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

OK. This discussion started several months ago, why is it still not fixed? I thought it was a bug that has happened before? After 2 iOS updates, really?

My problem is pretty much the same with most of the people in here. I was in the mood to create smart playlists last night and when I synced my iPhone (iPhone 4), instead of the 'usual' (how you order your smart playlist with column order), in this case, my 'Most Played - 100' which is supposed to give me the rundown of the songs I like at the moment (Last Skipped - not in the last 1 week, Last Played - in the last 2 weeks, Year - greater than 2010, Date Added - in the last 10 months), also checked Limit to 100 items and selected by "most often played".

What I would just normally do before was to just click on the column order "Plays" descending order. My playlist on my phone == on the playlist.

But now, it does not work that way! When I get it in descending order of Plays, it doesn't reflect on the iPhone.

But when alphabetical order (e.g. Artist Name), it is reflected on the iPhone,

Also, I experienced what some of you are saying re metadata. When I tried to change the album art of one particular album (it was already on my iPhone), it did not get updated. When I try to unsync it then sync it again, it still didn't work. What worked for me is when I deleted the album from the iTunes library, then put it back and sync it again.

Hope Apple fix this as soon as possible Yeeeah

OFF-TOPIC

UPDATE: I "copied" the album from FOLDER 1 to FOLDER 2 (Same exact albums). I deleted FOLDER 1. I imported the album (which is now in FOLDER 2) to my library. Sync it, metadata on my iPhone is finally updated.

Message was edited by: princestrong

OK, so I had the work-around working using the "playlist-of-a-playlist" method where you basically create the smart playlist of your podcasts then create another playlist that just includes the first playlist and sort the second playlist the way you need. So basically I had playlist one as "myPodcasts" and playlist two as "myPodcasts Sorted".

As I said, this WAS working UNTIL... I turned on iTunes Match 😢!

Since iTunes Match doesn't match podcasts, I can't see how this affected my podcast smart playlists, but there you have it. All hosed. Nothing sorted anymore. WT! Apple?!

So I decided to start clean. I deleted EVERY PLAYLIST I HAD. All of them. Then I went into the podcast tab of my iPhone and unchecked every podcast. After synching I verified that there were no podcasts and no playlists on the phone. Then I create one (1) smart playlist and sorted it. I went to the podcast tab of my iPhone and selected only that one (1) new playlist. I didn't select the individual podcasts in the podcast list, just the smart playlist. I pressed "apply". . .

I picked up my phone, tapped music -> plalists and what do I see? TWO FREAKING PLAYLISTS with the SAME NAME! This is ludicrous! One playlist has the random order I have come to expect and the second one is SORTED CORRECTLY.

At this point I am just speechless. Come on Apple, throw us a bone!

I suffered from the same issue, but I finally gave up and purchased (I think it was only 1.99) Downcast, it downloads your podcasts directly to your IOS device, it completely works. I also tried podcaster but I like the more variants for speed of playback and Downcast supports enhanced podcoasts (chapter marks).

Sometimes you just have to say UNCLE as this issue may get resolved hopefully soon, but it will just come back in some future update of either iTunes, IOS or OS/X. UNCLE

- Brent

Received a phone call from Cupertino in response to an email I sent inquiring about the smartlist problems. They are aware of the problem and hope to have a fix soon. So at least we know they're working on it. Hope that helps those of us who are eagerly waiting for the fix.

Finally someone rcvd an acknowledgement that there is an issue and someone is working on fixing it.

As long as they acknowledge the issue and they are working on it, that's cool with me.

I used TechGeekBlogger's method last night and...

...after testing it numerous times, it works 🙂

I removed all my old podcast playlists from iTunes 10.x, the iPhone 4.x and synchronised the iPhone to remove all traces.

I made a Smart Playlist containing all unplayed, audio podcasts, within the past 30 days, with live updating checked. I name this "Mother."

I then created a "Child" Smart Playlist, containing the Smart Playlist of "Mother", with live updating checked and removing played episodes.

I manually orderd the "Child" Smarth Playlist and added it to my iPhone and synched...

Et voile! Magical.

Before this, I'd been re-ordering them on the "Mother" playlist and drag-and-dropping them into a static playlist.

Thanks for your help.

Now...can you fix the Windows 7 taskbar locking thing on iTunes 10...

@ApostlesPoem

Thanks for the help! I finally have my playlists organized!!! A couple notes:

1. I didn't delete any playlists before adding the Child playlist and it seems to have worked fine, i.e. I don't think it's necessary to remove playlists first.
2. It wasn't immediately obvious how to create the Child playlist. Here's how in case anyone else is confused:
   • File -> New Smart Playlist...
   • For the rule, select "Playlist", "is", "Mother" (keepthe "live updating" checked)
   • Now the playlist will appear with all the others and you can name it Child (or in my case Brad 4 Star Sorted)
   • Sort Child the way you want it to appear on the iPhone
   • Before you sync, make sure the Playlist is selected for synchronization under Music -> Playlists for the specific device.

Hey, not me! Thanks to TechGeekBlogger

Finally! @capecodmass, your solution was the only one that actually fixed my sort problem. Yay!

Yes!!! That fixed it. Now works on my iPad2 and iPhone 4.

Has anyone tested iOS 5.1 if that would fix the problem?

I had a related problem that I think stemmed from the same bug as this one. My smart playlist with Top n (example: Top 25) most-played songs ended up reverse-sorted on my iPhone (but were correctly sorted on my iPad). It was previously fixed and reappeared in the same iTunes version as this bug. After upgrading to iTunes 10.6 and iOS 5.1 yesterday, my playlist is now correctly sorted. I think the iTunes update (rather than the iOS update) contains the fix, but I updated both at the same time, so I cannot confirm that.

Seems like to me so far so good after the 5.1 update and iTunes, except I'm still getting Music Videos to appear in my music only playlists on my iOS and not in iTunes... In iTunes I selected "media kind is music" as a rule iTunes rules works in iTunes not iOS.. This was an issue when iOS smart playlist sort order became an issue..

khs1985a,

Have you also tried adding "Media Kind is not Music Video" to your smart playlist?