Smart Shuffle 4+

Just what I needed

I use this app to allow me to shuffle by Album. However, another nice feature is the ability to remember where it last played, even after a full battery charge. My iPod touch is of the last generation and won’t do the latest Apple Music updates that remember playback but instead erases my whole shuffle if I pause too long or charge battery to full power.

What I would like in this app is the ability to also shuffle by song...thereby allowing me to fully replace Apple Music/iTunes altogether. Any chance of that? That would convince me to give this app 5 stars.

Nice app when it works

When I initially purchased this app, it worked fine. Each time I hopped in the car the album I’d been listening to would resume where it left off. Occasionally, if I’d been away from the car for a while, using other apps, it would “forget” the playlist in progress, and the iPhone music player would revert to the first track in my library by alphabetical order. Upon opening Smart Shuffle a prompt (from my iPhone I believe) would let me play from the last remembered song, which usually wasn’t exactly where I left off, but close enough. The problem is that it gradually got to the point that Smart Shuffle would rarely resume a playlist when I started the car, and could never seem to successfully restore a playlist, instead just reshuffling. I have over 500 albums on my phone, and would like to stick with a playlist that allows me to hear many different things without repeats. Constantly stopping and starting over is a deal breaker. I’ve recently added a different app that performs the same function and doesn’t seem to have any such issues. Unfortunate because I prefer the look of the Smart Shuffle interface, especially the screen that allows you to swipe through albums horizontally.

Developer Response ,

Sorry you're having trouble! Car audio interfaces are all different, and even behave differently with new iOS releases. Nevertheless, we'll take a look at the recovery logic of Smart Shuffle and see if we can tweak it to make it work better for you. If you'd like some personalized support, please email us at smart_shuffle_support@spudfish.com and we can ask some questions about your setup to help us target and find the issue.

Close but too slow

I almost feel like this app deserves 5 stars simply because it provides a stellar concept for the neglected album lover. I want to love it, I really do. Unfortunately, this is not everything it ought to be. The concept is perfect. The way you can explore playlists, combine playlists, and add/remove albums for listening is great. Once that is done, the user experience is pretty bad. The interface is slow and doesn’t react in a timely way when responding to buttons being pushed. (I’m using an iphone 7. Maybe that’s the reason. Maybe iOS is bugging. But i think it should work properly on a 1 year old phone.) There’s also no way to actually interact with songs, scrub through the track, rate or love songs. I bought it for a dollar figuring it was worth a shot but it doesnt meet the requirement. If you’re going on a road trip, this will work great. Otherwise, not so much. If only the album shuffle and album selections could be merged into what apple already has in the stock app, we would have a GREAT app. Not yet though.

Developer Response ,

Thanks for giving Smart Shuffle a try! The slow interface issue was due to a known bug introduced in iOS11 that impacted all third-party music players. This bug has been fixed in iOS version 11.3!
In terms of your other suggestions, we didn't want to recapitulate all features of the Apple Music app, especially since once you select your albums and shuffle in Smart Shuffle, the entire queue appears in the Music app as well. There, you can see songs, scrub through tracks (which you can also easily do on the lock screen or with remote control devices such as the Apple earphones that come with iPhones), and rate or love songs. Also, if you press and hold on the progress bar in Smart Shuffle, a list of songs appears and you can select a new song to play. We feel that this is a good way to merge what apple already has and what we provide.