Summary
- YouTube Music has finally added Title, Artist and Album sorting to playlists.
- The service still lacks crossfade, device handoff and lossless audio that rivals offer.
- The rollout appears to be staged, so if you don’t see it yet, keep your eyes peeled.
YouTube Music appears to be getting a major update to playlist sorting that should solve one of users longest-standing complaints. While that’s great news, the fact that this wasn’t a feature before is baffling — and it’s not the only obvious feature that’s missing from Google’s music streaming platform.
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YouTube Music gets actual playlist sorting options
Finally
Google appears to be rolling out some new options for sorting playlists — Reddit users have spotted Title, Artist, and Album options in the sort menu. Previously, the only options were Top voted, Manual, Newest first, and Oldest first. The lack of these options has been a major complaint among YouTube Music fans for years, so people are obviously excited about the change:
If that seems like a really basic feature to be getting excited about in 2026, you’re not alone. But that’s just how it goes with Google sometimes (remember how recently Keep got basic formatting?), so we’ll take what we can get.
Not the only feature YouTube Music is missing
The basics just aren’t all there
Playlist sorting isn’t the only important feature missing from YouTube Music. The biggest remaining omission is probably crossfade — a setting that causes songs to fade in and out with a slight overlap so that transitions are seamless. YouTube Music technically has gapless playback, but that’s not really the same. Gapless playback removes the gaps (obviously), but it doesn’t prevent jarring song transitions.
Playlist sorting and crossfade are pretty standard features in a music player, and they’re present in most of the service’s major competitors, like Spotify and Apple Music. Even more frustrating is the fact that Google Play Music — the service that YouTube Music replaced — had robust playlist sorting and crossfade, along with other useful tools like editing metadata for songs you upload. Again, this sort of awkward transition to a new service isn’t uncommon with Google, but that doesn’t make it any less annoying.
That’s not all
YouTube Music also lacks some less-essential-but-still-nice-to-have features present in competitors, including handoff between devices (YouTube can cast, but you can’t hand off control seamlessly) and lossless audio formats. Again, Spotify and Apple Music offer both of these features.
YouTube Music has a lot going for it, so it’s a bummer that basic features are still lagging behind. Hopefully these new playlist features are a sign of things to come.
As for these new playlist sorting features, the rollout appears to be staged, as not everyone has them yet. This is typical for Google — keep your eyes peeled over the coming weeks.
