Change shuffle algorithm on android player

[sbehnke 0]

On Android the shuffle function in the libraries is not random. For example if I start to shuffle, go back to main screen, go the same library and shuffle again there will be in 100 tries maybe the half or more often the first played file a file starting with "a". Sometimes the next file will also be a file starting with "a". Sometimes the first file is a file with "b" or "c" but nearly never a file above "f".

If I hit the shuffle button 100 times directly without leaving the music database I get a few songs played twice or more often. If have about 5000 songs so this sure can happen but not as often as it does. 

The shuffle function on the webfront end is much more random. First played file starts with any letter and repeated click on shuffle nearly never plays the same file within a series of 100.

It would be great if you change the shuffle algorithm, all other media players on android don't show this behaviour, but the Emby Player is my main media player. I have all my media on my Emby-Server as this is the best way to keep my media files in order.

Thx, Sven

[EmblemJD 21]

This is the Nth time this issue is brought up here but has yet to be fixed by the Emby Team - it affects more than just Android, the Shuffle "randomization" is fundamentally flawed and makes it unusable, especially for large music libraries as it seems to "randomly" pick between Titles starting with 1 and Titles starting with A - its infuriating. How come this is still a thing @Luke? What is the reasoning behind "pseudo-random" Shuffle that only picks a minuscule subset of options?

Please finally have a look into this, it affects all platforms and all players and all media types!

further example posts of this BUG

 

• fix proposed a year ago by @visproduction

 

"We are looking into this" has been commented by Luke for at least 2 years - so far ZILCH

[Rumzzz 31]

I honestly vaguely remember the shuffle working properly in the past when I first started using Emby (maybe 3 years ago?), not sure when that changed.

I've got a handful of bugs that have been stuck in limbo, but I don't want that to discredit all of the work the devs have been doing. 

[EmblemJD 21]

That is not the intend of my post @RumzzzI am overall quite happy with Emby and the development, however it is just baffling to me that such a fundamental misbehaviour is flying under the radar for so long. It is one of my biggest gripes, as also the performance of Shuffle makes my music library borderline useless and manages to crash Emby on AppleTV if I dare to shuffle through too many episodes to fast...Still amongst all the self-hosted Media library options, Emby still reigns supreme.

I remember one of the members of the dev team explaining that they went for their own implementation of "randomization" and I think this is where a lot of the issues we are experiencing stem from. So I hope this gets the attention it deserves as it is not a realistic assumption that all libraries will be <100 items (or whatever the current limiting factor is) - same rings painfully true for Search, but that is another topic for another sprint (maybe, hopefully...)

Edited December 16, 2025 by EmblemJD

[darkassassin07 652]

Hey; it's good to see Emby added a shuffle feature to the player. Gotta be honest, I kind of forgot about/haven't really looked at Embys music playback since 2017 when I had originally asked about adding the ability to shuffle to now playing; that's such a critical feature for me that I've always used other players.

 

(note, tested via Android exclusively)

Emby does seem oddly consistent in it's shuffle. If you add a bunch of music to now playing and repeatedly enable/disable shuffle: the list is always sorted into the same 'random' list. The list never re-shuffles, just switches between the same shuffled list vs not shuffled.

It does pick a new order every time I click 'shuffle' on an album or playlist; it just doesn't pick a new shuffle order when enabled/disabled in the now playing list.

 

I'm not really seeing the issue described above. If I click shuffle on ~6k songs; each time, playback starts with a song from all over the alphabet. Not just stuff from the first ~100 items. 

 

Side note; while testing this, shuffling many items on android actually crashed OneUI entirely, kicking me out to the lockscreen which also had to reboot.

Edited December 16, 2025 by darkassassin07

[Luke 42077]

HI, we are working on improving this. Thanks for the feedback.