The Shuffle Buttons

There aren't many buttons to push on the shuffle, and that's a good thing because it makes it hard for you to push the wrong one. Most people can figure out how to press the big button to start and stop the music, and perform other basic functions using the four other buttons to control volume and navigation. There are a few interesting features hiding behind those buttons. Unlike other iPods, the shuffle has no hold switch to prevent tragic button-push accidents. On the shuffle, you can lock the buttons by holding down play/pause button for a few seconds until the amber light blinks at you a few times. To unlock the buttons, hold down play/pause button again until you get the blinking green light.

Although iPod shuffle lacks the fancy song-scrubbing trick that lets you quickly skip through a track, it does have the same basic fast-forward and rewind feature as other iPods: just hold down next or previous to move around in the current song. When you pause your iPod shuffle, then press next or previous, the iPod moves to the new song and starts playing. That's different from other iPods: on those, the iPod stays paused when you press next or previous. This is just another example of how Apple wisely simplified a feature to accommodate a screen-less design.

When you pause the shuffle, the green light blinks at you. If you leave the shuffle paused, the light stops blinking after a minute, and it's easy to forget that it's still on. The shuffle has clever hardware and software that greatly conserves power if the iPod has been paused for more than a minute or so, but when you are not using your shuffle you should use the good old-fashioned off switch to be sure it isn't using its battery when you don't want it to.

Once in awhile your iPods will get confused and must be brought back to its senses by resetting it. iPod shuffle is no exception to that but there is a unique way of resetting it: turn it off using the slider switch on the back, wait awhile (at least 5 seconds), then turn it back on again, to either the play-in-order or shuffle mode position.

Your iPod shuffle includes a handy shortcut for going back to the beginning of its playlist: just press play/pause three times and the shuffle will start playing at the beginning of the first song. If your iPod is in shuffle mode it will reorder the playlist before starting over. You can use this trick to quickly get to songs at the end of the playlist. Just triple-click to go to the start and then press previous to wrap around and get to the last song. While other iPods let you choose whether they start over or stop when finishing a playlist, the iPod shuffle always starts over, for the sake of simplicity, which makes this tip work. (It also works on other iPods if you turn on repeat all in the settings. But other iPods have screens, which makes them somewhat easier to navigate).

Next