Shuffle SHOWS, not episodes when using the Library shuffle function

Feature Suggestions
1

Plex TV Library has a shuffle option, but it just shuffles every episode randomly. This is chaos when you have shows like Lost or Dexter that are very clearly supposed to be watched in order.

I propose an option that allows you to shuffle shows in your library, but plays them in Unwatched order. Say I have the following shows, and the corresponding Watched status:

Lost - S03E04
Dexter - S01E09
The Office - Unwatched
Breaking Bad - Unwatched

The proposed shuffle function may play episodes in the following order:

Breaking Bad - S01E01
Lost - S03E05
The Office - S01E01
The Office - S01E02
Dexter - S01E10

etc.

I don’t really want to start watching breaking bad in the middle of the show, then jump to the very beginning of Dexter and so forth.

This would also be super great to have in Playlists or Collections. Could make Plex feel like a more traditional television watching experience, if the user so chooses.

2

I would honestly program this myself if I had access to the shuffle mechanism. I’ve been wanting this as an option for so long.

3

Would absolutely love this if I could play in episode order. I tried to finagle it with the smart playlists but the only option. Is to play then in air order. So you might get through 3 season of one show then the second picks up and so on.

4

any chance of this ever happening? Whenever I finish one show, I always have a hell of a time picking the next one to watch. Being able to just have shuffle pick the next episode of a show for me would be awesome.

6

Man, I can’t believe this has been implemented yet. I have spent so much time reading on how to implement this but nothing seams to work. So frustrating

7

I don’t mind it being out of order, it’s closer to simulating surfing channels. But I agree it should shuffle tv shows and not episodes. I have 300ish tv shows, but close to 600 episodes of Mister Rogers Neighborhood, so even though I have 300ish tv shows, there’s a 95% chance I get a Mr Rogers Neighborhood episode, and an almost 0% chance I get a show that only had 10 episodes.

8

I would love this feature, but enabled with a Playlist whereby you can select which TV Shows you would like in ‘TV Mode’.
If you added 4 shows as in the above example, it would randomly select the different shows, but play the episodes in order for the TV show, thus providing you with your own ‘TV experience’.
This way you can exclude TV shows that you do not want to watch or create Playlists for your mood, for example, Comedy playlist, Drama playlist, Action playlist; Kids playlists.
Please can more people vote for this option or is there a plug-in to provide this feature

1 Like
9

Is there any way to have Plex playback a group of television shows in sequential order, either through playlists or auto-play?

I don’t care if the shows that gets selected is completely random, in fact I would prefer it. I just want Plex to select from a pool of shows and continue from the next unplayed episode of the show that is selected.

For instance, I have a number of TV shows, lets say 5, and I don’t want to binge through a whole show. I’d like to see the first episode of show 1, maybe followed by the first episode of show 5, followed by the first episode of show 2, etc.

Ex:

  • Shuffle button (or play button) is pressed.
  • Show 1 Episode 1 plays
  • Show 5 Episode 1 plays
  • Show 2 Episode 1 plays
  • Show 1 Episode 2 plays
  • Show 3 Episode 1 plays
  • Show 4 Episode 1 plays
  • Show 2 Episode 2 plays

Not sure how feasible this is. I saw a post from about 5 years back that nothing ever came out of, just wanted to see if there have been any developments on something like this. I can do it in a playlist manually but it would take forever and I would really prefer it to be in a completely random order.

Also, this is my first time posting so I apologize if it’s not correctly formatted.

10

Like the pseudo tv suggestion?
I’m not sure it’s mentioned in the OP but should be part of the suggestion/discussion.

11

Yes, this seems similar to what I’m looking for. Though, reading through this post, it looks like this leans more towards setting up various channels that would constantly be playing through media.

I’m looking for one playlist or channel that plays when I choose to play it, and will randomly cycle through all of my media and play the next unwatched episode of whatever show gets picked.

12

Someone created a script to do this but I’m a moron and don’t know how to implement it.

Here it is: GitHub - robobeaver6/plex_playlist_generator: Generate a playlist of an arbatory Length on a Plex server for the next unplayed episode from random TV shows in the Library

Please post directions for dummies if you know how to how to do this.

13

I would like a feature similar to this but not really at all like this. This one mod won’t let me create a feature request or clarify it before closing my threads, I also don’t have any votes left as they are tied up in 5+ year old feature suggestions.

Anyways, this also seems like a nifty feature even if it isn’t what I wanted to suggest. This is me throwing my support behind it since got not votes.

14

I’d like to renew the request to create a playlist shuffle option. In any playlist that contains episodes from the same series, this randomization would retain the chronological order during playback. So, if the playlist starts with Show XYZ S03E04, then the next time Show XYZ plays, it should be S03E05.

So, say you have a few educational children’s shows, but want them shuffled to kind of emulate a TV channel. However, you wouldn’t want the content to jump around between seasons, especially if they randomize a few consecutive episodes from the same show.

I picture this being similar to the “repeat” function that has the options to loop a single track, or all tracks. You’d have the “shuffle” option that toggles between “shuffle all” and “shuffle shows”. Maybe you’d also want to shuffle one series/show with a 3rd option, “shuffle series”. With AI, I wonder if there could even be a smart shuffle to pick similar shows to switch between.

15

I have a library of TV shows that I’d love to be able to put on shuffle. My issue is that Plex completely randomizes which episodes it plays, rather than just randomizes the shows.

My request is to provide a shuffle play option that will shuffle between shows, but playing the oldest unwatched episode for whatever show is randomly chosen. Watched episodes should only be played if all episodes for all shows have been watched in the library.

1 Like
16

I would love the ability to shuffle my TV library, but the episodes to play from the first unplayed episode so when I don’t know what to watch I can let shuffle decide but it’s always the next episode of the show I was watching instead of random episodes.

The pop-up at the end of the episode could countdown to shuffle again with an option to play the next episode from that show if pressed.

I’ve seen plenty of people ask for similar features online but nothing yet!

17

UPDATE 2025:
I have resolved this by using the TUNARR application
This connects to my Plex library.
I then create a ‘channel’ in Tunarr
Select my shows from Plex
From the Channels screen, select the three dots next to your channle
Select ‘Modify Programming’
This will show the current play list
In the top menu, select ‘Sort’
Change this to ‘Cyclic Shuffle‘
This will randomly show your shows, but play the episodes in order
In Plex, this is then added to Live TV\DVR and is available to you and Managed accounts