A-Z scroll disappeared on S22 Ultra! :(

[Kpop4Life]

So I just got a new S22 Ultra recently, installed Poweramp, copied all my music files over to the phone, then built a whole new play list. Much to my delight, I saw an A-Z scroller in the play list when I sorted by artist/album, which I've wanted for SO LONG because my play list is very long and has many artists. A few days later, I added a few new song files on the phone, then went into Poweramp to re-sort the list by artist/album like I always do, but when I looked at the updated play list, the A-Z scroll was gone!  I checked the settings and the option was still enabled, so I resorted again, but it didn't come back. I've tried every sorting option there is, and still no A-Z scroll. 😭

Please, how do I get it back?!

Poweramp build: 939
Device model: Galaxy S22 Ultra 512GB (SM-S908U)
Android version: 12
No custom ROM being used

[andrewilley]

Playlists do not have the A-Z scroll bar as there is no guarantee that their contents will be in alphabetical order, they are a fixed and flatten format in whatever order you happened to create them (often that would be by track number for album additions for example). The Re-Sort feature is a one-shot reorganise that saves a new instant copy of the list in a different order, but using it does not guarantee that you decided to chose alpha ordering, or that you have not subsequently moved any songs around.

Andre

[Kpop4Life]

22 minutes ago, andrewilley said:

Playlists do not have the A-Z scroll bar as there is no guarantee that their contents will be in alphabetical order, they are a fixed and flatten format in whatever order you happened to create them (often that would be by track number for album additions for example). The Re-Sort feature is a one-shot reorganise that saves a new instant copy of the list in a different order, but using it does not guarantee that you decided to chose alpha ordering, or that you have not subsequently moved any songs around.

Andre

Ahh, I see. Well, that's disappointing, and I sure would like that to be a feature in the future if at all possible. (I know you're not the dev, I'm just sayin'.) I did discover that if I simply choose the "All songs" option instead of opening a play list, I get an A-Z scroll, so I guess that will suffice as a workaround.

Thanks!

[andrewilley]

2 minutes ago, Kpop4Life said:

I sure would like that to be a feature in the future if at all possible.

Sadly it's not.

As I said, a playlist is simply a sequence of filenames intended to be played one-after-the-other, in whatever order the files happen to appear in the list. Playlists do not have a transient List Options=>Sort Order feature like other categories do (they are basically just an index to filenames, and are meant to be played as-given). You can change those lines around to make a new order whenever you like (which will re-write the whole list), and that can be done either manually or automatically. But any playlist could still be found in any order, and without a guarantee that it is an alpha-sorted list, it can't have an A-Z scroll bar. 

Andre