iPhone audiobook sort order no longer works

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Level 1

9 points

iPhone audiobook sort order no longer works

For years I have synched my Audiobook collection to iPhone and iPod with few problems. It has stopped working correctly with iTunes 12.7.2 and iPhone 6S+ (11.2). Playlists no longer play in order and also sometimes appear as multiple books.

All of my audiobooks have very carefully edited metadata. As well as titles, pictures and descriptions they:

Have correct Disk and Track information
Have a Unique title 'sort as' field
Have each track 'sort as' field sequentially numbered in a standard form. An example is: Bk_Fforde_U01_The_Eyre_Affair_05 for the 5th chapter of book 01 in the Jasper Fforde canon

I have reported this as a 'feature/bug' to Apple.....

Is there a way to force the iPhone to use the chapter 'sort as' field for playing?

Thanks

iPhone 6s Plus, iOS 11.2.1

Posted on Dec 17, 2017 11:46 AM

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Answer 1

Best reply

turingtest2

Level 10

272,761 points

Jan 14, 2018 7:21 AM in response to rorymob

See Organizing audiobook chapters. There is a bug with the main Audiobooks view in iTunes which can cause multiple covers to appear, although your sort naming scheme ought to work with that.

Depending on how you created your playlists the play order may not agree with the current display order. The play order is shown if you go to the songs layout and click the heading of the left most column of numbers. You can set the play order to the current display order after sorting on some other column, e.g. name (which will sort by sort name), then right-clicking the name of the playlist and clicking Copy to Play Order.

Books synced to an iDevice ought to play in sort name order when using iBooks, although it is as well to complete track and disc numbers in a logical fashion too.

tt2

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Answer 2

MikkelML

Level 1

4 points

Jan 14, 2018 4:38 AM in response to rorymob

I have the same annoying error. Hopefully it will be corrected soon in the next update.

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