Playlist sort order?

This is driving me crazy!! I use my iPod Touch in the car, and have always, for years and years, used special characters to bump playlists to the top. Now, I updated to 5.1, and I can't do it anymore! So now, I have to actually crash my car while I'm scrolling through 8000 albums to find the one I just added and really want to listen to, because it starts with a friggin Z. Pretty ridiculous. Even more ridiculous is that this thread has been going on for monthsssssssssss, and nothing came of it. Nothing came of phone calls, emails, etc. Very disappointing that I need to factory reset this POS, and actually DOWNGRADE the OS, just to get some basic functionality. Ridiculous!

Try using jsiddo'spost on page 2. Just create a new playlist with a different name and copy all the songs there, then order it the way you want to. It worked for me 🙂

If your problem is the order in which your playlist names appear (not the order of the songs within) then that is quite possibly an issue with your car's stereo and not iOS, especially if the playlists appear sorted correctly on the device itself.

My playlist names all appear in the right order within each playlist folder on my iPhone, but once connected to my Honda's (factory) stereo then the sort order goes out the window. The track order within the playlists are correct (on the stereo and on the device), just the playlist names no longer sort with ~ or : first like they used to before iOS 5.1.

I blame this on my stereo and not iOS since it is the stereo that is polling the device and sorting things in a particular order. By updating iOS, perhaps it now reads the information incorrectly, or at least not as it used to. My advice? For playlists you want at the top, precede them with "AA..".

If I had an iPhone it wouldn't bug me so much but I bought an iPod touch specifically for listening to music and I expected to order of songs in the playlists to be correct. If I wanted an iPod shuffle I would have bought that instead for a lot less money.

Come on Apple work your programming magic on this bug and squash it once and for all.

Track order within a playlist seems fine on my iPhone 4 and iPad 2. For awhile with 5.0.x it was screwy, but 5.1 (and now 5.1.1) are fine, they match iTunes exactly (both smart and static playlists) and I didn't have to re-create them as suggested by jsiddo above.

What iOS version are you on?

Do you auto-sync or manually manage? Do you use iTunes Match?

Have you saved the sort order of the playlist in iTunes and re-synced? Just because you arrange it how you like in iTunes doesn't mean it transfers to the device that way. You have to save the sort order, then re-sync your device. If you manually manage, change the order while connected to iTunes and then save the sort order.

Currently 5.1 but updating to 5.1.1 now

Most of the playlists are smart playlists. Most are sorted by the BPM column in iTunes. Creating a new smart playlist based on grouping contains then sorted by BPM by clicking the BPM column in iTunes has a different order on the iPod after syncing.

I'm not sure what save the sort order means? I just click the BPM column and it's always sorted that way until I click a different column.

I use smart playlists based on grouping contains or album starts with mostly.

OK I just updated to 5.1.1 and one of the smart playlists (i only checked one so far) that is sorted by BPM column is correct on the ipod but another smart playlist that is created using grouping contains but manually sorted in itunes has a different order on the ipod.

Ken Stone2 wrote:

I'm not sure what save the sort order means? I just click the BPM column and it's always sorted that way until I click a different column.

In iTunes, right-click on the playlist name and select "Copy to Play Order" to save the sort order, then re-sync your device. This has always been required, and always been the way to save play order.

Just checked some other lists and only found the one that is sorted correctly.

I never knew what copy to play order was I thought it meant something like add this list of songs to some currently playing list or something. OK I'll try it Thanks!

No that didn't work. I went through all the playlists and clicked copy to play order then did a sync. Still the songs are not in the order that they are in itunes. The other thing is that I never had to do this on iPod Classic and all songs on iPod classic are always in the same order as they are in iTunes. Also burning a disc comes out sorted correctly without having to click copy to play order.

Strange, maybe there's still a bug with the Touch, or maybe certain sort parameters don't sync properly. My regular and smart playlists are sorted as Album By Artist and they match iTunes just fine (now) on my iPhone 4 and iPad 2. Sorry, thought it would work for you.

No problem at all and thanks for trying I thought we were on to something there.

To too am having this issue. Where songs in the playlist do not appear in the correct order on the iPhone. I am using a smart playlist with iOS 5.1.1

The artists appear in order, but then the albums within are in a different order and the tracks themselves are not sequential in the album.

Leads to an interesting listening experience that I would rather not have.

I do not encounter the problem on small playlists only on larger ones 4-6GB

Here's something simple that worked for me:

I went to my Recently Added playlist which was all out of order for who knows what reason (I really wish I could figure out what causes this to happen, but whatever). Right click on the row at the top of the playlist that has "Name," "Time," "Artist," "Album," etc. and a drop down menu appears, and you can select other types of info to display. Check "Date Added" and then sort the playlist by Date Added. If you're super OCD like me and hate seeing a new column with a bunch of dates, you can make it as narrow as possible and almost pretend like it's not there 😉

I'm using itunes 10.6.1 btw.

Oh and for people who have this problem on their iPhone, what I would suggest is just making another playlist, adding all the new music that you want on your iPhone, and you can manually make sure that it's in the order you prefer before you sync it, and sync that playlist instead of iTunes's Recently Added playlist. That's what I've always done, I have a playlist called "New" and I just add whatever recently added music that I want on my iPhone. I never sync the Recently Added playlist because I almost always have more songs in that playlist than I want (or can fit) on my iPhone at a time.

I really wish the iphone / ipod touch would have playlists work as they do on the ipod classic.

If I sort a playlist by date added or bpm in itues then sync to ipod classic it's the same order but when syncing to iphone or ipod touch the play list never has the correct order.