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

The best solution I have found is to make a new smart playlist named "playlist of podcast playlist" that contains only the "podcast" smart playlist. I sort the podcast playlist by release date. When I sync my iphone 3GS on windows 7, the "playlist of podcast playlist" is sorted as in iTunes, but the "podcast" playlist is not sorted properly. Make sure to go to the Podcast tab and check the new playlist, otherwise it won't show on the phone.

I have found a fix for this...

Edit your 'recently added' smart playlist and add a new filter item...

'Date Added' is before 31/12/2020

you could specify any future date, but i chose something well in the future.

Re sync and all is fixed 🙂

Same here I also confirm the issue, I used smart playlists for all my songs and I see I now have to leave live updating off for now till a fix for iOS 5 grrrr.... My issue isn't playlist sort order, but in a playlist with music only no videos, wth live updating enabled I would see on my iPod Touch music videos of the same Genre appear in the list. I temp re-enabled live updating then synced issue comes right back, so I'm leaving live update off for now till a fix..

if you change your sort list from ablum by artists to just artists, it worked for me

If you are trying to sort by 'Date Added', try adding 'Date Modified' to your playlists and sort. Not perfect but works in most cases until they fix this bug. Come on Apple this is rediculous.

Having this exact problem! Are you sure it's not iOS 5's glitch? I feel like 10.5 worked fine before I upgraded my iPhone, but I could be remembering wrong.

In addition, sometimes the alphabetization in Artists / Songs / Albums goes a little out of whack. For example, under "P" I'll have OK Ikumi, Omarion, & Owl City... is there anybody else with this problem?

This has happened before. I'd tried some of the previous suggestions this time, nothing worked until adding date modified to the playlist and resorting fixed it. Thanks

Hi guys, well I've been having this same problem over and over again and creating "dumb" regular playlists and copying stuff ***** hard. although since there is no alternative I had to do this too.

The thing I noticed is that, you know when iTunes notifies you that a smart playlist on your iPhone/iPod is in need of other playlists (entailed to your rules on the smart playlist you sync) which are not there because you don't sync them and instead you sync only the smart playlist with the rules you've set.

Well, (and I'm not sure if anyone pointed out this before, and if someone has I apologize for spamming again:P) it seems that turning the rules that require other playlists for your smart playlist to work is what ***** up sorting on your phone ipad or ipod, at least this is how it worked finally for me.

Try it out if you haven't and see for yourselves.

thanks and sorry if I am reposting same stuff.

I don't have any io5 devices but I have the same issue with a 6th gen nano and itunes 10.5. One solution that I found and posted in another thread was to setup your smart playlist as follows:

Match ALL of the following

Media kind is podcast

Plays is 0

Any of the following is true

Artist is "podcast artist name"

add more as necessary

Turn on live updating.

I would be curious if this works for others.

Fixed, sort of!

I'm having a very similar issue with iTunes 10.5, iOS 5 on an iPhone 4S. My regular (not smart) playlist was sorted by "Date Added" newest on top, and in my phone it seemed to be sorted by "Date Added" oldest on top (which is silly because I want to play my new music more often than my old music...)

Anyway, on a whim, I tried sorting my iTunes playlist by "Plays" and synced and it WORKED (properly sorted by "Plays" on my iPhone). Thinking I had fixed the issue, I again sorted by "Date Added" newest on top, and synced, and the iPhone reverted to "Date Added" oldest on top...

Thinking it might be just the "Date Added" column sorting that's F'd, I sorted by "Name," and synced and it WORKED (properly sorted by "Name" on my iPhone).

Not wanting to test each column, I decided to leave it sorted by "Plays," least on top, which is similar to "Date Added" newest on top, but not exactly. It'll have to do until Apple fixes this issue.

Conclusion: At least the "Date Added" column sorting in iTunes is completely disregarded on the iPhone, choose another sort column for now 😕

Correction: after testing "Name" descending and "Plays" descending, it seems iTunes always syncs ascending to the iPhone (which is why Name and Plays was working for me previously)...

So it appears that while the iPhone IS sorting by the column you chose to sort by in iTunes, it's ALWAYS ascending regardless of the order in iTunes.

It just so happens that "Plays" ascending (fewer play on top) is most similar to "Date Added" descending.

Another piece of the pie, besideds the playlist issue, now when I buy songs on my iPod Touch iOS 5.0 and sync to my Mac OSX 10.7.2 to change song info it does not reflect back to the iPod when I sync again... I used to be able to do this before iOS 5.0 update... I use my Mac to rearrange playlists order and update song info such as adding in lyric information into a song, when I sync music back to the iPod if orignally bought from the iPod no luck... From earlier posts I have tried the check uncheck methods but now no luck, hope there is a fix soon! My iPod Touch is now functioning less like an iPod and more like a Pocket PC! 😮 I like the iOS 5.0, but my music needs to be inorder I do use my iPod for in the car... Please fix soon Apple.....

Hello, Apple. I just want to get on the list of people who would like to have their podcast playlists in ios5 match the order we have chosen in iTunes. I hope you'll fix and let us know. Thanks.

Amen! Date added and other work arounds, aren't the same as just having iTunes and my iPhone playlists match. Remember, "It just works?"

Here's how to fix this.

1) Get your playlist in the order you want in iTunes.

2) Create a new playlist and drag all the songs into it from the sorted playlist.

The next 2 are important!!!

3) Do not change the order using any of the column headers.

4) Do not select Copy To Play Order.

5) (Optional) Delete old playlist, rename new playlist.

Sync your device.

The problem is in the sorting. If you don't sort your playlist via the column headers you're OK.

Hope this helps.