Mobile App Sort and Search

Due to having a conservative bent about mobile bandwidth, I do all my music discovery, starring and playlist editing at the computer, then sync to mobile everything starred and a subset of playlists. Once truly mobile (i.e. away from WiFi, away from PC) I don't download any music. None. Zilch. The offline play is a HUGE feature to me.


So - why so hard to search for a song that's already on the iPhone?  If all I wanted was blind random shuffle, guess what I'd buy? An iPod shuffle (and I don't want one).


No sort-by-artist. No sort-by-title. I need to the ability to search within what's already on the iPhone, NOT what's on the internet.


You've made it rather difficult to find and play what I've already decided to sync-to-mobile. Please make it easy.

Hey guys. We've implemented this on Android but please feel free to pop over to this idea and vote on the search filtering for iOS.

Related Ideas


We need it, in iPhone is possible and I don't understand why is not in Android... Some days I go in my car and I want to hear a song, and I have to search it scrolling the list... I will have an accident by this! 


Sorry for my English, I'm Spanish, still learning your language...


If you click on the "Library" collection it shows all the tracks you've got on every playlist. You can search that like you would any other playlist.

It does seem like an obvious feature though to have, so +1


I couldn't agree more! I am a new customer and I'm planning to go for a premium account as soon as my test period runs out. The only thing that might keep me from staying a premium user is the fact that on the ipod touch (maybe on Android too, I haven't tried it yet) I cannot sort my playlists - that keep getting longer every day. It is a pain to find playlists by scrolling through the whole list! Also, I don't see why there isn't a way to search for lists on the iPod/iPhone. I can search WITHIN a specific list, but I can't search a list among all of my lists! On Windows, or even on the iPad search results will include playlists and show my own one(s) if applicable. I love Spotify. That's why I'm even more puzzled by the fact that their mobile apps seem to be unfinished, half-hearted and that such a BASIC feature that seems to have been requested for a long time and that represents a core functionality of most modern players is just not there yet. I would really appreciate if someone from staff could comment on that, as my decision to stay a premium user really might depend on just that: Why is such a basic but important feature being left out? Are there any plans to implement sorting and searching on mobile apps soon? Best regards, Alexander


Edit: this request might not stand out among all the others. I have noticed that some of my FB friends on Spotify have very short playlists or none at all - I guess that free users who just give Spotify a short try won't even notice that managing long lists can be a pain.

I still don't see why there aren't more "kudos" for this request as I'd guess that many users having lots of playlists might prefer a way to sort and search them? Anyway, this feature is just too basic (and too important at the same time) for not being implemented, imho.


SO HAPPY to update that, yes, some recent Spotify for iOS update has apparently added the ability to search the playlist. Either that, or I hadn't noticed that one must pull DOWN at first. Anyway, that's huge.

I (for one) don't care much about "sort-by" in iPhone, now that there's playlist search.


The iPad-native app is a drastic improvement over using the iPhone app at 2x size. And yet... still no columnar view like the Mac/Windows app? No sort-by? And... do my eyes deceive me, or does the iPad app insist on searching "the world of music" without giving me the option to search just my playlists (particularly, Starred)?


It can't be that iPhone app can search just the current playlist, but iPad cannot. (Scratches head curiously.) 

On the iPhone, there's still no searching for playlists (as it's possible in the windows version). Just WITHIN a specific playlist! And there is no alphabetical sorting, which is really a HUGE downside to me! If at least we could sort alphabetically by author or album name *on the computer* in order to sync the easily sorted list to mobile devices... But this BASIC feature is just not there... after how long? How long has Spotify offered software on several platforms without any possibility to organize albums/playlists alphabetically, which is just basic and available with most music players (hard and software) ? I don't get it why this hasn't been thought of right at the beginning. Given how many users have been asking for it for quite some time now, I wonder even more about what their priorities really are. On the iPad, there's no sorting, no searching at all. And within a playlist, the album titles of tracks don't get displayed (they get displayed on the iPhone, though), which can be annoying too. But I guess and hope that the iPad build is still work in progress. I've been Spotify member for less than a week and overall, I really love it. It's just a tough decision for me whether I'll become and stay a paying customer or not, given that there's some quite basic but important features missing and staff doesn't seem to be very responsive when it comes to the implementation of a "sorting" option, for instance. To me, Spotify Premium (which mostly is about the advantage of using Spotify on mobile devices, right?) is not ready yet. It's heading in the right direction and it could become BIG, but as long as I can't sort my playlists by name nor search for a playlist by name and as long as the loudly acclaimed iPad version doesn't even show which album a track in my playlist belongs to, Spotify mobile is still in BETA imho. I will *probably* continue using the premium features because overall, I love the idea of having all the music with me on my iPod/iPad, but I'd expect Spotify to pay a little more attention to feature requests such as the sorting feature that have been around for a long time and to implement this sooner rather than later.

I'll just add that this feature seems like a no-brainer.  I'm only using Spotify for streaming, but I tend to make huge playlists.  For the most part, I just hit shuffle on them, but I also search for music within them.  Right now, it's impossible to find stuff unless I can remember what other songs I placed on the list in the same relative time period.  A simple "order by artist" button would solve all of my problems. Simplest solution: at the main playlist screen, just have a "Playlist Options" tab we could use to manage lists on mobile.


Hello, I am a premium user and using spotify every day. But I would really like to be able to sort my songs in my playlists. In any way like i can do on the computer. Like this 


Yeah and how about remove song from playlist in the phone... ain't got enuff coders in the office ?


A must.




Having large playlists I want to liste to the latest additions and start downwards. Now you have to scroll down to the latest added which is the latest song in the list. Then you have to manually work your way uppwards in the list. That's just plain stupid.