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Playlist sort order?

The iOS 5 update seems to have messed up playlist sort order again.

First, the lists themselves are sorting in yet another different way than in iTunes. I've been using special character (-, |, etc.) to force my lists into a particular order, getting my most important ones to the top. Now in iOS 5 these are all treated as whitespace and the sort order is just alphabetical regardless of leading characters.

Annoying.

Furthermore, I've noticed that some playlists seem messed up. I use one smart playlist that includes recent podcasts, putting the latest ones up top. But now it always syncs with the newest on the bottom, regardless of how I have sorting set in iTunes. Oddly, if I sort it alphabetically in iTunes then it will do the same in the iPhone. But sorting either by date or track number always goes in ascending, never decending, order.

Posted on Oct 14, 2011 11:05 PM

49 replies

Mar 24, 2013 8:51 PM in response to Robert Hurt1

Right click on the bar that has "Name, Time, Artist..." etc (all the sorting options) and add the "Date Added" option.

Then choose either ascending or descending dates.

Hope this helps!

Dec 2, 2014 7:09 PM in response to Robert Hurt1

I am still having an issue with the playlist sort order (not song sort order within a playlist). I have iTunes 12.0.1.26 on the Mac and iOs 8.1.1 on my iPhone 6 Plus. By the way, I am also using iTunes Match.

The playlists are listed correctly in alphabetical order on my Mac, but on my iPhone music app, the order is very weird. Here is the order of my first few playlists:

J-Drive

J-Eva

J-Jason Dunn

J-Jeff Lynne

J-Eagles

J-Ashes

I put the J- at the beginning of my playlist names, so that mine would all be listed together. A- is at the front of my wife's playlist names. That didn't work, because some of mine were listed in the middle of hers. Then I tried creating a playlist folder and moving all my playlists into the folder. That kept mine separate, but they are in the order shown above.

I just noticed that the playlists are listed in the correct order on my iPad. They are only incorrect on the iPhone.

Jun 17, 2015 2:40 AM in response to wigglefish

Found this thread after a google search - noticing this same problem, too, with Playlist names being out of sort on my iPhone 6 running current iOS compared to how I have them set up on my Mac. Something with the current work I do that's suddenly very frustrating now that I'm aware of it. Good gosh - this thread was started 2011 with this SAME bug and it would seem there's still no fix going on FOUR YEARS? What does it take to get Apple to fix these sort of things? I did see the comment back in 2012 - "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." - and he we are and it's 2015???? In this case - it just DOESN'T work! Come on Apple!

Jul 24, 2015 12:26 PM in response to kiki19

It is absurd that a workaround of using special characters was necessary to sort playlists at all, but the fact that the recent update removed even the ability to do that is shocking. It loos like I may return to j4il break1ng so that I have some control of the device I paid for.

Playlist sort order?