music not sorting by song name in iOS 10

Open the Settings app and scroll down to the Music app. Inside the app’s preferences, you will find ‘Sort Songs & Albums’ in the Library section. By default, it is set to ‘By Artist’ but if you change it to ‘By Title’, they will be sorted alphabetically.

In the Music Player, press "Library" to open up the list of Songs, Playlists, Artists, etc., Select "Songs", When your list of songs comes up, top right corner it should say "Sort" press that and the option of "Title" and "Artist" comes up, select "Title".

It's flipping ridiculous that it's this difficult simply to select how to sort the lists, and all because it won't do it the proper way which is to sort things who you ask it to in the first place, if you ask it to search by "Title", you don't then expect the results to be in Album or Artist order.

This works for me for the regular library when I'm just listening to music, but is there a way to fix the issue when creating a new playlist on the device? The sort option isn't at the top right when trying to add songs to a playlist.

I just updated to iOS 10.2 today December 2016. My music is now being arranged by artist. In past updates you go to SETTINGS. MUSIC. ARRANGE MUSIC. to change this back to alphabetically arranging your music. There no longer is a tab to arrange the music alphabetically???? Why do they insist on screwing things up when they aren't broken in the first place??? And where do you go to complain to someone who actually makes any real decisions on these matters?

Open the music app, from library select songs, you're then shown all the songs in your library; at that point you'll see 'sort' in the top right of the window, which will allow you to sort by artist/title without going through settings.

The closest solution I have found is this and it seems to work pretty well:

1. Sync your iphone up to your itunes.
2. Select your playlist.
3. Right click > "Copy to Play Order"

This will sync the playlist in your iphone to mirror that of your itunes. GIt seems like libraries and playlists need to be managed in itunes and then synced to devices. For all you early adopters of the ipod, it's basically the exact same way you would have managed an ipod.

I am sure this is how Apple intends for you to work across their devices. I just wish the feedback had these instructions. I have yet to see if the solution has automatically synced with my Apple TV.

Hi, even though I have selected the "By Title" option at my iPhone and iPad they are still sorting manually. I went to iTunes and forced the playlist to be sorted by Name, which I believe it's similar to the "By Title" iOS option... and it still doesn't works. Any guess? (All devices are connected with the same AppleID account)

Same issue and I'm becoming very frustrated. I sort my music by song title so I know when I need to skip a particular song due to children in the car or music preference. If I wanted it sorted by artist I would go to artist.

I really wish they would see how the first time they did this upset people and NOT DO IT AGAIN and instead they now make it harder to fix.

Thank you. I ended up figuring that out right after I posted.

I still don't understand why each upgrade changes this. I also don't understand why each time i upgrade (despite having more than enough storage space) some of my music goes missing and I have to hook up iTunes and put it back on.

THANK YOU. Yes. I figured that out after screwing with it for half an hour. It's so frustrating when they change things that aren't broken. When you update everything else stays the same. Why can't this???

I love Apple but I am really starting to get annoyed by the stupidity in this, it's hardly rocket science is it. You ask for the list to be by "Song" alphabetically and it does it by Artist, I mean, it's as if Apple are saying "Yes we know you asked for X but WE know best and we KNOW you really want Y, you haven't asked for it but you want this and because you won't do it our way we'll make it increasingly difficult for you to do it your way."

As clever as you are Apple, if I want it sorted by song then sort it by SONG, not by Artist just because you mistakenly THINK you know best! 😠

Thank you Jeff, I'm starting to get increasingly hacked off with this sorting music by everything except what you actually want it sorted by, I found this AGAIN this morning after 10.2 update, went to the Settings to sort it and now THAT'S been removed. It's driving me crazy. Thank you for your help.

Hi guys,

I have a slightly different solution. My playlist song order was different on my phone as iTunes so I did the fix that was suggested above with no reward.

I had added some songs to the playlists affected but with no result so what I did is this.

I duplicated the playlist in iTunes, then deleted the original playlist, then renamed the duplicated playlist.

The songs then appeared in the order that I wanted.

Hi Phoenix7178

Thanks for your post which makes sense and works, except that I've experienced a peculiarity. I wonder if you have any idea... I'm running ios 10.21 on iphone and 12.6 on pc and they're synced. On checking my itunes library, one of my playlists contains 1216 songs. On the pc the sort by title works perfectly, but on the iphone only about two thirds sort correctly then the balance are unsorted! Cycing from 'Title' to 'Artist' and back makes no difference. It's been an issue for about a year so I know it's not ios 10.2 specific. Mighty annoying. Many thanks

That seems to work for our ENTIRE library of songs but I want to sort only one playlist differently on my iPhone. I tried changing the playlist on my computer which worked great and then syncing the iPhone to iTunes on my computer. No luck. The sorting of the iPhone playlist did not mirror the one in iTunes on our computer.