Shuffle by title or shuffle by album

Some users ask for this feature (shuffle) - and it has been there from the beginning!

UPDATE: This feature is now in the Playback Control. See new-feature-in-v410-playback-control

You just have to tap on the detail-disclosure button next to "Title" or next to "Album" on the rules-screen to choose "Shuffle by Title" or "Shuffle by Album" (and don't forget to run the search again for the new setting to take effect).

Some users don't seem to be aware that you can use all the colourful buttons to set the sorting or shuffling:
Sort by "Artist A...Z" (artists in ascending order), "Artist Z...A" (in descending order),
"Title A...Z", "Title Z...A", "Shuffle by title",
"Album A...Z", "Album Z...A", "Shuffle by album",
"Composer A...Z", "Composer Z...A",
"Composer A...Z", "Composer Z...A",
"Genre A...Z", "Genre Z...A",
"Rating 0...5", "Rating 5...0",
"Play Count 0...n", "Play Count n...0",
"Last Played 0...n", "Last Played n...0",
"Duration 0...n", "Duration n...0"

New in version 2.7

To get consistent results as quickly as possible, the search methods had to be adapted. Unfortunately, it was not possible to satisfy all requirements at the same time, as there are some frustrating limitations in the iPhone OS.

Search results are now generally faster. Especially when you have just 1 rule like "Genre contains 'blue' OR 'jazz'".
Now SmartPlaylist always finds all duplicate titles (songs with the same name).

To achieve this, music videos had to be excluded. We hope this is not a problem to our users. (If it is, please write to support.smartplaylist@gmail.com)


Other improvements:
"Play this" is now instant, i.e. there is no more foolish skipping (the solution was so simple).
There is now an option to turn off the badge on the application icon (to display the number of songs in the current smart playlist).
Another new option can be used to turn off repeated playback.

"Year" and "Date added" as search criteria

Many users have asked to include "Year" and "Date added" as search rules.

Unfortunately, these information are not available on the iPhone/iPod Touch, they simply do not exist in the programming interface. There is no way to include them in SmartPlaylist  :-(

Workaround for "Year":  UPDATE: With v5.2 Year can be used to search and sort
Add the year in brackets to all your titles (e.g. "Hell Hound On My Trail [1937]"), then you can use it as a search rule on Title (e.g. Title contains "hell AND [1937]"). Or create a playlist in iTunes for every year ...

Workaround for "Date added": UPDATE: With v7.1 (iOS 7) you can search and sort by date added.
Create smart playlists in iTunes according to the date added, e.g. "Added last 7 days", "Added last 30 days", and so on, then you can use a search rule on Playlist containing e.g. "7".

The workarounds are a pain, of course, but there is nothing we can do about it at the moment. We have reported a feature request to Apple.