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

Unfortunatly the issues are a little more complaicated still, song metadata is also affected. When syncing back to your iOS device, for instance if songs exists on your iOS device and iTunes and now you add lyrics to your songs in iTunes, then sync to your device the lyrics are not showing up on the device for the songs with updated info.... With old iOS never had this or other playlist sort order issues...

The solution presented has to do with the title of the thread - playlist order, not lyrics. That's another issue alltogether 🙂.

Was it the iOS update caused this? Or this was an issue before the 5.0? and iTunes 10.5...

iOS5.0 introduced this bug.

iOS 5.0 introduced the Music app in general to be buggy, various parts of Music App on iOS from playlist, to metadata! Apple please fix soon is all we can say...

This problem drove me crazy and here is what has worked for me on two devices running ios5 and iTunes 10.5

Plug in you're iDevice, wait for it on the left hand side and expand the little triangle. i found that i had sync issues where smart playlists could not be synced because they relied on another playlist that could not be found, ie not explicitly found on the iDevice. this problem had come up in a previous few ios updates and was fixed by adding a condition to your smart playlist that said Playlist is Music. i made sure all of my smart playlists had no dependancies on other playlists that were not on the iDevice. once i confirmed no further sync issues, i unselected the smart plalists from from the music sync in iTunes, synced, re-added them and synced again.

this fixed both my old 3GS and new 4S

really thought this would work then but nope still got issues 😟

For a Most Recently Added Playlist for music on iPhone 4, iOS 5.0, iTunes 10.5 (141), Here's what worked for me after lots of experimenting:

To Create a "100 Newest" playlist:

1. In iTunes, delete any previous 'X Newest" playlists if they've not been syncing correctly since iOS 5 update, especially if they have referenced other playlists. In my experience if these playlists are not syncing in the correct order, there is nothing you can do to make them sync in the correct order - cut your losses and delete.

2. In iTunes under 'Library' in the sidebar, select 'Music"

3. From the 'File' menu select 'New Smart Playlist'

4. In the pop up box that appears, check 'Match the following rule:'

5. In the next line, in the pop-up menus, select the following: 'Media Kind', 'is', 'Music'

6. Check the "Limit to" checkbox and enter the '100' in the box, and then select the follwing option in succeeding popup lists: 'items', selected by 'most recently added'

7.You may check either or both of the options 'Match only checked items' and 'Live updating' - in my experiments these had no effect.

8. Click 'OK' and name your smartlst '100 Newest' or anything you'd like.

Here's something to note:

In your iTunes 'Music Library', the sort order is newest song at the top of your library when the LIBRARY is sorted by 'Date Added' and the small triangle has it's apex pointing down. To me this means the LATEST song is on top.

In your '100 Newest' playlist, to sort so the newest song is at the top of the playlist when the PLAYLIST is sorted by 'Date Added' , you'll note the triangle is oriented with the apex pointing up. To me this signifies the 'YOUNGEST ADDED' song is on the top.

However you view those two items, it's interesting that you'd expect the sort order might be reversed according to the triangle orientations, but it's not. And that's one of the sorting problems I had with syncing my playlists - newest were on the bottom on my iPhone playlist, but on the top in the playlist in my iTunes Library. Certainly not a consistant user interface.

Also note that if you've used a previous hint in referencing a dated order playlist to avoid a previous iTunes playlist syncing bug, those lists now won't sort properly any longer. As I said - cut your losses and start anew.

Hope this helps someone else. It took me a long time to get right.

It's definitively a bug. My iPhone 3G works fine with the same playlist, where my iPhone 4S gets it the wrong way around. I hope this will be fixed in the upcoming 5.0.1 release that is currently in beta...

I think I'll wait for the update which I hope is soon

Strange... but it worked. I right clicked the Smart Playlist, chose "Edit Smart Playlist", turned off the "Live Updating" check box and synced the iPhone. Voila... the sort order on the iTunes 10 and iPhone (with IOS 5) are now the same!!. Hope this helps! (In case this doesn't work for you, you may want to try the instructions at http://support.apple.com/kb/TS3044 Though it is given for iTunes 9.0, it might work)

The issue was resolved by using a smart playlist that contains the original playlist like some of you described. Thanks.

This worked like a charm for me, so thank you so much!!! Thank you thank you!! I hope they fix this bug soon so I won't have to keep making new playlists and drag+drop everytime I add new songs. -c

I have a smartlist with all my podcasts sorted on "Date added" desc. With my new iPhone 4S the list is sorted "Date added" ascending. On my 2nd gen ipod touch I do not get this problem (iOS 4.x).

This problem happened before and was eventually fixed. I guess we just need to 1) make sure the developers know about this problem; 2) then they put it on the list of bugs to fix and 3) eventually it will be fixed.

Do we have a confirmation that step 1 has been done.

This bug is affecting all aspects of music playlists on all iOS 5.0 devices.. Besides the playlist sort order I'm getting music videos showing up in my playlists from other playlists lists on my iPod that in my iTunes I doesn't happen. Also this bug is screwing up content metadata... Some songs aren't showing correct lyrics, and album art on the iPod. I know this is related to playlist sort order bug, because when I made a regular non smart playlist all these issues didn't show up in regular playlist on my iPod...