iTunes 11: Playlist shuffle sort

If you have something that you would like Apple to add to iTunes (or anything else), please go to www.apple.com/feedback. From there, select what product you wish to suggust an idea for.

Apple has inexplicably done away with this feature. There is no workaround. The measly 20 song Up Next menu is what we've been given in exchange. This is not a suitable replacement for those of us who previously used shuffled playlists. Apple, please bring back the ability to shuffle playlists and view the ENTIRE playlist in shuffled order and to export playlists in shuffled order.

Ageed. Not good.

Worse still, it appears that the shuffle 'toggle' is now global and not per playlist. Set one playlist to shuffle and they all do. Hopeless. Let's just hope its a bug not a feature.

You make a really good point.

BUT, they say that Apple doen't follow these forums. Sooooooo, if you want to tell Apple about a bug or request a feature ......................

www.apple.com/feedback/itunesapp.html

Yes, I did that too. Just venting. Between this iTunes update and the Maps fiasco, I have lost faith in Apple's previously lauded ability to get things right.

I am quite disappointed as well, by far the most used feature in itunes for me as I listen to most of my music through shuffled playlists. Hey Apple, here's a tip DON'T FIX WHAT'S NOT BROKEN! Also this would be a clear example of customer knows best not Apple.

This one took me a while to find. Initially I thought you couldn't even play a playlist shuffled. But you can. You select the playlist from the sidebar, then click the shuffle icon on the top.

Yes, the playlist view only shows an order by artist. But you see the "to play" order in the up next feature and can reorder the next 20 songs.

The best solution I have found so far for this is to make the playlist and put the list in order according to the track number. That way you have artist list in what looks like a more random order. I used the shuffle playlist feature before to make a playlist of music by the decade it was released and listen to various music at a time. I can get my car to shuffle the playlist as well, but each time I turn the car off it resets and I have to manually go in and select that I want the music shuffled. So it save a lot of time to have it pre-shuffled on the ipod.

Agreed this stinks, as I do the same things as all of you... create a playlist, shuffle it, then copy to play order before exporting to iPod.

The way it is now, you have to re-shuffle every time you start using a playlist, and some songs just don't come up that often for whatever reason.

If anyone finds any other work arounds, please let me know. Wouldn't have downloaded this version! Is there any way to go back to version 10?

Smart Playlists are stupidly powerful and can easily be used to generate random playlists

I regularly want a random playlist of tracks on albums I've added to iTunes recently so that I can get a feel for a number of different albums when driving in the car, baking muffins, etc...

I have a Smart Playlist with the following criteria:

• Date Added is in the last 10 days
• Mark checkbox Limit to 9999* items selected by RANDOM
• Media Kind is Music

The result is a playlist that is in random order... You must sort by the left-most column...

You can apply the same techniques to any playlist... Say you want to randomise tracks from several of your favourite albums...

• Drag those albums to a new playlist... I'll call it "MY AWESOME ALBUMS"
• Create a Smart Playlist with the following criteria...
  • Playlist is "MY AWESOME ALBUMS"
  • Mark checkbox Limit to 9999* items selected by RANDOM

The result is a playlist of your fave albums that is in random order... You must sort by the left-most column...

If you wish you can now Ctrl-A the tracks and drag to create a new "Static" playlist...

db

Edit... Sorry... Should have mentioned that to create a Smart Playlist simply click on the + button bottom left in iTunes

Message was edited by: dronebox

Here's one way (on a mac):

1. Set up two playlists. Playlist A has 1000 songs or so. Playlist B is empty.

2. Select Playlist A, and make sure the "Up Next" queue is empty. (You can click "Show Up Next" from the View menu to see it).

3. Hold down the option key while clicking the Shuffle icon near the top of the screen. This will add all 1000 songs from Playlist A onto the "Up Next" queue.

4. Highlight all of the songs in the Up Next queue. (i.e., select the first song, scroll to the bottom of the Up Next list, and shift-click the bottom song)

5. Control-click that highlighted list, select "Add to Playlist", and choose Playlist B.

Playlist B now should have a randomized list of the songs from Playlist A, that you can synch to an iPod or whatever.

Another tip: To get podcasts to get mixed in with all my other audio files, I always change their Media Kind to Music and uncheck the "Remember playback position" and "Skip with shuffling" boxes after downloading. (You can see those via "Show Info")

"The problem is that in iTunes 11, that left-most column doesn't do anything anymore (where it used to sort by the random order). Good suggestion, though."

Hmmm.. That's odd... I worked through the steps several times before I posted and I've created lots of lovely random playlists and am listening to them quite happily on iProducts both old and new...

Might be something to do with me being in the wrong forum... My bad... I'm using iTunes 11 on a PC running Win7 :-(

Yes. This works! Thanks dronebox. : )

So, here's what I found out by playing around. I'm not sure if the first step is necessary, but I prefer the sidebar, which is more like the pre-Itunes 11 interface.

From the menu, go to View, select "Show Sidebar".

Scroll down on the sidebar to the playlist you want to sort.

Click to select the playlist.

From the menu, go to View, select "View Options"

In the dialogue box that opens, you'll see "Sort by" and a drop down box. Select the column that you want to sort by. The list resorts.

Close the dialogue box.

Harder than it has to be... but the functionality seems to still be there.