YouTube Music Adds Playlist Sorting by Title and Artist

If you have ever tried to find a specific song inside a 300-track YouTube Music playlist, you already know the pain. For years, the app offered no way to sort your playlist alphabetically, forcing users to scroll endlessly or simply give up.

That frustrating era is finally coming to an end, as Google has quietly begun rolling out the playlist sorting options that users have been demanding since day one.

What Sorting Options Are Finally Coming to YouTube Music?

As Android Authority reports, a Reddit user first spotted the new options inside the app’s sort menu. In addition to the existing choices like Manual, Top Voted, Newest First, and Oldest First, three brand-new sorting filters are now appearing for select users:

Title: Sort every track in your playlist alphabetically by song name.
Artist: Group and arrange tracks by the artist’s name for a cleaner listening experience.
Album: Organize your playlist songs by the album they belong to.

These are exactly the kinds of foundational tools that any serious music streaming service needs, and Digital Trends confirms they are now genuinely on their way to users after years of absence.

Why This Update Is Such a Big Deal

It might sound like a minor tweak, but for anyone who has switched to YouTube Music from a rival platform, the absence of these features has been a constant source of frustration.

As Make Use Of points out, Spotify and Apple Music users have enjoyed alphabetical sorting for well over a decade. Even more striking is the fact that Google Play Music, the very service that YouTube Music replaced back in 2020, already had robust playlist sorting built in from the start.

The community reaction has been a mix of genuine relief and mild disbelief. Many users on Reddit and social platforms have responded with comments along the lines of “it is about time,” while others are still questioning how such a basic feature was missing for this long.

According to PiunikaWeb, the response from the community has been largely positive, even if the excitement itself feels a little bittersweet given how long the wait has been.

How to Check If You Have the New Sorting Options

The new sorting filters were first spotted by Reddit user Stevenmc8602 running YouTube Music version 9.20.52 on Android. However, as Android Police notes, another user on the exact same version reported not seeing the options at all, which confirms this is a server-side rollout rather than a standard app update.

Here is how you can check right now:

Open a Playlist: Go into any playlist inside your YouTube Music library.
Tap the Sort Icon: Look for the sort or filter button near the top of the track list.
Look for New Options: If you see Title, Artist, or Album listed alongside the older options, the update has landed on your account.
Update Your App: Make sure you are on the latest available version from the Google Play Store to give yourself the best chance of receiving it.

If you do not see the new options yet, you are not alone. Since this follows the same pattern as the recent YouTube Music Now Playing redesign, where features are rolled out gradually in waves, the full global rollout is expected to reach all users within the coming weeks.

What Is Still Missing From YouTube Music?

Even with this welcome addition, Make Use Of highlights that YouTube Music still lags behind its competitors in a few key areas.

The most notable remaining gap is crossfade, the seamless audio overlap between tracks during transitions. Spotify and Apple Music have offered this for years, and it remains one of the most frequently requested features on YouTube Music’s community forums.

Still, this playlist sorting update is a genuine step forward. For heavy users managing libraries of hundreds or even thousands of saved tracks, the ability to finally sort by Title, Artist, or Album fundamentally changes how usable and navigable their music collection becomes.

Source: It’s only taken a decade: YouTube Music is finally getting basic playlist sorting features