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Select All does not select all

Select All does not select all

Premium plan, on MacBook Pro

 

I am trying to create a playlist which includes all my liked songs. However, there seems to be no working way to select all tracks in "Liked Songs".

- Edit/Select All, or Command-A, seem to only select a limited number of songs (about 2-3 screens of them)

- Shift-clicking first and last songs selects only part of songs in between, leaving "windows" of unselected songs. 

 

Looks like a bug to me. Any workarounds?

 

Reply
17 Replies

Hey @bob_bobene

 

Thanks for posting on the Community about this.

 

Could you confirm if you can perform the selection when holding the Ctrl key and clicking on each song with the mouse? If this doesn't work you can try selecting a track, then holding the Shift key and pressing the Arrow Down key to select multiple songs.   

 

If you still can't select multiple tracks after trying out these steps, you might need to run a clean reinstall of the Spotify app on your MacBook. We recommend this step for removing corrupted data that could be causing the issue. It also gets you the latest app version with all necessary updates. 

 

Keep us posted! We'll be here if you have any questions. 

Hi Ivan - thanks. 

 

It would be Command key on Mac. Yes, it works, as is shift+arrow. 

 

I would like to clarify that the problem is not inability to select multiple songs, but inability to select ALL liked songs - about 12,000 of them.

 

I believe I found a workaround for this: mouse-scrolling through the entire collection (it takes good several minutes), then Cmd+A.  From the looks of it, I speculate that, when Cmd+A is pressed, Spotify is only adding to selection songs that have recently appeared on screen plus a couple of screens worth of songs up and down.

 

Hey @bob_bobene

 

Thanks for getting back to us. 

 

Could you also try if you can select all tracks by clicking the first and the last song in the playlist while holding the Shift key? This is expected to mark all songs as selected and allows you to scroll faster through the playlist by using the sidebar. 

 

Then just right-click on a selected track and use the Add to Playlist option to transfer the entire selection of songs to another playlist.  

 

Hope this helps. We'll look out for your reply.  

Ivan - thanks. As I described in the original post, when I shift-click first and last song in collection, Spotify leaves "gaps" in selection. IE it select songs "selectively" between the first and the last, leaving groups of unselected songs  sporadically scattered throughout

Hey @bob_bobene

 

Thanks for keeping us in the loop. 

 

Keep in mind we also recommend performing a clean reinstall of Spotify on your device to make sure the app is updated to the latest version. After a clean reinstall you should be able to select all tracks in the playlists. Give it a try and let us know the outcome. 

 

Another thing you can try if the clean reinstall doesn't solve this is cleaning up the hosts file on your MacBook. Follow the steps described here on how you can do that.

 

Hope this helps. Keep us posted. 

I did clean reinstall. Situation unchanged.

 

Clicking the first song and pressing cmd+a selects 227 songs out of more than 12,000

Shift-clicking first and last song selects about 1200 songs.

 

 

Hey @bob_bobene

 

Thanks for getting back. 

 

Could you confirm if you managed to clean up the hosts file on your device? If you see no change after the clean reinstall this step might help you solve the issue. 

 

Keep us posted! We'll be happy to lend a hand if you need more help.  

I would like to revive this thread. Since the last post, the situation improved: now, cmd+A (Mac) does select all songs. However, shift-clicking first and last songs in the range still selects groups of songs in that range, leaving other groups in between unselected. This is a serious headache when creating playlists...

 

Thank you

Hi there @bob_bobene,

 

Thank you for your reply.

 

We tried this on our end with a playlist that contains 1000+ songs and we couldn't replicate the same behavior.

 

Can you confirm if you followed the step that @Ivan provided in his answer above?

Also, can you log in with a different account - such as a friend's or a family member's to see if the issue persists? This will help us understand if it's account related or not.

 

We'll keep an eye out for your reply.

 

Cheers!

JeremyModerator
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Yes, I followed all the suggested steps, perhaps more than once.

 

My library is 12,000+ songs. When I select the first 1000 songs the problem does not appear on my end either. When I try selecting about 5000, it does. See the attached video.

 

Generally (and slightly off-topic), IMHO, Spotify has issues with large libraries. Another one I am facing is playing songs in iPhone that are not in the beginning of the library. I also feel strongly that shuffling all liked songs only uses a portion of the liked songs - but I'll have to do some work to collect evidence of that...

Hey @bob_bobene,

 

Thanks for getting back to us and for the video.

 

We understand how important your music is to you and appreciate the time and effort you took to build up such an impressive music collection. Regrettably, experiencing performance issues when making alterations to very large playlists (over a thousand songs) is expected, since the system is constantly trying to update information in real time.

 

Our developer team is aware of this and they're working on improving the experience. We thank you for your report in this regard and will keep it in mind while moving forward. We cannot say when or if this will be solved, but we recommend keeping your app up to date, as software improvements come with every update. 

 

Hope this info is useful. Let us know if there's anything else we can help with.

Mihail Moderator
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Hello - 

 

Thank you for acknowledging that what I experience is a real problem. I would like to point out though that difficulties do not only pertain to making alterations to collection such as selecting and moving around thousands of songs.  As I indicated in a previous response, I have issues accessing some very basic functionality, such as playing songs by selecting them directly, or in shuffle.

 

On a more general note:

I am collecting music since mid-1980s. For a collection built over 30 years (moving from tapes to CDs to digital), 12,000 songs is not a very large size at all. I fairly recently moved my collection from Apple Music to Spotify, attracted by the features facilitating finding new music - and, in that respect, the change was worth every penny. I significant chunk of the 12,000 songs was added to my collection since I changed to Spotify. 

Which is all to say: it is very strange to me that the platform so mature as Spotify has difficulties handling music collections of a reasonable size, especially provided how effective it is in helping collections grow.

Hi @bob_bobene

 

Thanks for getting back to us. 

 

We understand where you're coming from. 

 

As @Mihail mentioned, large playlists can have an impact on the app's performance not only when selecting songs, but also when trying to perform other actions. 

 

We appreciate your report and will make sure to pass it on to the right team. 

 

If you need help with anything else, just let us know.

 

Cheers!

EniModerator
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“Music acts like a magic key, to which the most tightly closed heart opens.”– Maria von Trapp

I've been using Spotify for YEARS now... I'm also a software developer, so all the uninstalling and cleaning files protocols have already been followed...

The selection of multiple songs is definitely broken for all platforms that I use, MAC desktop app, MAC Web browser, and my Android phone...

I remember being able to select multiple tunes super easy across all platforms; now it's just impossible; no matter how hard you try or what shortcuts you use, the only way to save some tunes to a new playlist is by adding them ONE BY ONE... :'(

Is there a bug backlog I can report this into? It has been months since I noticed this behaviour, and it seems I'm not alone...

Hi there @yuriovich,

 

Thank you for your reply and feedback.

 

We understand that things can feel frustrating when things don't work as you'd like them to. Rest assured that we're always trying to improve as we always strive to improve our features.

 

We've passed along the feedback to the right team as mentioned above.

 

We hope for your understanding and that you continue using Spotify and find it gets better in the future.

 

Once again - thanks for the feedback, we appreciate it. Let us know if we can help you with anything else. 

 

Take care!

JeremyModerator
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Hey Jeremy, thanks for getting back to me.

I won't stop using the platform, I really like it. 🙂

I'm also getting a new work laptop soon, so will be able to do a fresh install on a fresh device... If for some reason it works there, I will let you know here on this thread.

Thanks again,
Y

Hi again @yuriovich,

 

Thank you for getting back in touch 🙂

We're happy to hear that you like the platform.

 

Let us know if we can help you with anything else in the meantime.

 

Have a great continued week! 

JeremyModerator
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