topic Re: Smart Shuffle Ruining Playlist Order in Your Library

Smart Shuffle Ruining Playlist Order

zoozlee — Sat, 01 Apr 2023 08:03:14 GMT

Plan

Premium

Country

USA

Device

iPhone 12

Operating System

iOS 10

My Question or Issue

Smart shuffle should be controlled feature by the user, and have the choice to completely disable!

I would like to completely disable the smart shuffle because I used to be able to unshuffle my playlist and it would pick up where/when that specific song was saved. Now when I unshuffle it goes back to the same exact spot every time. I really dislike the smart shuffle, users should have the ability to completely enable or disable the feature if they don’t want it!

Re: Smart Shuffle Ruining Playlist Order

Alex — Mon, 03 Apr 2023 10:28:16 GMT

Hi there @zoozlee,

Welcome to the Community!

You should be able to deactivate the Smart Shuffle in the following ways, by clicking the Shuffle button multiple times (you'll see the icon changing):

at the top of the playlist
In the Now Playing View
directly on the queue (iOS only)

You can differentiate between the shuffle modes like so: If the icon is grayed out - Shuffle is switched off. If the icon is green - Shuffle is on. If the icon is green and has a little star next to it - smart shuffle is on.

Hope this helps.

Re: Smart Shuffle Ruining Playlist Order

zoozlee — Fri, 14 Apr 2023 08:20:59 GMT

Hi, I have been turning it off using all of those options. Unfortunately whenever I turn it off it sends me to the same place in my playlist instead of picking up when I saved the song that is currently playing.

By disabling the function I’m referring to removing it entirely as an option from my account.

Thanks

Re: Smart Shuffle Ruining Playlist Order

AlejaR — Fri, 14 Apr 2023 21:25:40 GMT

Hey @zoozlee,

Thanks for your reply and for the clarification.

At the moment, there's no way to completely disable this option from your account. We understand where you're coming from and we really appreciate the time you took to let us know your comments in the matter.

Another user had a similar request, so they posted this idea about it. Feel free to add your vote and subscribe to it in the three-dot menu, that way you can stay up-to-date with any relevant news about this.

We'll be here if anything else comes up. Once again, thanks for the feedback.

Re: Smart Shuffle Ruining Playlist Order

Arxareon — Fri, 23 Jun 2023 13:12:36 GMT

Whether we can disable this feature as a whole doesn't matter as much, the real issue is the fact that when we unshuffle, it DOES NOT continue playing the current song at its original spot within the playlist so the next song is what would be after that one in the default unshuffled playlist order.

Turning off smart shuffle jumps the song that was playing before the playlist was shuffled to begin with so we cannot use the regular shuffle feature to jump to a random spot in the playlist but continue playing the default order following that random spot after unshuffling the playlist. The current implementation of smart shuffle completely removes this functionality.

I'm sad to see no in-depth UX considerations were made. Please, do better Spotify!

Re: Smart Shuffle Ruining Playlist Order

zoozlee — Fri, 23 Jun 2023 03:42:14 GMT

Yes!! You put it perfectly! If I wanted to hear Spotify recommendations I would use the playlists they create, please leave me and my perfectly curated playlist alone and smart-shuffle free!

Re: Smart Shuffle Ruining Playlist Order

JP20Boss — Mon, 29 Jan 2024 16:03:44 GMT

Chiming in because this issue finally drove me to find a thread. Smart Shuffle & Shuffle being integrated into one button has been a nightmare because of this!

Re: Smart Shuffle Ruining Playlist Order

MattSuda — Sun, 22 Jun 2025 04:54:11 GMT

Hey everyone,

Good news! Spotify has listened to user feedback and you can now disable Smart Shuffle from the mobile app settings, as mentioned in this now implemented idea. This setting will also be added to the desktop app in a future update.

Steps to disable Smart Shuffle in the mobile app:

1: Tap on your profile picture at the top left corner

2: Tap on Settings and privacy

3: Tap on Playback

4: Switch Include Smart Shuffle in play modes off

Note: This is for Premium users only and right now it's only available in the mobile app, but in a future update, there will be a setting to disable Smart Shuffle in the desktop app as well.

More info can be found in the Shuffle help article here:

https://support.spotify.com/article/shuffle-play/