How to Turn On or Off Smart Shuffle on Spotify

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Grace
August 22, 2025

Spotify Smart Shuffle is a dynamic feature that refreshes your listening experience by adding similar songs to your playing queue. It replaces Spotify’s Enhance Feature and now is available to Premium users (and Free users in select regions) on iOS and Android devices.

However, user opinions on Smart Shuffle are mixed. Many love the convenience and the way it helps to discover new music, while others think it is unpredictable or disruptive. This guide will show you how to enable Spotify Smart Shuffle, save new songs you like from it, and easily turn it off if it doesn’t suit your preferences.

Contents

Read Also: How to Stop Spotify Playing Songs Not on Playlist

What Is Spotify Smart Shuffle?

Spotify Smart Shuffle is an enhanced shuffle feature to keep your listening interesting. Different from regular shuffle, it plays your playlist in random order, but mixed with new songs recommended by your listening habits and playlist vibe.

Smart Shuffle is limited to Spotify Premium subscribers, who can use it on both desktop and mobile devices. However, it is also the default play mode for Free users in select regions including Brazil, Canada, Colombia, Egypt, India, Indonesia, Nigeria, Pakistan, South Africa, Thailand, the Philippines, Turkey, and Vietnam.

Benefits of Smart Shuffle:

  • Discover new music: Find tracks that match your tastes.
  • Personalized shuffle: Provide a more tailored and dynamic shuffle experience than a simple random order.
  • Variety: Add a fresh element to your playlists.

Considerations:

  • Lack of control: You can’t choose what plays next.
  • Unpredictable flow: Suggested songs might disrupt the flow or mood of your original playlist.
  • Potential mismatches: Recommended songs may not always fit your preferences.

How to Turn On/Off Spotify Smart Shuffle?

When you want to freshen up your playlist, try activating the Smart Shuffle feature. However, if you prefer to have full control over your listening experience and return to the original playlist order, simply turn it off.

Turn On Smart Shuffle on Spotify

  1. Launch the Spotify app and go to a playlist.
  2. Tap the Shuffle icon twice to enable the Smart Shuffle (Shuffle Off > Shuffle On > Smart Shuffle On). You’ll notice the shuffle button change to a green Smart Shuffle button, indicated by a sparkle on the top leftSmart Shuffle active

Turn Off Spotify Smart Shuffle

To turn off the Smart Shuffle on Spotify, tap the green Smart Shuffle button once, and it will return to the white Shuffle Off icon.

Turn-on-Spotify-Smart-Shuffle

How to Add Smart Shuffle Recommendations to Playlist?

 For a playlist with more than 15 songs, Smart Shuffle will add one recommended song for every three tracks in your playing queue. Otherwise, the recommended songs will be added at the end of your playlist. Here is how you can identify these new tracks and add them to your playlist if you enjoy them.

 Find Smart Shuffle Songs

  1. Tap the playing song at the bottom of your Spotify app。
  2. Select the Play Queue icon.
  3. You’ll find the Smart Shuffle recommended songs with a green sparkle symbol next to them.
find smart shuffle songs spotify

Add a Smart Shuffle Song to Playlist

  1. Tap the playing song to enter its detail page.
  2. Use the Plus button to save it to the playlist you are listening to.
  3. If the track isn’t to your liking, you can also remove it by tapping the Minus or X button.
add smart shuffle song to playlist

Extra Tip: How to Play Spotify Songs in Order Without Premium

Unfortunately, playing songs in any order on the Spotify mobile app isn’t available for free users. When you tap the Shuffle Play button on a playlist to disable it, Spotify will prompt the message below, suggesting you to upgarde to Premium.

Play-in-Order-Only-for-Premium

However, this limitation can be overcome with a smart Spotify music converter. Pazu Spotify Converter is designed for both Spotify Free and Premium users to download songs, playlists, albums, and podcasts for offline listening. It extracts Spotify music and converts it to various high-quality formats, including MP3, M4A, AIFF, WAV, FLAC, and AAC. Pazu Spotify Converter supports both Windows and Mac computers. After downloading, you can transfer the songs to any compatible device for offline listening. With this tool, you have full control over your music collection and can play them in any order without Premium.

Key features of Pazu Spotify Converter:

  • Download Spotify songs, playlists, albums, and podcasts with both Spotify’s free and premium accounts.
  • Built-in Spotify web player, no Spotify app needed.
  • Multiple output formats: MP3, M4A, AAC, FLAC, WAV, and AIFF.
  • Download Spotify to MP3 in 320kbps.
  • Keep all ID3 tags.
  • Rename Spotify songs with titles, albums, artists, etc.
  • Multilingual interface.

Now, let’s learn how to use Pazu Spotify Music Converter to download Spotify songs with a free subscription.

Step 1. Select Spotify music

Download, install, and run Pazu Spotify Converter on your Mac or Windows. After logging in to your Spotify account, use the integrated Spotify web player to search for songs, albums, or playlists you want to download. Click the Add to List button to load all songs in the album or playlist.

add to download list

Step 2. Choose the output format

Click the gear icon on the top right corner to select the output format (AUTO[M4A], MP3, AAC, FLAC, WAV, or AIFF), choose output audio quality, customize the output folder, and more.

download format

Step 3. Download Spotify Songs to Local

Click the Convert button to start downloading the Spotify songs to your local computer.

To download individual songs or specific songs of your choice, simply uncheck the ones you don’t want to download and click the Convert button.

Convert-individual-songs

Step 4. Find Your Downloads in the Local Folder

Once the conversion is done, click the folder button or directly go to the output folder you customized in the previous step to find the downloaded Spotify songs. From there, you can transfer the songs to any compatible device and enjoy them in any order.

find downloads

Note: The free trial version of Pazu Spotify Converter enables you to convert the first three minutes of each song. You can remove the trial limitation by purchasing the full version.

Conclusion

Smart Shuffle offers Premium users a fun way to explore new music with personalized recommendations. If you prefer to listen to the original playlist, you can easily turn it off by tapping the Shuffle button. Unfortunately, Free users can only shuffle play Spotify playlists on the mobile app. To have more control over your music collection, you can use Pazu Spotify Converter to download Spotify songs. This allows you to play them offline on any compatible device in any desired order.