A year later, YouTube Music adds library sorting for albums and playlists

Abner Li | Aug 22 2019 - 9:47 pm PT

In addition to lacking major features like a cloud locker and migrating playlists, YouTube Music is still missing basic functionality expected in an audio player. The ability to sort albums and playlists is now finally available on Android and iOS.

Since launch, Google’s latest streaming service has arranged your library by recently added. This included the playlists you’ve created, saved albums, liked songs, and subscribed artists. Reverse chronological order is a very YouTube and feed-inspired choice, but not one that scales well to large libraries.

YouTube Music now lets you sort content by alphabetical (A to Z) or reverse alphabetical (Z to A) order. “Recently added” is the default, but heading to any of those four sections in the Library tab reveals a new dropdown menu.

Your choice is specific to a page, and can be independently set. It’s not available on the Device Files tab of local files.

This long overdue and basic feature was first promised last August. In an interview with Engadget a few months after launch, Google promised that sorting was “firmly on the roadmap.” It’s unfortunate that the feature took a year for the YouTube team to tackle.

YouTube Music sorting is widely rolling out with version 3.29 on both Android and iOS, but it’s not available on the web client. It’s better late than never, but the streaming service has so much left to do.