Playlist sort order?

Yes, this is happening to me as well. I use the "-" character to make a playlist appear at the top of the list in iTunes (10.5).

When I updated to iOS5, the playlists are sorting in alphabetical order, as usual, but ignoring the "-" character. iOS5 and iTunes should use the same alphabetization scheme.

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.

The original poster is referring to the sort order of the playlist *names* themselves, not the songs within the playlists.

For example, here is a sample set of playlist names that appears in the left sidebar of iTunes 10.5, under "PLAYLISTS". These are in alphabetical order. The playlist names include the initial dash character "-" so that those playlist names will sort at the top of the list.

-Newest songs

-Podcasts

3-star songs

Good songs

Sad songs

When I sync to my iPhone 4 running iOS 5.0, then go into Music, then to Playlists, the list of playlists looks like this:

3-star songs

Good songs

-Newest songs

-Podcasts

Sad songs

This is a different sort order. Obviously, the sort order of playlists (leaving aside the issue of the order of songs within playlists) should be the same in both iTunes and the iPhone.

I have filed this as a bug using Apple's feedback web page.

I see this is a different problem, and one I've encountered as well. Haven't found a solution yet. Hopefully will be fixed soon.

This too is happening within the playlist itself. I have my newest songs on top via "Date Added" in iTunes, and playing them via iPhone shows in the opposite order.

My guess it is happening to both lists and songs.

Try my solution above and see if it works for sorting your songs. Ithink it is important to select 'Music" In iTunes under 'Library' in the sidebar.

That won't solve the ordering of the playlist names, but it might help in sorting the songs within the playlist. Hope it helps.

I am experiencing both. My lists are out of order and the items on them as well. I use > at the start of a playlist folder name to group the folders and it is being ignored as others describe. I also use smart lists for podcasts. I had them set to list & play in order of release date but it no longer works. Furthermore I think it is a shared issue with iTunes 10.5 and/or iOS 5. I was originally convinced it was iOS 5, but after I updated to 5.01 tonight I wanted to see if it was fixed, so I marked a bunch of my podcasts as unplayed. Things remained pretty much the same on the phone, but I also noticed that on the playlist in iTunes they where not listed in release date order like they used to be. They where listed in the order I marked them as unplayed in. Previously I could do that and they went into the list inserting appropriately by release date. I originally updated iTunes and to iOS 5 the same day. And today is the first time I played with it in iTunes since then so I can't say if it's been an issue there the whole time or not. They really need to fix this though. Being able to sync and listen to my podcasts in order without having to think about it was one of the first reasons I switched to iDevices.

I've found a work around. It only applies to smart playlists though. And I've only tested on 5.0 not 5.0.1, but worth a try.

To transfer the playlist order to your iOS 5 device:

Edit the smart playlist and tick the following option

"Limit to XXX [items] selected by [most recently added]"

Set XXX to a number well over the total amount of songs in that playlist to give you plenty of room to add more. I've set mine to 5000. You can also keep "live updating" checked.

Sync your device, and the playlist should be back to the correct order, newest to oldest.

This list of playlists sort order issue is bothering me, too.

I have used underscore prefixes for years on my iPods to get my favorite playlists to the top of my playlist folders. The more I want to see the playlist at the top, the more underscores (_) I put at the front of the playlist name.

While they still sort correctly in iTunes, the underscores are now ignored on my iPod forcing me to do too much scrolling on my iPod to get to my favorite playlists

Speaking of scrolling, some of my playlists are a thousand songs long. It takes a long time to finger drag to the bottom of the list. Often I will be getting close and accidentily touch a button at the bottom of the screen and end up looking at the list of artists or albums instead of my playlist. It would be helpful if there was a scroll gadget on the side I could drag faster to get close to my songs and then drag the old way to find it precisely. Sorry about this side issue, but I wanted to get it off my chest.

I've been using asterisks and numbers to bump my most used playlists to the top of the list—the Apple OS and the iPod sort spaces and punctuation first, then numbers, then alphabethical characters, but not it won't on the iPhone, iPad using iTunes Match. Not okay. Do we have to start renaming playsist AA, AAA, AAAA? iTunes should be more sophisticated than the Yellow Pages.

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.

Is anyone else still having issues with the order of the songs in their playlists? Even with updating, I still can't get the songs on my ipod touch's playlists to match the order that they are in on itunes.

How does this just suddenly not work after years of it just being a given?

Sorry to double post, but I just did a check. And I think the issue somehow lies in not being able to match reverse listed orders of playlists.

What I mean is, if I set a playlist to title, it works when it is on A at the top. But if I click title again, so that the list is now setup so that A is at the bottom, it won't sync. Same thing is true with other ways of sorting the playlists. I click on Date Added so that the oldest songs added are on the top, sync, and it works/syncs correctly on my ipod, but then when i click Date Added again so that the most recently added songs are at the top, sync, and it doesn't work (oldest songs are still at top when I want the newest added ones....).