Desktop: New Your Library sidebar

[MattSuda]

Spotify is introducing a new Your Library sidebar in the desktop app and Web Player.

The new Your Library sidebar improves navigation and makes it easier and faster to collect and retrieve all types of content, bringing new features to desktop that you're already familiar with in the mobile app. The new sidebar is also more customizable than before to meet different preferences.

You can read more info about the new desktop experience in the Spotify Newsroom post:

➜ Spotify’s Desktop Experience Gets a Brand-New Look With Redesigned ‘Your Library’ and ‘Now Playing’ ...

This thread is your go-to destination for learning what's new, asking questions, getting help for issues you might have, as well as to share your feedback about the new Your Library sidebar for desktop. Also, do you have any tips for other users on how you are using the new Your Library sidebar? We'd love to hear them.

What's new in the Your Library sidebar?

• See your entire collection and all of the content types (not just playlists)
  
  
• Filters for your collection (Playlists, Artists, Albums, Podcasts) that can be combined with other filters (By you, By Spotify, Downloaded)
  
  
• Sort options for your collection (Recents, Recently Added, Alphabetical, Creator, Custom Order)
  
  
• Chosen filters and sort options will be remembered in the sidebar across restarts of the desktop app
  
  
• Search through your collection in the sidebar
  
  
• Pinned library items to find your favorites, faster – current limit is 4 (Playlists, Playlist Folders, Artists, Albums, Podcasts)
  
  
• Art covers are now shown in the sidebar
  
  
• Compact library layout (no art covers) is available as an option in Settings to increase content density
  
  
• Dedicated + (plus) button to create Playlists and Playlist Folders
  
  
• Flexible Sizing: A collapsed library view (with only art covers) to maximize the browsing area, a regular width view, and an expanded view for more focused library management and curation. (you can also drag to customize the size)
  
  
• In the expanded library view, you have options for list view, compact view, and a grid view. The list and compact views show you more details in 2 columns, Date Added and Last Played, and the grid view allows you to see larger art covers.
  
  
• Playlist Folders can still be expanded into the sidebar in a tree view, and now when you click on them, the sidebar only shows the Playlist Folder and what's inside for a more focused view.
  
  
• Menu option to move a playlist to a folder (with search)

Note: The Your Library sidebar experience will be the same for the most part in the Web Player. However, the Web Player does not support all of the features found in the desktop app. To be able to use all of the features, you can download the desktop app right here.

Tips to get started:

If you need a familiar experience to help you get started with the new Your Library sidebar, here's how to get it as close as possible to the old sidebar that previously only showed playlists:

• In the left "Your Library" sidebar, click on the "Playlists" filter at the top.

• Then, in the drop down menu select "Custom Order" under "Sort by". You will then see your previous playlist order and be able to move your playlists and folders like before.

• Your currently chosen filters and sort options will be remembered across restarts of the desktop app.

• If you would like to only see text in the Your Library sidebar (no art covers), go to the drop down menu and at the bottom of the menu click on "Compact" under "View as".

• Flexible Sizing: You can drag the Your Library sidebar to different sizes. Fully expand the sidebar by clicking the arrow button at the top, and fully collapse the sidebar by clicking on the "Your Library" heading to see only art covers.

• At the top, you can scroll through the different filters with your mouse scroll wheel for faster navigation when the sidebar is set to a smaller size. 

Walkthrough of the basics:

Sidebar List:

You can now see your entire collection and all of the content types (not just playlists) in the sidebar list. At the top, click on the filters to filter the content you want to see, and click on the drop down menu to change the sort order or view of the list. To create a new Playlist or Playlist Folder, click on the + (plus) button at the top right corner of the sidebar. To search through your collection, click on the search button.

Filter Options:

At the top, click on the filters to filter the content you want to see. You can scroll through the different filters with your mouse scroll wheel for faster navigation when the sidebar is set to a smaller size. 

To remove the filter, click on the X or the currently selected filter and then choose another filter to see another type of content. Having no filter selected will show all types of content mixed in the list.

• Playlists
• Artists
• Albums
• Podcasts & Shows
• These can be combined with other filters: By you, By Spotify, Downloaded

Sort Options:

At the top, click on the drop down menu to change the sort order of the list under "Sort by".

• Recents
• Recently Added
• Alphabetical
• Creator

When the "Playlists" filter is selected, you have the option to see your playlists in your own custom order.

• Custom Order

When the "Podcasts & Shows" filter is selected, you have the following option:

• Recently Updated

View Options:

At the top, click on the drop down menu to change the view of the list under "View as".

• Compact (view text only without art covers)
• List
• Grid (bigger art covers)

Flexible Sizing:

You can hover over and click on the right edge of the sidebar to drag it to your preferred width. You can also fully expand the sidebar by clicking the arrow button at the top, and fully collapse the sidebar by clicking on the "Your Library" heading to see only art covers.

In the expanded library view, you have options for list view, compact view, and a grid view. The list and compact views show you more details in 2 columns, Date Added and Last Played, and the grid view allows you to see larger art covers.

FAQ:

This section will answer your frequently asked questions and will be updated with the latest answers.

Related help articles on the support website:

• Your Library   • Sort and filter   • Keyboard Shortcuts

Can I view the Your Library page in the main browsing area like before?

• Unfortunately, the old Your Library page in the main browsing area is being discontinued with the release of the new Your Library sidebar. You can adjust the size of the Your Library sidebar to be bigger and you can also enable the "grid view" if you would like to see bigger art covers.

How do I see only my playlists in the sidebar like I used to be able to, I can't drag and move my playlists or folders anymore?

• In the left "Your Library" sidebar, click on the "Playlists" filter at the top.

  
  Then, in the sort options drop down menu select "Custom Order". You will then see your previous playlist order and be able to move your playlists and folders like before.

  
  Your currently chosen filters and sort options will be remembered across restarts of the desktop app.

I don't want to see art cover images in the sidebar, how do I turn them off?

• If you would like to only see text in the Your Library sidebar (no art covers), go to the drop down menu and at the bottom of the menu click on "Compact" under "View as".
  
  

How do I get the album art to expand in the bottom left corner like before? When I try to expand the album art, it opens the Now Playing View sidebar to the right.

• Unfortunately, that is no longer possible. When you expand the album art in the bottom left corner of the app, it will no longer hover over the Your Library sidebar. Instead, the new right sidebar will open up. You can resize the Now Playing View sidebar to your preferred size.
  
  

  You can read more information about this by going here.

How do I play or shuffle play a Playlist Folder now? (I don't see dedicated pages with play / shuffle options anymore)

• Right click on a Playlist Folder and select the "Play" option. To shuffle play, make sure to turn on the shuffle mode first before selecting the "Play" option in the right click menu.

How do I get to my Local Files now?

• In the left "Your Library" sidebar, click on the "Playlists" filter at the top.

  
  Then, in the sort drop down select "Custom Order".
  
  The "Local Files" playlist will be near the top of the list under your pinned items (if any).

Feedback:

Where can I give my feedback about the new Your Library sidebar in the desktop app?

• We welcome your feedback about this change. The best way to share your feedback is to comment here in this thread.

[nikkitoss]

Some of the features are ok, but sub-navigation in the sidebar is so annoying on the desktop. It feels like designers nowadays just design for mobile and ship that for every platform just because mobile is such a big part of the market. 

Please don't do sub-navigations for tree views on the desktop. Or at least don't do it by default, move it to a specific icon button or something.

[ManMachine]

---

@nikkitoss wrote:

Some of the features are ok, but sub-navigation in the sidebar is so annoying on the desktop. It feels like designers nowadays just design for mobile and ship that for every platform just because mobile is such a big part of the market. 

I think it is a big mistake for Spotify to do so as the use cases are entierly different.

On mobile, doing music discovery is really hard because of the limited screen size and general user interface but that's ok because  I just listen to what I already found and put in playlists.

On desktop I expect to for example be able to spend time finding new interesting stuff, get a quick overview of a bands production, and put cool stuff I want to listen to more in playlists for easy access on mobile later.

Also on desktop, Spotify always ran in the background playing nice music while working.   I temporarily switched to streaming with YT because of the whole accesspoint:22 thing...    Discovering a lot of cool progressive bands at the moment btw. 🙂

[caleidoscopic]

I don't listen podcasts on Spotify, but I always have one, two or even three rows of podcasts ahead of all my music preferences or recommendations.

I will never listen to podcasts on Spotify

I think it's great that you want to offer podcasts, but couldn't they be disabled for someone who doesn't want to use this app for it?

[theodosiaprevost]

Yeah the podcasts and audiobooks drive me crazy. It makes the home screen useless because they take up so much of the screen, and it's essentially just ads.

[thomasmills89]

I use macbook 13" M1, at the start of the weekend the update reverted and I had a version that looked like the previous version (which worked perfectly) and I was very happy again. This morning I restart Spotify and see this new update has returned again. wth is going on at spotify.

[BeatKitano]

I'm not really around anymore (I'm just logging in for this specific update) but... I miss the 0.9x days... Who thought window gaps in a windows was cool and making the library part the unimportant part?

I'm sorry spotify but the deal was: you have a huge selection of music and I listen to what I want when I want... I'm not in for the curated experience.

I've been slowly reconstituting my local library and at this point if there's no change revert I'll most likely cancel my subscription in not too long. And judging by the reactions here... the shareholders won't like that change either.

[Puglifiled]

Okay, I think I'm warming up to this update. What's killing me right now is that it seems to be SO MUCH SLOWER at the top folder level(s). I guess I'll need to start deleting a ton of playlists...

Could the development team PLEASE make a recommendation on a maximum number of playlists for the desktop app? I realize this is a loaded question, since it varies widely based on the performance of each user's computer, but still...

[toraqi]

I have been using Spotify for a decade and was never bothered much by the constant chopping and changing of the UI, but this has to be one of the absolute worst changes I can remember. Makes it so much harder to find literally anything saved in your library, be it playlists or albums, when they are all shoved to the side and minimized. The alternative is to either sacrifice half of your screen at all times to just see your library, or to constantly adjust the size of the sidebar. Both are terrible. And to top it off, if you expand the album art it doesn't scale with the sidebar, leaving a lot of space on the right side of it consisting of active clickable library items, but their identity is hidden by the album art. Genuinely baffling how this update was even approved. The previous design was perfectly functionable, please bring it back.

[daturaloca]

This thing is so badly designed that I wonder if Spotify designers even use their app.

This kind of UI patterns are already brilliantly solved in any operating system. Please stick to those UI guidelines instead of messing up with the user interface and frustrate your users. The client are already so bad designed - this thing just doesn't make sense. What is the arrow right? Is different from the left arrow. The name of the folder is invisible. The "by you" and these filters where an horrible idea from start, why you are putting them here :(`

 

[OceanFlan64]

This is absolutely horrible. I'm seriously considering switching back to Apple Music with this. This may be the final straw. If I add music to my library, that means it is the most important music to me. Why should the most important music the user selects be relegated to a tiny portion of the application? It's my most important music that I hand picked into my library. It should be able to take up the entire screen. Browsing "YOUR Library" should be simple, easy, convenient. This is an absolutely atrocious update that spits in the face of Spotify's users.

[MihailY]

Hey everyone,

Thank you for participating in this thread and sharing your feedback about the new Your Library experience on desktop.

Before anything else, we want to assure you that we're reviewing your comments and forwarding each individual user's feedback to the relevant team here at Spotify.

We'd also like to address some of the most common issues we've noticed being mentioned here:

My playlists are out of order after the update (mentioned by @Sylis_ca, @oauo, @sergioro, and others)

• As outlined in Matt's comment here, you should be able to see the original order by selecting Playlists - Custom Order in the filters section of your sidebar. Once this is selected, you can rearrange your playlists in whatever way you like.
• Please note that you can't reorder Liked Songs, Your Episodes or Local Files - they will always be at the top.
• You can "pin" items at the top of the list above these items though - this is currently limited to 4 items.

I'm unable to move playlists/folders out of a folder (pointed out by @RectangleSquare, @Hencraft, @thisisgok, and others)

• To move playlists and folders, they don't have to be sorted by Custom Order, but it may make it easier to understand where it's being moved to.
• You can open a folder using the arrow to the right of the folder. This can make it easier to drag something out into a new location.
• You can also drag a folder/playlist and hover over the sidebar back button/arrow (at top of Library) and this will update the visible structure, allowing you to place it in the desired position.

The Library sidebar has limited width

• We're happy to announce that after sharing your feedback, this was changed to make it wider.

Once again, thank you for sharing your constructive criticism and helping to make Spotify better!

[Chuck2389]

Thanks for the update! A little acknowledgement of being heard by an "official" source can go a long way toward calming everyone I think. It sure would be nice if there was an "ask me anything" post where we could have a conversation with someone at Spotify. I guess that's wishful thinking though.

I tried resizing my sidebar and sure enough, I can fill about 80% of the screen now. Certainly an improvement. Now if we could just get the album art to fit better, I think most people will (begrudgingly) accept this new update over time.

[Steve79]

Allowing the sidebar to be extended to almost full screen is an improvement.. However, if you stick to this layout, there are at least two crucial elements that must be redesigned as soon as possible.

1. Take a careful look at my screenshot and consider... This is insane.

2. When navigating deep within a sub-sub folder, it is inconvenient to have to click multiple times to reach the root.

I'm currently on the fence about whether I should leave Spotify after being a paying customer for about 10 years. I strongly dislike the frequent major redesigns that occur every 2 years. Consider this: Would you enjoy getting into your car and discovering that all the pedals, buttons, and controls have been rearranged? Or, do enjoy walking into your kitchen just to find out that the fridge is now in the bedroom?

Please look at my screenhsot, and forward to your team to analyse!

Thanks!

[Huothar]

I pray for someone to make an alternative desktop app. One that can load my library and it's not horrible.

[wanderful]

aghhh why is spotify desktop becoming more and more like the phone app? the ease of organizing and visualizing on the desktop compared to the phone app is why i use the desktop version, primarily. @spotify, please bring back dragging and rearranging playlists and having the folders drop down to open up while maintaining a visual of the full library list. 

while i'm here, speaking of library organization, @spotify can you please re-create a separate ARTIST COLUMN? hard to believe this obnoxious change hasn't been reverted yet. 

[gazmx]

I find it amusing that Spotify appears to have made Playlists less appealing in this update.

Personally, I've found myself gravitating to Albums and Artists more than before, as their content is easier to find and navigate.

It's amusing because I assumed that Spotify wanted us to use Playlists over Albums, as Playlists allow them to guide us towards artists and tracks that boost their own revenue.

[cordeliaprangley]

Recently my Homepage has shifted to showing podcast recommendations but I do not use spotify to listen to podcasts, mainly music. 

I use premium and want to explore new music not podcasts!

The only thing I see is my recently played but that limits me from exploring new music. 

Using a MacBookPro with the Spotify Application (Premium Account)

[Autoplay_is_Trash]

I think Spotify used to be really good up until their updates this year. For me, even though I save albums I like, there's no real difference between my saved library and music I search up. Most of the albums I like I know what they are, so I just search for what I want and get it. Library is most helpful for new bands I discover that make me go, "Oh that's brilliant, I'll give the rest of the album a listen later," so saving lets me remember who that cool new act was. But if I already know what I want, I can just find it easier in search, usually don't even need to type it in entirely and the algorithm can predict what I mean from my history. However, until quite recently it used to be that clicking a song in search results took you to its album. That's what you'd expect, right? Quick, convenient way to access the music. Now it takes you to a lyrics page? And a page of the band's hits? wth? There's already a lyrics button, you know, and if I wanted to see their hits, I would go to artist's main page. It's totally pointless. To make matters more confusing, clicking on songs in playlists or search goes to lyrics page, but clicking currently playing song in bottom left corner goes to its album. It's not even a consistent ui anymore!

[Rimšiakas]

Seriously, this is the worst and most nonsensical UI update I have ever seen on any program. Revert it now and make a note to never do anything like this again. It's hard to even give constructive criticism because not a single thing about this update has made the experience better and I can't imagine the thought process of designing something like this.

Why the **bleep** would you cram the playlists and the library into a single sidebar. For me it makes sense to have the album list as an image grid and list of playlists as a text list. Sidebars are perfectly fine for text lists. Not so at all for image grids. They should not be in the same place.

Now to go from playlist list to the album grid I have to click an X to leave the current playlist view, scroll to the side to get the albums button, click on it, expand the sidebar and switch from list to grid view. When previously it took two clicks.

Just infuriating. It's been weeks since I got the update and I'm not getting used to it a single bit.

Change it back. Please. This app used to be the best.

[shakeheartbreak]

Spotify, you've **bleep** up big time here.  I'm a long-time user and am now having to actively think about how to navigate my own carefully-curated playlists and still hit the wrong buttons. I've needed to find these posts to even begin to understand how this is has happened and how I can (partially) fix it. Before then I couldn't understand why I couldn't just drag and drop new artists and albums into them without the option being grayed out.

The new UI is overstuffed, overcomplicated and entirely unintuitive.  You seemed pretty happy to spend millions on an anti-vaxxers podcast - is there any left to create a good UI (or possibly, finally, allow Alexa users to have multiple Spotify accounts on their speakers like this thread from literally years ago?)