iPhone 3.1 Bugs: Podcasts Out of Order
Instead of the iPhone’s built-in iPod app sorting podcasts chronologically up or down (newest to oldest, or oldest to newest), iPhone 3.1 users are seeing… no logical sequence that can be made sense of. Indeed, some of you let us know because the lack of order made you think your podcasts weren’t updating at all. Rest assured, it’s not you.
To be clear: You’re not out of order. Apple’s out of order! All these [redacted] podcasts are out of order!
If you’re having the same random podcast listings — or better yet, if you’ve come up with a solution or work around that’s better than just hunting for the blue “new” dot — let us know in the comments.
[Thanks to everyone who brought this to our attention]
September 16th, 2009 at 9:56 pm
So glad this is getting exposure. I vote for oldest to newest!
September 16th, 2009 at 10:10 pm
Ok thought I was just going crazy glad it’s not just me with this prob. Also has any1 elses podcast screen seem to be studdering when you page through them? Things just don’t flow as smooth anymore for me.
September 16th, 2009 at 10:15 pm
Nothing about the randomly crashing iPhones?
September 16th, 2009 at 10:19 pm
Not only they are out of order, some of them are with cover arts some are not! Also some show the release date some show nothing.
It’s really weird.
iTunes 9 has its fair share of bugginess too. For instance multi disc album sequence is totally effed up
September 16th, 2009 at 10:22 pm
My 2 year old iPhone 2G crashed and rebooted itself for the 1st time this week under OS 3.1. I’m seeing more sluggish issues as well, which makes me think it’s bad memory management. The fact that my podcasts are not being sorted, either in the podcast area or in smart playlists I have created just for my downloaded podcasts, have driven me to abandon my iPhone for podcast listening and use my old iPod until Apple fixes this.
September 16th, 2009 at 10:30 pm
Hmm that’s odd, I’m running 3.1 on iPhone 3G 8GB, and my podcasts are all in order (from oldest to newest). None of them are in haphazard order though.
Mine isn’t jailbroken, how about you guys’?
September 16th, 2009 at 10:44 pm
I sync two podcasts. One is just fine but the other dates are sort of intertwined. Really odd…
September 16th, 2009 at 10:52 pm
I’m having a similar problem with general music playlists!
Very annoying.
I reported it during the beta stages, but it seems they never got it fixed!
September 16th, 2009 at 10:55 pm
On my iPod Touch: I haven’t checked about the order of the podcasts, but I know that when I listen to a podcast and rate it on the ipod, and then sync back to iTunes, it resets the play count to 0 and the rating to unrated
September 16th, 2009 at 11:02 pm
I wasn’t updating merely because I’m waiting for the 3GS jailbreak, but this is another HUGE reason to put me off from doing so.
September 16th, 2009 at 11:02 pm
Not having this particular problem. Different problem. After syncing my 8gig 3G, a few hours after, I decided to listen to a podcast. I open the iPod and all my music, videos, and podcasts, are all gone. It was horrifying. I began to panic an rebooted my iPhone, no help. So oddly enough I check Settings>General>About: Available (Storage) and it says “987MB” I have a total of three gigs of audio on my iPod at any given time, 2.5gb of which is music the rest being podcasts. I haven’t gotten the chance to resync yet today but I’m hoping this was only a simply mistake and doesn’t have to resync all audio back on. If I only had a penny for every hour I’ve put into syncing this damned phone, go ahead oh powerful Jobs, smite me, I would have bought out Apple Inc. or at least Steve Jobs identity and made some mondo changes to this thing. Lol. A little.
September 16th, 2009 at 11:04 pm
I dont use the iPod for podcast I use Podcaster AKA RSS Player. I travel way TOO much to be at my host computer and I like OTA downloads of big podcast.
September 16th, 2009 at 11:13 pm
No problems here with 32GB 3GS. I’ve heard of a bunch of different issues in a bunch of different areas though. This isn’t much unlike a regular computer though. Once in a while you just get a bad apple (hahaha) and need to reload!
Kick Butt
September 16th, 2009 at 11:40 pm
It’s not 3.1 I “upgraded” to iTunes 9 while still running 3.0.1. Once I updated iTunes, the podcast shuffle happened. My favorite podcast comes in Hour 1, Hour 2, Hour 3. Now, all the Hour 1s are together, then Hour 2s, etc. I can’t listen to them in the order they were released without hunting for them.
September 16th, 2009 at 11:40 pm
3g – clean updates….
While texting it will randomly go black and refuses to come back on unless i leave it alone for a few minutes then try to plug it in to charge then the screen comes back on.
September 17th, 2009 at 12:04 am
It’s not just podcasts – it’s smart playlists as well… album tracks all mixed up with other album tracks and not playing in the right order. Even my VOICE MEMOS are mixed in. Not happy.
September 17th, 2009 at 12:53 am
Agree with FoilTape, have update to iTunes 9 but have not upgraded to iphone 3.1 and Ihave the podcasts “out of order”
September 17th, 2009 at 12:54 am
Nope… not jailbroken here… seeing my issues on fully ‘legal’ system. As for RSSPlayer, I’d love to use it, but for some reason it’s not downloading the files locally so I can listen to them. It acts like it’s downloading the file, but then when you go to listen to it, it ends up streaming the file.
September 17th, 2009 at 1:05 am
It’s not just podcasts. It’s also the episodes of all my TV shows, which are no longer in chronological order by season, and within the season, by episode. They’re all jumbled and in no discernable order. C’mon Apple, let’s get on this!!
September 17th, 2009 at 1:07 am
Hello. I “fixed” the problem by deleting iTunes 9, and re-installing iTunes 8. To add insult to injury, iTunes 9 libraries aren’t compatible with iTunes 8 libraries, which means I had to rebuild my podcasts list. Suffice it to say, I’m rather annoyed.
September 17th, 2009 at 1:13 am
Why should any one care when the blog itself numbers its episodes 1,2,3,….16, 17, 65 !?!!
September 17th, 2009 at 2:02 am
its not only the podcasts, all smart playlists are out of order as well.. i noticed the first day 3.1 came out and posted a thread on apple user support.
link: http://discussions.apple.com/thread.jspa?threadID=2151272&start=0&tstart=0
September 17th, 2009 at 3:15 am
This bug is being discussed heavily in another thread also. Some users trace it down to a bug in iTunes 9 actually because they encounter the same bug when they upgrade to iTunes 9 while remaining on iPhone 3.0.
http://discussions.apple.com/thread.jspa?threadID=2151728
I am also impacted by this bug big time. Let’s make enough noise here so that Apple will hear our grief and fix the bug ASAP.
September 17th, 2009 at 4:06 am
What helped for me was first deleting the podcast from iTunes (and retrieving the individual podcast files from the trash as backup, in case they disappeared from the feed), then syncing with the iPhone, followed by resubscribing to the podcasts through the iTunes Store (and putting back episodes that have disappeared form the feed from backup, by dragging them to iTunes) and syncing with the iPhone a second time.
This made all the podcasts’ episodes show up chronologically (oldest first) on the iPhone again.
HOWEVER: it only seemed to work with podcasts subscribed to through the iTunes Store. Podcasts subscribed to manually (via the Advanced menu in iTunes) are still listed randomly on the iPhone.
September 17th, 2009 at 5:14 am
Same problem here. I think what is happening is if I had, say, episodes 3 & 4 on the iPhone, then downloaded 5 & 6, the order would be 5, 6, 3, 4. I.e. I think each time it adds episodes it puts them at the wrong end of the list.
Also getting the stuttering to an extreme.
Also today, for the first time, I got “updating library” when opening my podcast list! I’ve been on 3.1 since day 1.
September 17th, 2009 at 5:21 am
This is happening to my regular playlists. Frustrating.
September 17th, 2009 at 5:25 am
I’m seeing this with iTunes U items as well on my 3GS with 3.1.
September 17th, 2009 at 6:14 am
I’m having the same problem with my podcast smart playlist on my iPhone 3G. I found a workaround that will work for me at least until Apple fixes the problem.
I edit the smart playlist and uncheck the “Live Updating” option – then when I sync the podcasts show up in the right order. I have to recheck the Live Updating box when I download new podcasts to that list. It’s a pain to check and uncheck the list before synching, but it’s working for me right now.
I heard over on the iTunes forums that when some people do this, it deletes the playlist entirely from the phone – the playlists reappear when they re-checked the Live Updating box, however. So your results may vary with this workaround.
September 17th, 2009 at 6:46 am
I’m having the same problem. I listen to a lot of podcasts, and this drove me nuts. I keep two smart playlists to maintain my podcasts, one for those I listen to daily, and one for all podcasts because I want to listen to my extensive backlog in order. I’ve been working like this without a flaw since I figured out smart playlists under the 2.1 firmware. 3.1 broke it.
I have found a workaround that will have to do until somebody finds a way to downgrade to 3.0.1 or Apple releases a fix. Every morning after I sync my new podcasts, I start an on the go playlist. I start with my daily podcasts, then I go to the podcast playlist in iTunes and start adding them in the order that I want them on the iPhone. This is slow and painful, especially since my podcast list scrolls very slowly and stops frequently.
I’ve also noticed that I can’t create a new playlist in iTunes and sync it to the iPhone. I tried that, but no new playlists will sync across. Anybody having that problem too?
September 17th, 2009 at 7:00 am
What a pain this is! I typically build a playlist of podcasts I want to listen to for the week, and order them by rating. This allows me to listen through them all, with the most important first. Now they are all out of order and including ones that I dont want to listen to at all! From the comments, seems like this is more of a iTunes 9 issue, than a iPhone OS 3.1 issue. Lets hope they fix this soon. Any one find it on apple’s website?
September 17th, 2009 at 8:51 am
I have seen a pattern in the sorting, as weird as it is. I subscribed to a podcast that is 3 1-hour segments per day, 5 days per week. They show up in my podcast list correctly labeled as “Thur Sept 17 2009, Hour 1″ However, they look like they are sorted by the hour first (all of the Hour 1 podcasts are at the very top of the list, then Hour 2, then Hour 3), then by day of the week (day order) and then by the month of the year – alphabetically. So – if two podcasts were both hour 1 on any given wednesday, the one in August appears before July. It is asinine.
You’re right though, the first time I noticed it I thought the sync had gotten totally screwed up so I sat there looking at the list on my phone for several minutes trying to figure out wth happened.
September 17th, 2009 at 11:20 am
The problem is DEFINITELY with iTunes 9.0. I deleted my iTunes libraries, brought the old library back from the “Previous Libraries” folder, threw out 9.0 from the Applications folder and downloaded 8.2 from Apple’s support site. Once installed it found the old library and when I sync-ed the iPhone the podcasts were back in the right order.
More **** software from Infinity Loop.
September 17th, 2009 at 11:50 am
Mine did this for the first time yesterday… Crashed, and I couldn’t even turn it back on. I didn’t know what was going on. Seems to be working fine now (knock on wood) but if it does it again, it is the final straw in my move to android… i think.
considering I haven’t read enough to see how much it crashes… hehe.
September 17th, 2009 at 5:52 pm
Just use RSS Player its way better
September 17th, 2009 at 5:57 pm
3.1 is rubbish! More (maybe less major, but still) bugs than 3.0!!! Not to mention the dissapointment from the iPodtouchwithcameralessness I’m feeling.
September 18th, 2009 at 6:00 am
I don’t think 3.1 is rubbish, but the podcast sorting issue is definitely keeping me from enjoying any of the new features.
Is there a way to go back to 3.0.1?
September 18th, 2009 at 9:43 am
I have the podcast sorting issue. Very frustrating. listening to multi part podacasts is almost impossible. I will not be installing futire major updates until all the kinks are out first. I regret doing the version 9 upgrade and hope this gets resolved quickly. Is there no QA when majors versions go out???
September 18th, 2009 at 11:42 pm
I am a podcast addict. I have several “smart” playlists that update with my automated subscriptions. They are now all useless. Since I have several, it would be problematic to check and uncheck “live update” all the time. Anyone know how to bring this to Apple’s attention?
September 19th, 2009 at 2:08 am
I became aware of the problem last weekend, and heard Ken talk about it this morning (via Lexy.com) during my drive to work. I see many folks cite podcast examples. I bought the Harry Potter CD audio book “Deathly Hallows” — ripped into iTunes, created a playlist, it all displays fine in iTunes 9. I went to listen to it (iPhone 3GS, 3.1) during a long road trip last weekend and all of the audio book tracks were in a random order. I went back and checked the iTunes playlist, and everything looks fine.
September 19th, 2009 at 12:26 pm
This is so frustrating! My Coast to Coast podcasts are in perfect order in iTunes, totally jumbled up on my iPhone! Really sucks when I can’t listen to 4 one hour shows without having to search for each episode! I’m mad. Must be aliens in there.
September 19th, 2009 at 4:41 pm
My coast to coast episodes are crazy, too! I can’t even figure out an order because I have way too many to listen to! I am sitting here now trying to listen on my computer so I can delete the ones I don’t want and get them off my itunes! It also screwed them up on my old classic ipod…ahhhh! any idea when a fix will be available????
September 20th, 2009 at 10:52 am
Hey! I got a bug for you! I like my keyboard to be nice and loud when I type but now its quiet no matter how much I turn the ringer or sound up!!
September 20th, 2009 at 2:19 pm
Mine is screwed too. My iTunes U videos are out of order as well. Since I use my iPod Touch primarily for podcasts and iTunes U and since everything I listen to is to be listened to in order… my iPod Touch is essentially a BRICK! V3.1.1 does NOTHING to fix this.
September 21st, 2009 at 9:39 am
Same here, frustrating…
September 21st, 2009 at 12:39 pm
I’m having the same problem. I updated to 3.1 and itunes 9 on the same day, so I’m not sure which caused the problem. The apple help desk said they’d never heard of the problem. It would seem they have now. Podcasts are in order in itunes, but totaly random order on the iPhone. I even tried renaming the files in itunes 01, 02, 03, etc… no help. The files are still in random order.
September 21st, 2009 at 8:29 pm
Count me in the screwed up category. . .32GB 3GS, All my podcast originate from Itunes and I have several podcast all fouled up. Hope Apple hears of the problem now and has a quick fix. . .very annoying. . .
September 22nd, 2009 at 8:11 am
same issue, all my smart playlists are suddenly wacked now i installed os3.1 & itunes9.0 in one hit… i listen to everything via playlists… this is sh1tting me off
September 22nd, 2009 at 10:30 am
I removed all my podcasts, changed the order to 3 least recent, synched then changed the order back to 3 least recent new. Hey presto. Apple catches up with Microsoft on bugs!
September 22nd, 2009 at 5:43 pm
EVERYONE! Relax. It’s a BUG in iTunes, and version 9.1 has been released to “address” the issue. Go patch iTunes and resync.
September 22nd, 2009 at 6:11 pm
————-UPDATE on iTunes 9.1—————
Booo, so much for that. If your issue is with Smart Playlists, they’re STILL out of whack! Gggggrrrrr!
As a workround, I’ve ended up making a regular playlist, where I manually drag and drop my desired smart playlist contents into. Lame, but it works, and it’s manual. Kind of defeats the whole point of a SMARTLists APPLE!!
Lame.
September 22nd, 2009 at 7:28 pm
First of all, Apple released iTunes 9.0.1, not iTunes 9.1. Second of all, it still doesn’t fix this problem.
September 22nd, 2009 at 8:23 pm
Re. the stuttering scroll in the podcast list, I have the same thing. In the list of podcasts (with the podcast graphic) it stutters and sticks in scrolling. However, once I go into the episode list of a podcast, it scrolls fine. Kind of annoying when I want to skip around and listen to different podcasts.
September 22nd, 2009 at 8:25 pm
Thanks for the heads up on iTunes 9.0.1. But, come on Apple! Another freaking 100+ meg download for a .0.1 patch??? And NO! I don’t freaking want Safari installed! Stop making me uncheck that. Geez…
September 23rd, 2009 at 6:00 am
So that workaround for regular playlists doesn’t appear to work for podcasts…I put my podcasts onto one and it doesn’t show up at all. Fail.
September 24th, 2009 at 10:22 am
iTunes 9.0.1 DOES fix this problem. But after updating to 9.0.1 you have to uncheck all your podcasts and sync your phone so they’re all removed from the phone, then check them again and sync again so they’re copied back to the phone. Everything should now be sorted correctly.
September 24th, 2009 at 1:00 pm
Updated to 9.0.1, unchecked all podcasts and synced phone. Verified podcasts removed on phone. Then checked podcasts and synced again. Podcasts are still out of order on phone. Fail.
September 24th, 2009 at 9:01 pm
Updated to 9.0.1, deleted all podcasts from the iphone, resent all podcasts to the iphone and problem solved! Now they’re chronologically ordered properly again.
September 26th, 2009 at 1:38 pm
No go for me either. I tried every combination but smart playlists that contain multiple hour podcasts with the same date are screwed. They are fine using a manual playlist or turning off “live updating” which kills the whole point of a smart playlist.
The smart playlist appears in the correct order within the iTunes library but is still screwed up within the podcast tab when the device is mounted.
September 27th, 2009 at 6:33 pm
Mine has Out of Order music Playlists 3.1 jailbroken. only issue i see so far. also some iphone stop the tethering.
September 28th, 2009 at 10:13 am
This is happening to me too. My iPhone is not jailbroken. It’s really annoying and I hope Apple is making it a priority to fix it. I want podcasts from oldest-to-newest, top-to-bottom, so I can just listen to them in sequence or double-click the thing on the earpiece to advance to the next one. Plus it’s hard to keep track of which ones to delete in iTunes once I’ve listened to them because they’re in a different order than on the iPhone.
September 29th, 2009 at 7:36 am
I’m also having problems with new iPhone update, well just 1 problem. I have 28 tv shows synced to iPhone, when browsing through movies is fine but when browsing for tv shows it displays only 1 n’ not all 28. The only way to find them all is through spotlight search. Can anyone help?
September 29th, 2009 at 10:10 am
“Steve said: Sep 24th @ 10:22 am iTunes 9.0.1 DOES fix this problem. But after updating to 9.0.1 you have to uncheck all your podcasts and sync your phone so they’re all removed from the phone, then check them again and sync again so they’re copied back to the phone. Everything should now be sorted correctly.”
Does this also work for tv shows that I know is on my iPhone but not showing up when browsing for them under tv shows option?
September 29th, 2009 at 6:18 pm
Nevermind, I worked it out for myself. Had to name n’ number all tv shows myself, now it shows up on iPhone. But I see what you mean with podcasts, it did that with 2 seasons of same tv show I have till I renamed them season 1 and season 2. Apple, sort yourselves out will you! If it ain’t broke in the 1st place don’t fix it!
October 2nd, 2009 at 4:42 am
None of the music, movies or apps that I got direct from iTunes work at all. It says movies cannot be played, the apps crash as soon as try are opened so I deleted them tried to download them again from my phone and iTunes they still all crash!! Help 3.1 sucks:(
October 5th, 2009 at 10:19 pm
Go into your playlists and uncheck live update. Your songs/podcasts will be in their correct order.
October 6th, 2009 at 3:56 pm
I have IPod version 3.1.1 and Itunes version 9.01. BUt there’s a problem with the playlists. Unchecking and syncing took everything off my Ipod including the playlists and then rechecking and syncing again put everything back exactly the same. It changed nothing!!! And most galling. The playlists in The Itunes library and the device library both have the correct order that I want. They match, But for some reason or other my physical Ipod does not. What is that about?
October 9th, 2009 at 6:57 pm
I was having the same problem. Note ther are two places to set shuffle. At the top of the song list, and a small icon in the upper right corner of the screen when song is playing. See post I have copied below (this fixed the problem for me):
“Shuffle was turned on! (i suspected it was, but didnt know why)
I had a look at the online iphone manual, and it says there are 2 ways to turn on shuffle, press shuffle at the top of the artist’s song list, and the second is when the song is playing, you tap on the album cover, it will come up with the playback controls, playback time etc, and there is a small ’shuffle’ button in the corner i never noticed before, that turns it on. I must have pressed it by accident, and never noticed…
October 17th, 2009 at 12:32 pm
The shuffle trick isn’t the answer. I did uncheck the ‘Live Update’ checkbox on my Smart Playlists and THAT worked. UGH!!!! So frustrating!
I always sort so that the song JUST added to my playlist is ALWAYS at the top. I hate hunting!
October 20th, 2009 at 1:02 pm
having issues with audiobooks not playing in sequence on my iPhone with 3.1 software. The audiobook will play in sequence within iTunes, but will shuffle around on the iPhone. I do not see any “shuffle” settings while an audiobook is playing like I do when playing music. . . .
October 27th, 2009 at 3:08 pm
@ Scott post 69
i had the same problem with audiobook tracks playing in a random order. I went to my music tracks and turned the shuffle setting on and off again. When I went back to audiobooks they magically started playing in order again! Try that
October 28th, 2009 at 7:20 am
Just make sure you have sorted by podcast title name not anything else and sync it again. This fixed my problem.
October 28th, 2009 at 7:56 am
Workaround for out-of-order playlists – Select all podcasts in i-tunes and “get info”. Go to the “options” tab and change “media kind” to “music”. Smart playlists all work properly for me after that change, but each new set of podcast downloads will have to have the same treatment before they will sync properly. Thank goodness for cntrl-click. It’ll be good when this problem is properly fixed.
October 29th, 2009 at 12:37 pm
Jon,
Thanks. Turning shuffle off on my music tracks then going back to the audiobook fixed the issue. . . . ODD
November 6th, 2009 at 8:55 am
I’m having the sorting problems with iTunes U tracks… even though they are all numbered… changed the media kind to “Music” and put them in a smart playlist, now they are loaded in order. Sucks you have to work around the iTunes U like the podcasts.
November 11th, 2009 at 9:50 pm
Ive been going nuts with my audiobook playing randomly. I even verified that the “Skip When Shuffling”. Thanks for the fix!
November 16th, 2009 at 3:21 pm
I got 82 episodes on the PodCast and all come in random order… Its such a struggle to keep track of which one I completed and which one is next… at times.. I could not find the right episode and end up listening them in wrong order..!!!
it sucks..!!! it should be in Oldest first to newer…
November 19th, 2009 at 8:13 pm
I have the same problem after ripping audio book CDs. It really makes listening to a book very agrivating.