Setting to toggle between "simple" and "advanced" track shuffling

[Inclement Death]

Currently, the app has very advanced and somewhat confusing shuffle option. I suggest adding an option in the settings to toggle between a simple (current list/queue) shuffle or the current, more advanced shuffle functionality.

[andrewilley]

It's not actually as complex as it seems once you get the hang of it. There's a FAQ here: 

 

You can pick the mode directly rather than having to cycle through all of them by long-pressing on the Shuffle icon and choosing from a list. So if you are playing in Albums mode for example:

Off: Plays everything in its assigned order. No shuffling of albums or songs.

Shuffle All Songs: Completely randomised, picks songs from the whole Library.

Shuffle Just Songs: Shuffle all of the tracks in the current album, then move on to the next album and play its tracks shuffled, and so on.

Shuffle Just Categories: Picks albums at random, but the tracks within each album will be played in the correct order.

Shuffle Songs and Categories: Combination mode, where an album is chosen at random and its songs are shuffled too, and so on.

Andre

 

[Inclement Death]

I understand there are users that enjoy that level of control over the shuffle feature, but there are those of us simple folk that just want to toggle shuffle on and off for the tracks in the current list.

Use cases:

Multiple tracks that should be a single track, but the artist or record company decided to separate them for some unknown reason; which forces the user to disable shuffle so they can listen to the split tracks in the correct order, then re-enables shuffle when finished.

User reaches a track on an album that contains a cluster of great tracks they want to listen to and temporarily shuts off the shuffle to listen to the group of tracks, then re-enables shuffle afterward.

 

Yes, both use cases would reshuffle the playlist, but the user is aware it's going to happen anyway.

[andrewilley]

Remember there are probably just as many people out there who only ever use 'All Songs' shuffling, or people who want to hear random albums but never with the individual tracks re-arranged.

Hence my suggestion that the Shuffle Icon could have an option whereby tapping on it acts as an on/off toggle, with the actual type of shuffling in use being selected by long-press.

Andre