In addition to having a ton of music on my Apple iPod, I also have a copy of it all on my laptop, which is great. Any time I want I can plug in my headphones and listen to it while working. Except there are some songs that I just don’t want to show up when I’m in “shuffle” mode in iTunes. Can I mark them as not eligible for play during a shuffle?
Thanks for asking that question. You’re reminded me that I need to tweak those settings too because I sync my iPhone with my MacBook Pro and as a result, my iTunes library includes a CD full of ring tones. It’s very weird when they show up when I’m shuffling through music in a hotel room, background music while I’m working! In fact, one time I was sure my phone was ringing and I’d missed the call. But that’s another story! 🙂
Turns out that there is the ability for you to specify that a specific track — or a set of tracks or albums — should be omitted from the shuffle playlist, though you have to hunt a bit to find it.
To start, let’s jump into iTunes and find a track to skip or omit:
The trick here is to right click (if you’re on a PC) or Control-click (on a Mac) on the track information. You’ll see a context menu pop up with a remarkable number of options:
Choose “Get Info” and you’ll see a ton of information that iTunes knows about that particular track:
Don’t get sidetracked here, though. Click on the “Options” tab along the top of this window and you’ll find what we want:
I’ve highlighted it in this screen capture, but you can see “Skip when shuffling”. Click it and close the window. Done.
Now, if you choose a set of tracks at the same time — a much easier way for me to avoid my daughter’s music on my shuffle playlist, for example — you’ll find that the Get Info window has less information and the Options tab is structured differently:
Same basic operation, though, check the box and choose “Yes” from the little menu. Close the window and you’ve restored control of your iTunes shuffle playlist.
Enjoy!
Thank you so much! I’ve been trying to skip some of my songs while on shuffle for a long time and now I finally found a way to do it 🙂