Hymns App Shuffle Function

I've noticed that the Hymns app shuffle function only shuffles the list once and then never again, despite turning it off and on.

Additionally, if you leave the app for a bit then come back, the very next song is the first song in the shuffled list.

Is there anyway to get it to shuffle and mix up the Now Playing list? As it stands now, I might as well not even shuffle it.

Are you talking about the Church's official LDS Music app (I'm assuming iOS)? I just tried the shuffle feature and it worked as I expected – but I don't use it often so it's possible I'm not seeing something.

sbradshaw wrote:Are you talking about the Church's official LDS Music app (I'm assuming iOS)? I just tried the shuffle feature and it worked as I expected – but I don't use it often so it's possible I'm not seeing something.

I am sorry, it is called LDS Music not Hymns.

You would need to do the following:

1. Add music to a playlist. I just added all of the hymns.
2. Hit shuffle then play some hymns. Jot down the order in which they play. I am not certain how long you would need to play them or if that even matters.
3a. Hit pause then come back to the app a few hours later. If you hit play, it will typically start the song you last heard over then the next song will be the first song in the shuffled playlist.
3b. Find another song from the main list of songs, play it. The next song will be the first song in the shuffled playlist.
3c. Double tap your home button and kill the LDS Music app. Open it back up and play the song that shows in Now Playing. The next song will be the first song in the shuffled playlist.

I love the hymns but having this happen over and over again, well to be positive, is helping me to memorize the words to the first handful of songs on the shuffled playlist .

Thanks for reporting this – the LDS Music app is a community project that relies on volunteer developers. The project has been almost dormant for some time but there's an effort under way to reopen the project and get some new developers involved. I added this to the list of bugs. Hopefully we can get it fixed!

sbradshaw wrote:Thanks for reporting this – the LDS Music app is a community project that relies on volunteer developers. The project has been almost dormant for some time but there's an effort under way to reopen the project and get some new developers involved. I added this to the list of bugs. Hopefully we can get it fixed!

THANK YOU!!!

Just wanted to give some resolution to this thread. I'm a volunteer developer on the iOS LDS Music app and have been working on fixing this issue. It turns out we were using a random function for the shuffle with two problems: 1. We were not setting the seed for the RNG explicitly, thus leading us to use the same seed every time the app was opened, resulting in an identical stream of random numbers. 2. The random function additionally suffered from modulo bias. Switching to a different random function resolves both of these problems.

The code will be reviewed soon and hopefully make it into the next release of the app.

That is great news!

Thank you so much for all your hard work and time you've given to resolve this!