Joe Maring / Android Authority
TL;DR
- YouTube Music is testing new playlist sorting options, namely track title, artist, and album.
- The feature was spotted in app version 9.20.52 on Android, but it appears to be a gradual, server-side rollout.
- These standard alphabetical sorting tools bridge a massive feature gap with competitors like Spotify and Apple Music.
YouTube Music has its own fanbase. However, the platform isn’t perfect, with bugs like the inability to play the next track (!!) affecting many users. Even if you discount the bugs as rare occurrences (they are not), the app is also missing plenty of basic features that have been in competing apps for ages, like the ability to sort a playlist by track title. It seems Google has finally listened, as users are now spotting more sorting options in YouTube Music.
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Reddit user Stevenmc8602 spotted new sorting options for their playlist: title, artist, and album, in addition to the currently available options, such as top voted, manual ordering, newest first, and oldest first (h/t PiunikaWeb).
The Reddit user is seeing these options in YouTube Music v9.20.52 on Android, but these changes are likely being rolled out via a server-side flag, so not all users may see them even with the updated app version. I’ve checked it on my phones, and I don’t see the options yet, so we’ll have to be patient for a larger rollout.
It’s genuinely mind-boggling that we’ve had to wait until 2026 for something as fundamentally basic as sorting a playlist by artist or album. While Spotify and Apple Music users have enjoyed these organizational luxuries for over a decade, YouTube Music users have had to make do with clunky workarounds or just accept the chaotic energy of non-alphabetical sorting.
It’s great to see these standard sorting options finally making an appearance. Hopefully, Google doesn’t drag its feet on this one. If you’ve been waiting to finally organize your thousands of saved tracks without losing your mind, keep an eye on your app updates over the coming weeks.
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