How To Shuffle A Spotify Playlist

Listening to user-generated or Spotify-created playlists is one of the best ways to interact with new music or music that you have personally grouped together (and thus which probably means that bit more to you).

However if like us, you often listen to the same playlists and have by now heard them in their standard running order one too many times, then the best thing you can do to freshen up your listening experience is to ‘shuffle’ that playlist.

To learn how to do so, simply follow our step-by-step tutorials, as laid out below. For any additional information or queries, please direct your attention to our FAQs at the end of this article.

How to shuffle a Spotify playlist on the Desktop app

  1. Open up the Spotify app on your PC, and if prompted sign in
  2. Locate a playlist from the left-hand sidebar, or from the main window by scrolling down to ‘Your Playlists’ and selecting ‘See All’
  3. Once you’ve found the playlist you want to shuffle, open it up by clicking on it
  4. Now, to shuffle this playlist, you’ll first have to play it. To do so, hit the big green ‘Play’ button at the top of the screen, beneath the name and display-picture of the playlist.
  5. The playlist will start playing from the first song at the top of the list. To shuffle it, locate the two crossing arrows to the left of the ‘Play/Pause’ icon at the bottom of the app, and click on this (this is the ‘Shuffle’ icon)
  6. The Shuffle icon will turn green, indicating that shuffle play is now on. You have successfully shuffled your playlist, and Spotify will now play it in a randomly selected order, starting with the next song up in the queue.
  7. To turn shuffle off, thus reverting it to normal chronological play, simply click this icon again.

How to play a Spotify playlist in shuffle mode on the mobile app

On the mobile app (only) you can actually start playing a playlist in shuffle mode, rather than having to play it first, and then shuffle it.

  1. Open up the Spotify app on your PC, and if prompted sign in
  2. Locate a recently-played playlist from the main screen, or any of your saved playlists from your library by tapping ‘Your Library’ in the bottom right, and then tapping ‘Playlists’ at the top of the next page.’
  3. Once you’ve found the playlist you want to shuffle, open it up by tapping on it
  4. You’ll see a big green button entitled ‘Shuffle Play’ – to begin playing this playlist in a randomly shuffled order, simply tap this button.
  5. You can revert the play order of the playlist to normal by opening up the ‘Now Playing’ screen at any time (by tapping the name of the current song at the bottom of the app) and then tapping the green ‘Shuffle’ icon (two overcrossing arrows), to turn it to grey (or ‘off’)

How to shuffle a currently playing Spotify playlist on the mobile app

  1. Open up the Spotify app on your PC, and if prompted sign in
  2. Locate a recently-played playlist from the main screen, or any of your saved playlists from your library by tapping ‘Your Library’ in the bottom right, and then tapping ‘Playlists’ at the top of the next page.’
  3. Once you’ve found the playlist you want to shuffle, open it up by tapping on it
  4. You’ll see a big green button entitled ‘Shuffle Play’ – ignore this for now. Instead, scroll through the playlist to find the song you want to start playing first (or simply select the song at the top of the list). Tap on this song to start playing your playlist chronologically from here.
  5. Now, to shuffle this currently playing playlist, simply open up the ‘Now Playing’ screen at any time (by tapping the name of the current song at the bottom of the app) and then tapping the grey ‘Shuffle’ icon (two overcrossing arrows), to turn it to green (or ‘on’)
  6. You can revert the play order of the playlist to normal by opening up the ‘Now Playing’ screen again at any time, and then tapping the green ‘Shuffle’ icon again, to turn it to grey (or ‘off’)

And there you have it! Simple as that. Whether on the desktop or mobile app, by following our straightforward instructions, you can master the art of shuffling and unshuffling your Spotify playlists with just a few clicks or taps of the finger. Happy listening!

For any additional information or queries, please see our FAQs below.

Frequently asked questions

What is Spotify?

Spotify is the world’s largest and most popular streaming service for music, though it also caters to podcast listeners, too. Available as an app for the PC, Apple, and Android mobile phones and tablets, it attracts millions and millions of unique users every day, from all around the world.

What is a Spotify playlist?

Spotify playlists are user- (or app-) created collections of songs from any number of different artists. Typically, playlists have some sort of theme to them – whether they are a collection of songs particularly nostalgic to you, or reminiscent of a specific time in your life; songs you want to listen to, or artists you’ve yet to pay proper attention to; or, most commonly, themed by genre or era (or both).

For example, 1970s Punk Rock, 1960s Psychedelic, 2000s Hip-Hop, and so on. When a user creates a playlist, they can make it private or public; if public, it can be followed and shared by as many people as want to interact with it, and all of them can thus listen to it, as well. Spotify also generates its own playlists, which users can similarly follow, listen to, and share. 

Why would I want to shuffle a Spotify playlist?

When listening to any playlist on Spotify, it will automatically play unshuffled, meaning that the playlist plays through its list of songs in the order that they were added, i.e. in the order they appear in the list when you look at the playlist on the desktop or mobile app.

Whilst this is just fine, you might have listened to the playlist in this fashion lots of times before, and you’d like to hear it played back to you in a different, random order. That’s where shuffling the playlist comes in. When you shuffle a playlist, it is played back to you in completely random order.

Maybe you added songs to your playlist by artist, and so when played unshuffled you end up listening to songs by that same artist for what seems like ages before the playlist moves through and onto the next artist in the list. In such a situation, shuffling the playlist is the best way to mix it up.

How random is the shuffle feature in a playlist, and can I turn it off?

As random as random can be. When you click or tap that little shuffle icon, the order of the playlist will be totally mixed up, and – looking at your song queue – you’ll be able to see just how much. You can always turn it off again by tapping that (now highlighted green) icon, turning it back to grey.

What happens when you turn it off is that the playlist will revert to playing in order of the list, starting from the song you are currently listening to. In other words, if you pressed shuffle when listening to the first song on the list, then the next song could be from anywhere on that list.

However, when you press shuffle again on a new song to turn it off, your playlist will continue playing chronologically from this new song, which could mean that it effectively starts afresh from any random point on the list. Each time you shuffle your playlist, the order will be different.