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How can I customize how iTunes autofills my iPod Shuffle?

I have an iPod shuffle and it's pretty neat, though of course I'd love to have a tiny screen on it. Problem is, a lot of the time the music that iTunes drops onto the iPod isn't what I want. I do aerobics, and there's nothing that's a buzzkill faster than a slow song in the middle of a workout!


Dave's Answer:

You're in luck: I have an iPod shuffle (though it's a first generation 1GB unit, not one of the sleek new devices that Apple sells. Nonetheless, from the perspective of iTunes they're all the same, just different sizes.

So it turns out that there are two main ways you can control the music that Apple iTunes autofills your shuffle: either by picking a playlist or by creating a smart playlist. I prefer the latter, because there's all sorts of cool stuff you can do with a smart playlist. I'll demonstrate how you can skip slow-tempo music, for example, but give me a sec to show the basics of working with the iPod shuffle first, okay?

Unlike any other kind of iPod, when you plug a shuffle into a computer running iTunes, you get a slightly different display:

apple itunes ipod shuffle

Let me zoom in a bit on the bottom part, because that's where it's interesting:

apple itunes ipod shuffle autofill details

Here you can see on the pop-up menu that I've left it with the default selection of all music ("Music").

Click on Settings and you'll see that there are a few things you can tweak:

apple itunes ipod shuffle autofill settings

It slows the sync down, but I choose "replace everything" because that way each time I use the iPod shuffle I'm surprised by what is - and sometimes isn't - on the device. After all, a 1GB unit has about 950MB of space and my music library is over 27GB, so there's a lot more missing than present.

Click on "Autofill" or "Sync" and it'll start chugging along:

apple itunes ipod shuffle autofilling

More interestingly, go to "File" --> "New Smart Playlist..." and you can create a smart playlist that's perfect for this task:

apple itunes ipod smart playlist shuffle

Here you can see I've constrained this playlist to songs with at least 60 beats per minute out of my "rock" genre (fast tempo classical probably isn't going to be so good for your aerobics or Nia, somehow), limited to 1GB of music total.

Back on the main iTunes window instead of "Music" I choose the new smart playlist, then click "Autofill" again and my shuffle has a randomly selected collection of up-tempo rock. Neat, eh?


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Categorized: iPod, Sony PSP and MP3 Player Help   (Article 9123, Written by )
Tagged: apple ipod, apple itunes, ipod autofill, ipod shuffle
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Reader Comments To Date: 1

Dan said, on October 17, 2009 9:56 PM:

Your library is better organized than mine if you have all your BPM fields populated.

I just checked mine and less than 5% of the files have anything there. Of those numbers that are present, many are meaningless: A bunch of 192's and 168's, suggesting that somebody confused bit rate with BPM. A bunch of 3's for some reason, and one song claims to be 890 BPM. That should be a good one for the workout.

Starbucks coffee cup I do have a lot to say, and questions of my own for that matter, but first I'd like to say thank you, Dave, for all your helpful information by buying you a cup of coffee!

I do have a comment, now that you mention it!











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