Smart Shuffle only playing recommended songs

[MihailY]

We've received reports that the Smart Shuffle feature only plays recommended tracks. No liked songs or songs from the user's playlists are playing/visible in the queue.

[breecsm-us]

I'm having the same issue, it started yesterday. When smart shuffle is on, it only plays recommendations. 

[AlejaR]

Hey there folks,

Thanks for all your replies here and for the info shared.

If you haven't yet, we'd suggest you perform a clean reinstall of the app on the affected device. That way, you can make sure you're running the latest version of Spotify available and that the stored cache is not leading to Smart shuffle just playing the recommendations. 

If the above doesn't or didn't do the trick, we'd like to gather some additional info. Please send us:

• The make/model and OS of the affected devices.
• The exact Spotify version you're running there.
• Did you notice if this started to happen after a specific event such as an OS update?
• Does this happen only when playing the Liked songs? Or does it happen regardless of the playlist in which you use Smart Shuffle?
• All the troubleshooting steps you've tried so far. 
• A short video recording. You can attach the videos in your next reply in mp4 format, or upload them to YouTube or Google Drive and make them public.

Keep us in the loop!

[rcubed1996]

Plan

Premium

Country

USA

Device

(iPhone 8, Samsung Galaxy 9, Macbook Pro late 2016)

iPhone 14 Pro

Operating System

(iOS 10, Android Oreo, Windows 10,etc.)

iOS 18.5

My Question or Issue

Since yesterday, when I use Smart Shuffle on any playlist, it only shuffles the songs in that section. It doesn’t add any songs from my playlist into the mix. 

[Oemor]

On my Android device, with spotify Premium.

If I have smart shuffle turned on, it only plays songs recommended by smart shuffle and it's almost always exactly the same ones in mostly the same order. I liked the smart shuffle feature, but only if it would actually work

[raincloud66]

• Plan: premium
• Country: Japan
• Device: iPhone SE 2020, iOS18.x
• Spotify version 9.0.50.511
• Not sure when it started. Last week it wasn't happening. I didn't listen to smart shuffle during the week, and when I tried it last night it happened as described below.
• This happens to me when I play a playlist on my iPhone in smart shuffle mode. It ONLY plays recommended songs, and it plays ZERO songs that are actually on the playlist. When I tried on my MacBook desktop app, it functioned normally.
• I killed the app, rebooted the phone. I'd rather not delete the app and download it again, because it's a huge hassle returning all the settings to the way I like them. (Crossfade, autoplay etc etc.) All these settings get set back to default when you delete and reinstall the app. So I'm hoping Spotify can fix this issue without making everyone redownload the app!

Edit: when I wrote the above comment, smart shuffle was still playing songs from my playlist on my MacBook. But shortly after writing it, the MacBook app ALSO decided that it was only going to play recommended songs, no more songs from the playlist. It seems that it was doing fine until a non-playlist song showed up in the queue. From then on out, it played only recommended songs.

[TakeToTheSky]

On all my devices, recently, when I turn on smart shuffle, the first around 150 songs are purely recommended with none of my playlist songs. If I scroll to the bottom of my queue a few times, it goes back to normal.

[wiinfinity]

I am also encountering this. When my smart shuffle is on, it will only play the smart shuffle songs without mixing in any of my liked songs. I'm using Google Pixel 9XL and Spotify 9.0.50.416. I tried logging out and reinstalled the whole Spotify with no luck

[AmyFlowers]

Hi so since the last update, smart shuffle only plays shuffle songs. Before i could put on a playlist and it would add a shuffle song every 4-5 songs but now it does not play any of the songs from my playlists 😞

is this the new way smart shuffle works?

[askyee]

having this same problem, only last week would play my playlist and smart shuffle would add in a recommended song or 2 every few songs now if i turn it on it’s only recommended songs, i have no idea what’s happened 

[askyee]

nothing is fixing it atm either which is really sad cause i enjoyed smart shuffle a lot!