Why Does My iPhone Play The Same Songs On Shuffle

When shuffle is not really shuffling music on your iPhone, then there’s a problem. When you play a playlist or an entire album on shuffle, you’re simply asking your iPhone to entertain you while you’re left to guess what song plays next. Music shuffling as we know it will pick and play songs at random without a specific order and will continue that way until the entire playlist is exhausted. So what happens when you hear the same lineup of songs repeat over and over even when it’s set to shuffle?

In this article, you’ll find out possible reasons this may be happening and most importantly a fix to get you grooving to all of your songs on shuffle.

Why iPhone Plays The Same Songs On Shuffle

There are not many reasons why Apple music or any other song app you may be using is playing the same sequence of songs on shuffle. But what we do know is that the issue is software related. Below are some of the reasons this may be happening. However note that in this article, I’ll be using the Apple music as a case study as it is widely used.

1. Repeat Is Checked

With Repeat active for an Album set to play on shuffle, the same songs will be played over and over. Turning on shuffle will not overrule repeat for the songs as you can have both Repeat and Shuffle turned on at the same time. The Repeat button is located to the left of the Shuffle button and in some occasions can overrule shuffling effect. This will usually happen when you have one song on repeat without knowing, you can verify this by identifying a small digit 1 just on top of the Repeat button. In this case, just one song will repeat even if Shuffle is checked also.

 

 2. Shuffling Once

Tapping on the Shuffle button once will set aside an order of songs from which Music to be played back will be selected from. The list of songs selected will be random and will be played in that order from playback one to the last. Usually, a list of about 15 – 20 songs are selected at a time, and may also depend also on the number of songs you have on the album.

Once the last song on the pre-selected list of Shuffle is played-back, it’ll start the cycle again, repeating the same songs but maybe in a different order. I already can guess what your thought on this is, and you’re like why in the world world will Apple choose to Shuffle this way.

In my opinion, Apple’s choice of selecting only a few songs to be shuffled, which is afterwards repeated, isn’t the best thing. Real music shuffling should imply playing out all the songs on the album randomly from A to Z.

 

3. iOS Error

Software can affect how music shuffle works wrongly. Usually these are associated with errors and bugs affecting Apple music. It can easily be resolved though by just updating to the latest version of IOS. Do this too when you’re having a hard time with turning on Shuffle for a play list or you just can’t find the shuffle button.

 

How Do You Fix The Same Song Shuffle On An iPhone?

There are a couple ways to tackle the issue of having the same songs played back even when shuffle is turned on. Follow the below trouble-shooting guide;

1. Turn Off Repeat

Repeat enabled won’t allow your Music to shuffle successfully. In only a few clicks, you can turn it off. Follow the guide below;

• On Apple music, tap on the song currently playing at the bottom of the app
• Tap on the icon to the left of the stream icon. The icon has three lines and three vertically aligned dots.
• Tap on the Repeat button at the center of the three horizontally aligned buttons to turn off repeat for shuffled songs.

 

2. Reshuffle Music Playback

When you’re sure that the first shuffling has played the maximum number of songs shuffled, you’re to tap on shuffle again, twice to arrange a different list of songs to play back on shuffle. No thanks to Apple for choosing this UX for Apple music. You can Reshuffle in two ways, here’s how;

3. Manual Reshuffling

It’s manual because you have to actually tap the buttons to enable the Shuffle effect. To reshuffle just an an Album and not the entirety of your songs, here’s what to do;

1. On Apple music, tap on the album you already played on shuffle and now want to reshuffle.
2. You’ll find two buttons just at the top of the playlist or album.
3. Tap on the Shuffle button and it’ll be reshuffled to play a different order of songs. 

Do this too if you want to reshuffle your entire songs. This time tap on the Library to show all of your songs. Tap on the Shuffle button at the top to reshuffle the songs if you already had it played on shuffle.

4. Siri Can Reshuffle Your Playlist

This in my opinion is the best way to get reshuffling done as it is completely a hands off process, especially for the fact that you may have to reshuffle multiple times on Apple music. To ask Siri to reshuffle an album;

1. Wake Siri with the magic words – ‘Hey Siri’
2. Ask it afterwards to shuffle a particular playlist, album or even all your songs. You can simply say ‘Hey Siri, please play my kitchen playlist on shuffle’. And that will do the trick.

5. iOS Update

In the event you’re having persistent trouble with shuffling your songs, then updating to the latest version of iOS should help. To update your iPhone, follow the below guide;

1. Open the Settings app
2. Tap on General
3. Tap on Software update. 
4. Tap on the update available to your device to download and install it.

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Why Does Apple Music Repeat On Shuffle?

You have Repeat turned on. Repeat on will override the Shuffle effect on Apple music. Hence, shuffled songs will playback repeatedly. Here’s how to turn off Repeat on Apple music;

• Open the Apple music app
• Tap on the song currently playing or last played. You can find it at the bottom of the app.
• Tap on the icon to the left of the stream icon. The icon has three lines and three vertically aligned dots.
• Tap on the Repeat button to turn off repeat for shuffled songs. 

Conclusion

Shuffling songs can be everyone’s choicest way of playing music on their iPhone. You just sit and allow your iPhone to figure out what to play next on autopilot. However, Apple has not made this any easier and the reason this is so is not very clear. We all can only hope that iOS releases in the future will modify the shuffle feature on Apple music to play all songs on shuffle at once and not some at a time.