, as I tried to explain, it's not even in that order.)

He suggested giving feedback to Apple since he says it doesn't work the way I think it should work: that "Playlist Order" isn't the order of the playlist as defined on the Mac. It's almost random.

What??? Is this correct? (The term "Playlist Order" suggests it's supposed to be in the order as defined by the rules and in the order it's sorted by before sync'ing.)

Is the advisor is correct? That is to say that smart playlists and this default selection of "Playlist Order" for sorting them is useless and there is no way to get a smart playlist in the same order as on your Mac if it's not by Title Artist Album or Release Date (the other options)?

Mac Studio

Posted on Oct 27, 2024 9:07 AM

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Answer 1

Nov 4, 2024 7:18 AM in response to newdna

For those still having this problem - you are not alone. Since 2009 when I got my first Mac and iPhone I have never been able to make smart playlists synch with the phone in the order I want them to. Copy to Play Order has never worked for smart playlists for me. The songs synch in the order that they were added to the smart playlist when it was first added and bears no relation to any of the sort settings. If you write a script to select a smart playlist and display the tracks in their "numerical" order (as found by the script) then that's the order they appear in on my iPhone. On my iPod Nano they appear in reverse order. I've raised dozens of "feedback" forms about this in the last 23 years and it's never been fixed.

Of course, none of this would matter if there were an album shuffle on iPods but, apart from my Classics, there isn't.

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Answer 2

ed2345

Level 9

62,858 points

Oct 27, 2024 5:46 PM in response to R-J-B

"The advisor told me that the iPhone setting for Smart Playlists called "Playlist Order" (see screenshot below) has nothing to do with the order defined by the rules of the Smart Playlist on the Mac....Is the advisor... correct?"

Yes that is correct. In fact when there are multiple rules, sorting according to rules would not even be meaningful.

Playlist order is the order you put it in, which can be changed by dragging tracks up or down the list. If you right-click the playlist name and choose "Copy to play order," then the sync is supposed to put that same order onto the device, although it seems to be less than 100% reliable.

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Answer 3

newdna

Level 1

15 points

Oct 29, 2024 7:34 AM in response to R-J-B

I have fought with this for years. It is a bug and Apple doesn't care to fix it. Smart playlists are dumb. They have not worked hard enough to make their devices like phones and apple tv work with the Music or TV apps (or the iTunes app before they trashed it) Smart Playlist will NEVER sort right for you until Apple fixes the bugs. And no, Copy to Play Order does NOT work 100% of the time and there seems to be no pattern to how it breaks. I have spent hours and hours messing with playlists and then running upstairs to test on the Apple TV IT DOES NOT WORK. You can get a playlist that seems sorted right, but then add a new file to your library and they all go to sh....

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Answer 4

EBGBee

Level 1

8 points

Nov 4, 2024 6:59 AM in response to R-J-B

Has it continued to work for you, please? I'm finding that even this is intermittent. My smart playlists are predominantly podcasts featuring news, politics, etc., so hearing things backwards / randomly is really bizarre. I'm painfully working through all of my subscribed feeds checking they're individually set to play oldest>newest, but I'm not sure it'll fix things.

(iPod nano 6th gen coz it's an amazingly handy physical format for me, plus most up-to-date version of iTunes on Win11)

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