iOS 9 Music App Ignoring “Skip When Shuffling” Tag on Tracks Synced from iTunes

iTunes has a setting that lets you exclude certain tracks from shuffle mode. I use this for classical music and spoken work tracks that I don’t want to hear when I shuffle songs on my iPhone, or in iTunes. To set a track to not shuffle, select one or more tracks, press Command-I, and then click Options. Check Skip When Shuffling.

Skip when shuffling

Unfortunately, this isn’t working reliably any more. I started noticing this problem when the Music app was refreshed in iOS 8.4. But with the release of iOS 9, I see it a lot more; many of my classical or spoken word tracks come up in shuffle mode on my iPhone. Here’s on example. I just started shuffling songs on my iPhone, and you can see that, in the Up Next lest, the next track is from a Monty Python album, and the sixth track in the list is a classical track. Both of these are set to Skip When Shuffling.

Up next list

This is annoying. When I listen in shuffle mode, I’d rather not have to skip over a lot of tracks. This is clearly a bug, and I hope it will be fixed soon.

Dear reader, are you seeing this too?

52 thoughts on “iOS 9 Music App Ignoring “Skip When Shuffling” Tag on Tracks Synced from iTunes

  1. Sadly I am as well. Along with a similarly related problem where Music on iOS keeps reverting to shuffle mode (from playlist, Apple Music, or Apple Radio) about 2 out of 3 times I connect in my car. This is new behavior that didn’t exist prior to iOS 9. Added to the tracks I don’t want playing in shuffle mode I’m getting a lot of unwanted track listens.

  2. Sadly I am as well. Along with a similarly related problem where Music on iOS keeps reverting to shuffle mode (from playlist, Apple Music, or Apple Radio) about 2 out of 3 times I connect in my car. This is new behavior that didn’t exist prior to iOS 9. Added to the tracks I don’t want playing in shuffle mode I’m getting a lot of unwanted track listens.

  3. It works when you mark the item as music in itunes then sync it to iphone. The song gets greyed out. The problem, though, is that even when i turn off shuffle mode, I still can’t get that song to play…any advice? 🙁

  4. It works when you mark the item as music in itunes then sync it to iphone. The song gets greyed out. The problem, though, is that even when i turn off shuffle mode, I still can’t get that song to play…any advice? 🙁

  5. I spent a few weeks with Apple support advisors on this issue. My claim was that following the introduction of Apple Music and the updated iTunes client, when I use iTunes Match, the setting for Skip when Shuffling stopped working when streaming to Apple TV and iPhone. After getting bounced from iTunes support to TV support to iPhone support to Mac support, they concluded that the developers were working on it, and in the mean time, I should create playlists of what I wanted to listen to.

    • So, at most of my time, if I want to listen to a specific set of music, I will either create a conventional playlist, or a smart playlist, and shuffle from there.

  6. I spent a few weeks with Apple support advisors on this issue. My claim was that following the introduction of Apple Music and the updated iTunes client, when I use iTunes Match, the setting for Skip when Shuffling stopped working when streaming to Apple TV and iPhone. After getting bounced from iTunes support to TV support to iPhone support to Mac support, they concluded that the developers were working on it, and in the mean time, I should create playlists of what I wanted to listen to.

    • So, at most of my time, if I want to listen to a specific set of music, I will either create a conventional playlist, or a smart playlist, and shuffle from there.

  7. It’s not working for me,either. The songs I have set to “skip while shuffling” are Christmas songs, so I noticed right away the feature was gone when I started hearing about Rudolph in July. I’ve also noticed the shuffle feature will often repeat itself and start lining up the same set of songs you just listened to in the the same order over and over again as a shuffle. Apple can’t ever give us new features without destroying old ones.

  8. It’s not working for me,either. The songs I have set to “skip while shuffling” are Christmas songs, so I noticed right away the feature was gone when I started hearing about Rudolph in July. I’ve also noticed the shuffle feature will often repeat itself and start lining up the same set of songs you just listened to in the the same order over and over again as a shuffle. Apple can’t ever give us new features without destroying old ones.

  9. Yes, this annoys the hell out of me. I have not updated to iOS 9 yet. I’m on 8.4 it looks like. I have playlists of songs that I don’t want to play normally so excluding from shuffle worked great. But now it doesn’t and they still come up when playing music on my iPhone and it’s definitely awkward in my car shuffling music over Bluetooth. I can’t remember exactly when this started happening – maybe with the new music app on iPhone.

  10. Yes, this annoys the hell out of me. I have not updated to iOS 9 yet. I’m on 8.4 it looks like. I have playlists of songs that I don’t want to play normally so excluding from shuffle worked great. But now it doesn’t and they still come up when playing music on my iPhone and it’s definitely awkward in my car shuffling music over Bluetooth. I can’t remember exactly when this started happening – maybe with the new music app on iPhone.

  11. I have this problem, too. For the most part, I usually like the new features Apple adds to iTunes (even though they sometimes take readjusting my habits), but what I HATE is how they lose or screw up old features that I love. This “Skip When Shuffling” feature has been instrumental for me, as I like to put my entire library (which is enormous) on shuffle, and that feature allowed stuff like spoken word and Christmas music to be skipped over. Now, those types of songs are popping up frequently in shuffling. Creating a playlist to get around this would take a very long time, as I’ve got 122gb of music. I don’t want to make a playlist, I want this feature to work like it’s supposed to. Please Apple, get this feature back in action!

    [rant warning] Another feature that has been gone for years now, is iTunes allowing a track/artist/album from a Compilation album, to also be shown in the list of albums for that Artist, as opposed to only showing up in Compilations and Albums. For example, my Neil Young “Decade” album. There are songs by “Neil Young,” by “Neil Young & Crazy Horse,” by “CSN&Y,” etc. So I have it set as a Compilation album to allow multiple artists on a single album. Use to be, those “Neil Young” songs would show up under Compilations, under Albums, and ALSO under Artists, listing “Decade” as one of Neil Young’s albums. Not anymore. Now, and this is insane to me, I go to Neil Young and one of his main albums, “Decade,” is NOT even listed. If I want to shuffle all of Neil Young’s music, all those hits from “Decade” are not included. This irks me to no end. The only place those songs are found are under Compilations and Albums. Please restore this, Apple!

    Sorry for the rabbit-trail. I hope the next update takes care of the original topic issue, at least.

  12. I have this problem, too. For the most part, I usually like the new features Apple adds to iTunes (even though they sometimes take readjusting my habits), but what I HATE is how they lose or screw up old features that I love. This “Skip When Shuffling” feature has been instrumental for me, as I like to put my entire library (which is enormous) on shuffle, and that feature allowed stuff like spoken word and Christmas music to be skipped over. Now, those types of songs are popping up frequently in shuffling. Creating a playlist to get around this would take a very long time, as I’ve got 122gb of music. I don’t want to make a playlist, I want this feature to work like it’s supposed to. Please Apple, get this feature back in action!

    [rant warning] Another feature that has been gone for years now, is iTunes allowing a track/artist/album from a Compilation album, to also be shown in the list of albums for that Artist, as opposed to only showing up in Compilations and Albums. For example, my Neil Young “Decade” album. There are songs by “Neil Young,” by “Neil Young & Crazy Horse,” by “CSN&Y,” etc. So I have it set as a Compilation album to allow multiple artists on a single album. Use to be, those “Neil Young” songs would show up under Compilations, under Albums, and ALSO under Artists, listing “Decade” as one of Neil Young’s albums. Not anymore. Now, and this is insane to me, I go to Neil Young and one of his main albums, “Decade,” is NOT even listed. If I want to shuffle all of Neil Young’s music, all those hits from “Decade” are not included. This irks me to no end. The only place those songs are found are under Compilations and Albums. Please restore this, Apple!

    Sorry for the rabbit-trail. I hope the next update takes care of the original topic issue, at least.

  13. While it’s the opposite of the problems that this thread started, I hope you don’t mind me highlighting it here. I cannot get the 9.1 to shuffle at all, and it’s a real pain in the neck when I am running. Anyone have answers to this? I am ready to get rid of my iPhone if they cannot fix this. Thanks

  14. While it’s the opposite of the problems that this thread started, I hope you don’t mind me highlighting it here. I cannot get the 9.1 to shuffle at all, and it’s a real pain in the neck when I am running. Anyone have answers to this? I am ready to get rid of my iPhone if they cannot fix this. Thanks

  15. Checking backs few months later, just switched back to iOS from android, and was so excited About having my organized library on my phone! Sadly, I’m hearing my stand-up comedy tracks while shuffling music even after deleting the music and re-adding it to my phone making sure the setting is marked before the sync.

  16. Checking backs few months later, just switched back to iOS from android, and was so excited About having my organized library on my phone! Sadly, I’m hearing my stand-up comedy tracks while shuffling music even after deleting the music and re-adding it to my phone making sure the setting is marked before the sync.

  17. you can go into preferences and tick the box ‘show tick boxes’ and then go to your iTunes library and untick the boxes and hopefully when you play your musician shuffle it won;t sync those songs. Hopefully apple will sort the issue out but until then you can use this method to avoid unwanted songs. Thanks for reading.

  18. you can go into preferences and tick the box ‘show tick boxes’ and then go to your iTunes library and untick the boxes and hopefully when you play your musician shuffle it won;t sync those songs. Hopefully apple will sort the issue out but until then you can use this method to avoid unwanted songs. Thanks for reading.

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