[Desktop][Windows 10]Issue with (the Search Function in) playlists

[Soul_x]

Plan

Premium

Country

Romania

Device

PC

Operating System

Windows 10

My Question or Issue

Issue 1: For example, if you have a playlist with 20 songs, and you use the Search Function to search for a certain song and you play that one when you click the Next Button it will always replay that one song, it won't go back to access your whole library of 20 songs.

Is this supposed to work that way or is it a bug? This issue also applies if you search for a certain artist, it will only play the songs from the artist you searched for, ignoring the rest of your playlist.

To replicate this issue, access any playlist or make a new one, add a bunch of songs and use the Search Function to filter it. Play the song you searched for or any song from the artist you searched for and click the Next Button, it seems it creates a temporary new playlist within said playlist and will ignore the other song/s and/or artist/s. Is this intended?

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Issue 2: If you sort your playlist by DATE ADDED to be last added and you click the Next Button, they playlist will play the songs in the order that were last added instead of playing it in the order that it is sorted by, so for example if I added 10 songs on Dec, 19th 2020, it will play them in the order I added them that day instead of the order that it got sorted in the playlist.

To replicate this issue, go to any playlist, sort by DATE ADDED to show last added songs first in your playlist (click on DATE ADDED twice) and play the first song in your playlist, then click on the Next Button, the playlist will go through your songs in the order that were added not in the order that are sorted by.

[Alex]

Hey @Soul_x,

Thanks for reaching out about this in the Community!

Inside a playlist the little magnifying glass icon is not intended to Search, but rather to filter out songs in a playlist. So once you enter a criteria in the filter it will only give you the results which contain that criteria. So this will be the single or a few songs from an artist if you filter with the artist name. Once you've played the track that's let you won't be able to see any other tracks from the playlist until you clear the filter.

Hope this makes sense 🙂

Don't hesitate to reach out again if you have questions.

[Soul_x]

Hello @Alex,

When you click the magnifying glass icon it literally says "Search in playlist" it doesn't say "Filter".

My issue is not that I'm not seeing the other songs while I use the Search Feature, as I explained, the issue is that once I Search/filter for a song and I play that song, even if I clear the Search and I can see all the songs again, when I click the Next Button it keeps replaying that same song, does it make more sense now ?

This can't be a real feature, so if I have a 2000 song playlist, I want to play one particular song from it first, before I go back to shuffling through it how do I do that? since if I use the Search feature (filter as you call it) it will always replay that song instead of going back to my full playlist.

The same feature while using it on mobile, after you play the song you searched for, upon clicking the Next Button it will go back through your whole playlist again instead of playing that one song again and again 🙂 .

For my second Issue do I have to make a new post?

Thanks,

Soul

[Alex]

Hey @Soul_x,

Thanks for the reply.

What happens on Desktop when you use the filter function is that it shortens the playlist to only what you've filtered, so the app will no longer have the whole playlist loaded up, hence you can't play the next song automatically when you click the Play next button, because there is no other song if the filter is active. Even if you use the search bar, the app will find the song you're looking for, but if you play it straight away, without opening the playlist which it comes from, you won't be able to skip to a next song.

This works differently on Mobile, where you have the option to look for a song within a playlist, which is different than filtering.

Let us know if you have more questions.

[Soul_x]

Hello @Alex,

So, going back to my example with a playlist with 2000 songs, I can never go back to the playlist when I use the filter(search function)? How is that even possible, how did this get past the QA? It's a really poor design. So even If I clear the filter while the song is still playing and now the playlist shows the full list, when I use the Play Next it will still replay that one song... I'm sorry but this is a really bad design. Why does it not work as the mobile app? 

This is getting nowhere and I'm sure you had nothing to do with the design part but this is ridiculous :D.

Back to my second issue, do I have to make a separate post about that or would you also be able to help with that one ?

Thanks,

Soul

[Alex · Accepted solution]

Hey @Soul_x,

Thanks for your understanding regarding the search and filter function.

At this point, I'd suggest that you submit an idea on how you think the search function should work in the Community Ideas Exchange page. You can click here to start submitting it.

Make sure you read the guidelines to submitting ideas for Spotify so that we make the most of these precious input we've been discussing! The devs are always trying to make the app more user friendly so feedback like this is valuable. The new version of the Desktop app will soon be rolling out to all users globally, so hopefully more advanced search options will be implemented there.

Regarding your second issue: We tried reproducing this on our end, but if you sort a playlist by Date Added (Newest first) songs play in sorted order if you use the Play Next function. If you're not getting this result you might want to clear your app cache, following the steps from this Guide and see if that helps.

Cheers.

[Soul_x]

Hello @Alex,

Thank you for your swift replies and help.

Since you said a new version will hit the Desktop app soon I'll hold till then and see how the search/filter function works.

Regarding my second issue:

I uninstalled the app and cleaned cache but the issue is still present.

I found that this only happens with playlists that contain full albums instead of songs added one-by-one, so if I sort a playlist by DATE ADDED and go through it song by song, once it hits the album portion, it will play them in the order that those songs were "published" instead of the order I'm sorting by.

Since this is a minor inconvenience I can live with this issue.

Thank you again for your help,

Soul