Bug: iOS 5 and iTunes 10.5 podcast smart playlist sort order and how to fix.

Turning Off "Live Updating" worked for me. After sync'ing, I turn Live Update back on.

Pretty annoying as they had fixed this a while back

On my iPad, the smart playlist is sorted correctly. On my iPhone, the same playlist is reverse sorted. Both are running iOS5.

I have a similar problem with a non-smart music playlist containing 2403 songs. Songs were syncing in some weird semi-reverse order instead of Date Added with the most recently added at the top of the list, (even if I synced with the most recently added at the bottom of the list so that when reversed they should have come out on top). Previous to the ipod software and itunes upgrade all my playlists synced in the order they were in at the time on the macbook. I would've thought an ordinary, non-smart playlist would always sync in order?

I've got by ordering in Date Modified order rather than Date Added. I did turn off Genius at one point and then turn it on again, but I don't know if this made any difference. Anyway it now syncs (from macbook to ipod 4 both with the most recent itunes updates) in Date Modified with the most recent, which of course includes the most recently added, at the top of the list. It isn't exactly what I wanted but near enough for now. Strangely, another non-smart playlist of 24 which is in alphabetical order, just synced in alphabetical as before with no weird reverse ordering.

After hours of playing around with filters (and becoming extremely frustrated) this is what i ended up with to make the playlist show with the most recently added at the top of the list on my iPhone:

(I did try it with Live updating off then back on and it seemed to have worked so i'll be leaving it the way it is for now!)

i can also confirm this bug.

it was fixed prior to iOS 5. the problem existed severals versions back.

i can also confirm that the "limit to" fixes the bug.

but i hope apple will provide a real fix soon.

agree with the commenter that said "real low shelf apple".

steve isnt even dead a week and apples programming is already a mess and reverting to old problems.

shame on you...

I may not be posting in quite the right thread since I'm running a windows 7 machine and not a Mac but since I dont see a paralled thread for that OS I think I'll post ( again ) here.

Much of what is being said now is about how to cope while we hope .

So what I'm doing is creating "dumb" playlists by simply copying from my smart lists when that's important to me.

For most of my day (& life) my Ipod classic is my music player ( smart playlists with live updates just fine ) and my ipod touch is my PDA and/or game player.

So when I'm excercising and use my touch, earlier that day I'll copy my playlist for exercising from the smart list to a dumb one in itunes and then sync . It's retaining the order for now for me. \

Perhaps this will help someone else cope while they hope ( that Apple fixes this issue--that isn't broken on the classic--once and for all).

I havent read every single post yet, but I am having the same issue onmy iPhone 4 and iPad2, I found this problem years ago in earlier iOS versions and was told that it would be fixed, which it eventually was. Seems no one thought this thru in iOS5.

HERS THE FIX: Create a new dumb playlist and copy over the songs from the smart play list. Its not the most elegant solution, but it works for now until Apple fixes this problem. It requires some extra work everytime you add a new song to your library, but at least you will have a mirror image of the smart playlist on your devices.

I have tried doing what people have suggested but no luck on trying to fix my order i wish they would fix really soon. I hate listen to music not in the order i don't in recently added.

A couple things I have noticed while hoping Apple will fix this "spontaneous feature":

The work-around with setting the sequence in the second box of the "Limit To" does seem to work to a point. If I set the sequence to "Most Recently Added" or "Least Recently Added" it works - but the sequence of any podcasts added on the same day is still random on the device and does not match the computer.

Sequencing the smart playlist by clicking on the "name" column does seem to work. If I rename all of the podcasts in the list with an "a_", "b_" etc. They do order on the device in the same order.

I also remember having this same issue way in the past and it was eventually patched. Could it be that this patch never made it into IOS 5? Was IOS 5 forked that far back already that this patch was actually made after the version forked? Very intriguing...

It seems pretty obvious that either iOS5 or some code in iTunes was forked prior to the bug fix. I certainly hope it won't take them as many upgrades to fix it again as it did the last times. It took quite a while.

TechGeekBlogger wrote:

Pab,

Check out my reply in the other thread Temporary Fix for Smart Playlist order bug

Try the step by step test that I provide and let me know in both threads if it works for you. Hopefully it does and can help others.

This was the original workaround when this first occurred in iPhone OS 3 (from memory)

and it still works in iOS 5.

The key is that you need to sort the newly created Smart playlist (i.e. the one that simply references the original playlist) with the sort order you require and then this will be transferred to the iPod Touch/iPhone when it is synched.

It is slightly disappointing that this bug has resurfaced in iOS 5 and hopefully a fix will be

deployed soon.

Regards,

Thirsty of North Sydney

Working with the smartlist. Found out that the sort order is coming from the order displayed on the LIST view. I guess you can have a different sort order on each view (List, Album List, Grid, Cover Flow), and the phone only recognized the list view. If you sort by album, then you must make sure the whole album is marked part of a compliation to make sure play by track # is effective. The default view for a new smart playlist is LIST view.

Hey everyone,

Here's an update regarding the smart playlist bug, something I received from Apple:

It is a know bug, already for some time and already filed initially as Bug ID# 8209933 and a couple of duplicate bug reports, including mine, have been filed.

the respons included the line,

"After further investigation it has been determined that this is a known issue, which is currently being investigated by engineering."

so hopefully Apple is already working on fixing the problem. Like one of the previous posts mentioned, it's very likely that iOS 4 and iOS 5 forked before the bug was fixed in iOS 4... so they should be able to fix it pretty soon.

Hi All,

iMac 2011, iOS5 on iPhone 4 - this happened to me and on smart playlists only - the live update un-tick workaround fixed it for me.

Never had a problem before, and there is no doubt that the code was forked before this was fixed and missed in a later merge.

Shame as it is a really annoying thing so I'll have to manually manage the playlist...

M

Ditto. None of the suggestions here worked.