I’ve created a ‘Recent Films’ Smart Playlist, because the Apple TV’s ‘Recently Added’ feature is, well, a bit rubbish.

In the Apple TV app on my Mac , I have the films in the Smart Playlist listed in descending order, with the most recently added at the top of the list. However, on the Apple TV, the films in the Smart Playlist are always shown in alphabetical order. It’s really frustrating, and I can’t seem to find a workaround (I’ve tried restarting the Apple TV).

Of course, if Apple let the user choose the number of items that appear in ‘Recently Added’, this wouldn’t be a problem…

TIA,

Tim

The TV app does not support playlists, unfortunately.

mallbritton said:

The TV app does not support playlists, unfortunately.

What are these, then?

spetznatz said:

What are these, then?

I’m not extremely familiar with any of this, but I’m guessing the user meant the Apple TV TV app doesn’t support playlists (thanks to Apple for their confusing naming schemes across their products). Not sure if iPhone/iPad TV apps support them either. I think they all have “recently added” but that’s not a user-created playlist.

If it’s true these other devices don’t support playlists, then that’s a real shame. I was hoping to make some playlists at some point and play them on my ATV and iDevices—“movies to watch”, “movies and TV shows to play in the background while I’m working”, and “Christmas movies/shows for Christmas parties”.
Also there needs to be a “next“ button when playing a TV episode or something in a playlist.

spetznatz said:

What are these, then?

Ah, my mistake. I thought you were talking about the TV app on the Apple TV device. As you point out, the TV app for macOS does support playlists. Unfortunately I don't know why the lists don't appear in the order you want.

Sort order for TV shows and movies within the TV app is inconsistent. Using the TV app I've been slowly building a collection of purchased & downloaded Apple media along with ripped (owned) DVDs for a couple years and have found that sometimes the list is alphabetical (actually ignoring the word 'The . . ' at the beginning of a movie or TV title) and other times it remains in the order it was added. Then a week later when more media is added, it gets shoved to the bottom of the list w/o regard to alphabetical order, only to have the list later appear alphabetized. Then a week after than the sort order is re-imagined by the app again. And then there's the issue of Titles grabbing meta data and displaying it during ff or rewind.

On an older Mac Mini used only as the Apple TV app's 'server' running Big Sur, LaCie external drive array as the app's media library source.

I guess the TV app could be doing its own sorting and reorganizing thing when idle, but the only time the TV app is actually launched is when I add media. It is <Q>uit after that and the mini goes to sleep in 15. It's on a home LAN. When the ATV4K 'computer' app is tapped the Mini wakes and provides access to its TV app's library I assume because Home Sharing is turned on. It's just the annoying sorting inconsistency.