iOS 5 sync with iTunes not keeping playlist sort

If my smartlist is configured to play the newest songs first and I follow your steps, wouldn't I lose the ability to add new songs to the list?

I too have been having this issue. The only way (until they release a fix) is to Duplicate your selected playlist and then delete the original one. Rename duplicate if desired. Sorted!

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

That's not even the same issue. There are other threads that talk about Smart Playlist sync problems. This thread is about the sort order of playlists not being honored.

Yeah sorry I just noticed that some people here are only talking about regular playlists. But the problem seems to have been introduced to all of us at the same time. My playlist sorting was also not being honored, that was my issue as well. In any case, and since we don't seem to have a definitive solution, it wouldn't hurt to check for sync issue reports in iTunes. Good luck all

I have had the same issue with my iPhone 4 since downloading ios5. It takes a few syncs but I have not had to do anything drastic as suggested in some of the posts and my phone now has the playlist the same as itunes. I use the * rating system so resorted high to low and low to high. I also added the Date Added column to the selected Playlist. Synced. Deleted the Date Added. Synced. Not sure which part of this process made it work but it has now worked on two successive occasions a couple of weeks apart. Hope it saves someone else some frustration.

Thank you capecodmass!!! I can live with this workaround until Apple releases a fix for the issue. For the benefit of any others in the same boat as I was, I am pasting your workaround again as follows:

---------------------

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.

---------------------

🙂

If you predefine your sort (say you use a smart playlist called recently added, then create a new non-smart playlist after that), it should work even if you add songs to the top. Those new songs just will add to the top of the heap in the order you add them. So what I have been doing is

1) Create smart playlist (recently added)

2) select all and create a new playlist from selection

3) add new songs to that playlist when I get new music by dragging them onto the new manually created playlist. They add to the top, which happens to be the most recent.

I had to split up my 2,000 song playlist in half though to keep the ordering intact, even then. When I had one 2K list, the order still went random on the phone and I couldn't figure out why.

This is an infruriating and bad bug and I hope Apple (re)fixes it soon.

PS sorting by date modified seems to work too.

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 it right.

Thank you so much! This worked perfectly (create new playlist, copy music, delete old playlist)! Great work around! I went to Apple store and called their tech support and they were not even able to offer this solution/work around. Can you say frustrating? Wish I would have read this first, would have saved me hours of time, stress and frustration! I hope they kick out permanent fix!

I have iPhone 4s and I have the same problem...my old iphone 3G is working perfectly with the same computer and the same iTunes library! so it's iOS5 bug. I hope they fix it soon because it's very anoying

+1 Same bug. Impossible to sync the sort order of my smart playlists on iPhone 4S, iPad 2.

I found that if you wanna sort the songs by date, if you change the way you sort the songs from "date added" to "date modified" it works... so here are the steps:

1. Remove date added column

2. Add date modified column

3. Organize by date modified column

4. remove playlist from phone

5. add playlist to phone

No need to delete or make a new playlist. Just use the date modfiied column. Hope it helps!!

I know I am a bit late replying but I had the same problem of my date added playlist sorting into ascending order on my iTunes but descending order on my iPhone.

I simply changed the order to 'date modified' in ascending order on my iTunes and it worked the same on my iPhone.

Thanks for the tip, but this did not work for the "Recently Added" Smart Playlist on my iPod touch.