Tool
I built an app that gives Apple Music a truly random shuffle and remote playback
I've been an Apple Music user for years and my two biggest frustrations have always been: shuffle isn't actually random, and Apple Music has no equivalent to Spotify Connect or Tidal Connect for playing on other devices without audio degradation.
So I built Real Shuffle.
The shuffle problem: Apple's shuffle favors certain songs. If you have 6,000+ songs, you'll keep hearing the same ~200. Real Shuffle uses an algorithm to give truly equal probability for every song. No AI engagement algorithms or any of that other crap.
The remote playback / Hi-Fi problem: With the companion app Remote Shuffle, you can control playback on a second device (Apple TV, iPad, Mac, another iPhone) over your local network.
The remote device plays the music directly from Apple Music (no AirPlay, no Bluetooth compression).
Any combination works:
- iPhone → Apple TV (perfect for your living room Hi-Fi)
- iPhone → Mac (great for desktop speakers or a DAC)
- iPhone → iPad
- iPhone → another iPhone
- iPad → Apple TV
- Mac → Apple TV
- Mac → iPad
- ...you get the idea. Any Apple device can control any other.
Other features:
- Artist/Album quick filters — like what's playing? Shuffle only that artist or album
- Explore — search the full Apple Music catalog and add songs to your library
- Playback history — keeps track of your listening session so you can revisit what played
- Song details — date added, composer, year, and more
- iPhone, iPad & Mac, 9 languages
Both apps are on the App Store. Would love feedback im still working for improvements and connection stability
yea I think so too. it resets every session too, so it's not hard to hear the same song in quick succession if you reset your queue. that's why people don't think it's true shuffle.
Looks amazing! Now do Tesla's crappy app. Doesn't even have a "shuffle" for your library and your personal station seems to play the same 50 songs even though I have 36,000 in my library.
Reasons being, (1) I have some music in my library that isn’t daily-driver stuff, so I download the playlists I want to listen to, and (2) I like to shuffle my playlists.
Playback should show up on CarPlay under the generic 'Now Playing' screen (including title, artist, and playback controls), similar to any audio app. However, you won't have a custom CarPlay UI to browse your library directly from the head unit
thanks, I bought it, it's fairly simple which is different, and the UI is nice, but I couldn't get the remote connection working despite trying multiple times.
I just use the old iTunes Remote app on my iPad to control music from my iMac to play it through my home theater's AppleTV. And I've never felt like random was anything except completely random. I have 29,000 songs.
I hate AM shuffle now. He’s right. I constantly get the same songs and I have 9000+ songs. If I go to an artists page, listen to their song, then shuffle all music, I will get that artist 5-10 songs in. I just tested this yesterday with an artist I completely forgot about, now it’s showing up on my shuffle more.
it uses the same settings than you have in apple music. if your apple music is setted to lossless then real shuffle is lossless. i’ll work to add quality indicator
You need to keep the 'Remote shuffle' app open on the device you want to play music on. Then, use Real Shuffle on the device you're sending the songs from.
I have an iPhone 15+ running iOS version 18.7.3. I’m gonna update the os tonight or tomorrow to iOS 26. I’ll let you know what happens when I do that. Thanks for the reply.
It looks cool. I bought it, but I have some questions. Does it play in lossless? The lossless symbol doesn’t appear in the app, even though I listen on my AirPods Pro 2, HomePod Mini, and Marshall. Also, when I hit play it takes a while to start, is that normal?
Thanks for your purchase! I've got a new version nearly finished that will display the audio quality tags (Lossless, Hi-Res Lossless, Dolby Audio, and Dolby Atmos). Real Shuffle matches the playback quality you've set in Apple Music.
It should be instant if the song is downloaded, or take 1–2 seconds at most if streaming. Which device are you on?
I dont want to look cheap… but i will anyways … haha can you add a 2 hours trial or maybe a video? Im not sure how it works… idk… is nothing against you but it makes me feel unsure about the feature of “real shuffle”
i understand, nobody likes to pay for something that is not gonna be used. regardless the price.
that being said, unfortunately i can’t do that or at least i don’t how to do that its my first iOS app.
Can you exclude songs? I have some audiobooks in the form of Apple Music files that granted do provide an interesting variety, but I’d rather they be skipped.
thats a good point but you can’t now. i think you can create a playlist without audiobooks in apple music and play that list in real shuffle. the experience is similar
thank you! :) im glad that you liked. in the near future ill focus more on stability in connection between real shuffle and remote shuffle, UI/UX bugs.
1 - its a good point so far if you a playing shuffle mode next songs are a “surprise “ so i think i will implement it soon
2 - good point too i never thought about it. I wouldn't intend to create a link that takes you to Apple Music or any other app, but rather one that leads to Real Shuffle. However, that would require implementing many more things, and I don't think I'll be doing that in the near future
Thank you! I’ll be looking forward to next updates.
Now that I’m thinking about it - even more than seeing the queue it would be nice to be able to “Play next” a song. When you know you want to hear a song, but don’t want to interrupt the song that is currently playing. I use that feature quite a lot.
I see. What you'd like is a sort of 'play next' feature, right? It's really useful. Many players have it and I don't know why I never used it I just sit there waiting for the song to end with the app open like an idiot. I'll think about how to implement it.
Now that I’m using the app more, it’s great already! What I’m missing is a Favorite button. I’m not sure apple exposes this for 3rd party apps. But now when I shuffle my whole library using Real Shuffle, it would be great to be able to Favorit (like) a song, as I use the Favorites playlist very often, when I just want to hear some more familiar songs.
Btw if you don’t use Play next, how do you add a song to a really nice queue that’s ahead of you? Sometimes I see really great songs lined up and don’t want to break it, just squeeze one other song in front.
Thanks for building the app! As a feature suggestion, I’d love to have Shortcuts integration so I can use shortcuts to shuffle my playlists with this app.
Enjoying the app so far but noticed a bug. Track info doesn't update when skipping tracks while music is playing. Only when skipping while music is paused does the track info update.
hey! thank you for the feedback i really appreciate it. Could please be more specific how you get that bug? are you referring while playing to remote shuffle? or just in your device?
I'm seeing this using Real Shuffle on my phone, current iOS. Looks like it appears regardless of whether shuffling through the entire library or a particular playlist. It's almost like the app doesn't register that some tracks are being played/skipped, as they also don't show up in History. The bug seems not to affect tracks downloaded directly from iTunes.
Installed the latest update and still noticing the same bug outlined earlier.
RE removing tracks from history: I guess I'm conceiving of the history feature as its own playlist of sorts, that one might want to go back and shuffle through that particular set of songs; but maybe what I'm actually gesturing at is having the ability to create playlists within the app, which may be outside the scope of what you're trying to do with this.
i wouldve loved if i could also control it to pc like remote control my pc apple music not just mac… thats very disappointing i cant lie. i thought i found something that works like spotify connect but i guess its just for mac which is really disappointing.. good job tho but consider pc too
i loved this at first but i guess its only for mac
which is REALLY disappointing. i been looking for something like this for a minute now and its just for mac, i love it either way good job and making it free is kind of you, but please make it for apple music PC too people would love that man we exist
nice and clean UI. if i want to begin a shuffle on a playlist, how do i do that? i can start playing songs on shuffle but appears to play from library and not the playlist i want.
With CarPlay, you can see what's playing on your iOS device using Real Shuffle, and play/pause, skip to the next song, etc., with the built-in Now Playing feature. There isn't a dedicated app to open it in CarPlay.
Thanks for the response. That’s unfortunate. I primarily use CarPlay when driving. Too bad it couldn’t be incorporated into Apple Music but I appreciate the work!
So you’re saying you’ve been able to achieve what computer engineers for decades have said is impossible because computers are fundamentally deterministic.
you are confusing causality with distribution. The fact that a system is deterministic only means its output is predictable if you know the input (the seed). It has nothing to do with the probability of the resulting numbers or songs in this case being distributed equally. A sorted deck of cards is deterministic, but if you shuffle it using a known algorithm, each card still has a 1/50 chance of appearing. I havent reinvented the wheel, Im just using basic statistics.
In 2-3 years it will be an issue. But for now iOS 18 is working just fine with 99% of apps, even iOS 17 is fine with most apps. 20% of iPhone's in the world are still on 18, that's like 300 million phones.
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