Playlist order: iTunes vs. iPhone

[ciaran00]

Hello,

I can see that I can sync a Playlist to iPhone, and the playlist order is "Album and Artist". Is there a reason on the iPhone it orders it by "Name" or by "Playlist index (#)"? Seems to be a random decision by iTunes per playlist. Also, you can't reorder anything in iPhone - it doesn't let you click on the songs to drag them or the header columns. You can't even reorder the columns or put it in any view but Plain List view.

Am I missing something? Is this intentional?

This behaves the same whether the device is on the iTunes/Mac it syncs with, or not.

How do I order all my songs in all iPhone playlists by album&artist (not just album or just artist)?

Thanks.

 

[ciaran00]

Seems like the playlist order in the iPhone is accurate as per the playlist synced to the device.

But if I look at the playlist inside the device on iTunes itself (ie: to play from my computer) the playlist order is arbitrary (sometimes by Title, sometimes by Artist, Album, etc.). Nor can this sort order be changed.

 

[ItsJustafnPhone]

What you are doing is what I call "view sorting" in iTunes, it doesn't actually change the playlist order, just sorts it (and temporarily plays the songs in that order ) In order to change the real playlist order (what the iPhone cares about ) you can do three things

a) click on the empty box above the numbers on the left, this gives you the actual playlist. you can now drag and drop songs to change the playlist

b) Sort the songs the way you want (album,artist,etc). now select all, and go under file and choose "make new playlist from selection). this will give you the a real playlist

c) create a new playlist one song,album,etc at a time

 

[ciaran00]

Hi, thanks for your response.

a) If the iPhone is not manually managed (for Music), then iTunes will not let you click on any column headers (including the playlist index column that you mentioned). I _can_ click on column headers if the iPhone is managed manually, but then I completely lose the ability to autosync.

b and c) I like songs with 3 stars and over on my iPhone so what you've mentioned isn't a viable option because I'm syncing from a smart playlist. Recreating a playlist every time I sync sort of devalues the ability to autosync I think.

It still baffles me why iPhone or iPad displays the correctly sorted playlist (By Artist+Album), but iTunes itself will show the playlist inside the device sorted to a random header (like "Album" or Playlist Index, or even Artist sometimes). And of course these headers can't be clicked.

Also, another bug: If iTunes transcodes music for you (down to 128 kbps) if you check that box for your device, the Album Art for the transcoded files will not show up in iTunes (under the Playlist in the device). However, the Album Art shows up just fine on the device itself when played.

I am surprised at the stark discrepancies between iTunes and what the devices have. If anyone has a solution/workaround for the issue, I'd appreciate it.

 

[ItsJustafnPhone]

umm so then just choose to manually manage your music?