Smart shuffle blocking from playing songs in order offline

[Ankej]

Smart shuffle is blocking me from toggling between shuffling a playlist and playing it in order when I'm completely offline (on a plane, so no way to get back online quickly to toggle through it). Is there any way around it? 

[Joan]

Hi there @Ankej ,

Thanks for reaching out. Tapping the shuffle button again should disable the Smart Shuffle and return to the regular one. What happens when you try that? Send us some screenshots or a screen recording if possible. Also is this on all devices or only specific ones? Let us know and we'd be happy to take a look.

Keep us posted.

[Ankej]

This doesn't work for me. I get a notification "to turn on Smart Shuffle, you'll need to go online" and the shuffle icon just keeps spinning, tapping it again does nothing. I've already done a clean reinstall of the app and it's not helped either.

I'm on IPhone 13 Mini, my IOS is up to date. It's not happening on my IPad Air, where the error pops up but the icon stops spinning after 10 secs or so and shuffling turns off.

[Eni]

Hey there @Ankej, 

Thanks for letting us know. 

You mentioned that you already performed a clean reinstall of the app, but have you followed these specific steps to do so?

If so and the issue persists, would you mind asking a friend or a relative to log in to their account on your iPhone to see if they can replicate this with their account? 

Lastly, could you let us know if this started happening after a specific event such as an update? 

We'll be on the lookout. 

[SoreSoarer]

When I try to shuffle the queue in a downloaded playlist in offline mode, Spotify attempts to do smart shuffle. Because it is unable to smart shuffle in offline mode, nothing happens. If I press the shuffle button again, it reattempts smart shuffle, and this will continue looping. I am essentially unable to reshuffle the queue in offline mode without switching playlists.

Version

8.8.32.533
Plan

Premium

Country

US

Device

iPhone 11

Operating System

iOS 16

[Ankej]

Yes, I followed these exact steps several times.

I don't know anyone with a Spotify premium account whose login I could use.

I'm pretty sure it started right when the feature got introduced.

[Eni]

Hey folks, 

Thanks for your replies. 

@SoreSoarer, would you mind checking if the OS of your iPhone is up to date? On another note, it's well worth running a clean reinstall to get rid of any cached files that might be causing trouble. 

@Ankej, would you mind logging out and then logging back in to your account on your iPhone twice in a row? We know this sounds odd, but this will trigger a sync between your account and device. 

Let us know how it goes. 

[Ankej]

I'd seen this solution in a different thread and tried it already a couple of times, it didn't help

[SoreSoarer]

I checked that my iPhone was updated and did the clean reinstall. Neither of these solved the issue.

[MihailY]

Hey folks,

Thanks for getting back to us.

We've forwarded this to the relevant team here at Spotify, however, we can't confirm when it will be addressed. In the meantime, please make sure to keep your app up-to-date.

Cheers,

[adityamalhotra]

I have the exact same problem. Despite switching off smart shuffle/enhance multiple times, it switches on automatically as soon as you exit the playlist and then refuses to let you play songs in the background.

[adityamalhotra]

Hi, any update on this? This issue has been persistent for a few weeks now and isajor pain point for folks like me who travel alot. Makes the whole spotify premium subscription redundant if I can't play music offline. 

[Dian]

Hey @adityamalhotra,

Thanks for the reply.

We don't have any updates on this, but we can assure you that we're working on improving the user experience on our platform and hope to see this hurdle cleared as well some day.

Hope this clears things a bit,

Cheers!

[Telltalehart]

So the official response is “yes, we understand the problem and the solution would be fairly simple, but we’re not gonna fix it now”? What a load of bs. 

[Vegodan13]

I also have the same problem

[nico_rsx]

I have the same problem. It appeared a few weeks ago. When I start Spotify, sometime my Liked playlist is already in shuffle mode (i didn't do it myself). When I press the shuffle icon to put it back to non-shuffle it try to cycle to smart shuffle, but since I'm offline it give me an error and stay in shuffle mode. Impossible to go back to normal play. Very annoying since I'm often offline. If you can't solve this issue, just remove smart shuffle.

Pixel 6a, everything up-to-date.