It would be great to be able to sort by selecting “random” as an option. This would get one a randomized list in no specific order.
Would you mind including some use case for that so others might better understand why they should vote for your suggestion? 
If it’s solely for playback… you know there’s a shuffle button a bit to the right of your yellow “needs”
Instead of just hitting the shuffle button and have some thing play right away, A “Random” button once clicked would randomize your library at the same time allowing one to scroll through their library and select something. They would get to select from a Random list, but the choice would be a greater one than simply hitting the “Shuffle” button. Random choice, instead of forced randomness 
I doubt there’s enough interest in this to induce Plex to add a new menu item for it, but until they do, you can actually do this yourself, by following TeknoJunky’s tip for creating a random-sorted playlist).
If you want all of your movies in this list, instead of the filters suggested in the tip, just use “Year is greater than 1800” (or any other filter you can imagine that includes all your movies). The key for randomness is in the instruction for editing the ‘sort’ parameter in the URL.
Every time you open or refresh this playlist, on any device, you will see all your movies in a different randomized order.
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Thanks for the Tip beckfield, i’ll certainly look into this.
I came here also looking for a random sort (and also independently found TeknoJunky’s tip earlier today). A built-in random sort would be awesome so that it (1) can be used on other clients that can’t edit the URL, and (2) avoids the need to create a playlist, which is static (AFAIK) and can’t be viewed in grid mode.
Much better than a shuffle (at least to me) because I wouldn’t want it to automatically play anything, I wouldn’t want to go through random titles one by one (e.g., still need some control over content, especially if viewing with a group), and just much faster to see 10-20 titles at a time.
From the looks of it, the code for random sort already exists, and on the web client it works pretty fast. Does a button just need to be added somewhere?
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Good point MervMalt, if for instance you have a managed user it would be of use to an account like that.
Once the playlist is created on the server, you can access the playlist from any device, and as I said before, every time you open or refresh this playlist, on any device, you will see all your movies in a different randomized order. There’s no need for other clients to edit the URL.
TeknoJunky’s method creates a smart playlist, not a static one. If you add movies that meet the filter criteria, they will automatically be added to the playlist.
That’s the only thing you mentioned that this method doesn’t provide.
You can share the playlist with any user.
Thanks MervMalt, but from the sound of it, it’s not a one click method. One has to maintain and routinely update the playlist, distribute it. And if need be create a new one as parameters change. This is not for me.
A simple “Random” sort button sounds best for all involved in my opinion.
Thanks for emphasizing that part! Originally, I took my entire library and made that into a playlist (because I didn’t want to filter anything), but that created a playlist that did not re-randomize on refresh. If I add a filter (e.g., “movies after 1900-01-01”), then it becomes a smart playlist, which does re-randomize every time. So, filtering is a requirement, not just a suggestion. That part was not clear to me.
With that, the playlist does pretty much what I need it to do, minus minor things like grid view and other functionality you get from being a library sort option (e.g., additional filtering).
Hmm. I guess with the playlist, you can’t browse the titles either. On clients other than the web client, selecting a title automatically plays it. You can’t select a title and view the description, see cast, related movies, etc.
So, it would still be nice to have a sort option within the library itself.
you can add &sort=random to the main library artists/albums/tracks and save the URL.
plex doesn’t seem to want to add a random sort to the ui, so until they change their mind and actually implement something, you will just have to do it yourself via the url.
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It is annoying that they have a working, random sort option available, but that it is not enabled in the UI. Editing the URL is fine for the web browser, but when using any of the apps you can only use what is made available in the UI. It would be so easy to add another button, I do not understand the motivation behind not doing so.
don’t forget you can make an auto playlist always shuffled, so this would work on all clients
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I am mainly after a way to show a random list of my albums in the music library. Unfortunately playlists in plex only support individual files or music tracks. For now I am using the random album radio which is not ideal because it only selects 1 random album rather than a list.
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+1 , it would be that great to have this view !!
It appears this has been implemented with PMS 1.23.3
Fantastic, glad to see random shuffle in the movies finally happen.
