Please improve the flow for removing tracks from a playlist

Feedback
1

Adding a track to a playlist is relatively straight forward, but what happens if you want to remove one? It’s a high friction, frustrating afair. It’s not possible from the track itself, and instead forces you to navigate to the playlist and find the track.

I have playlists with hundreds of tracks. On the mobile app (which I use most often) I can’t see any search or sort functionality. Are we supposed to just scroll through the tracks until we find the right one?

I’d recommend just copying the way YouTube handles the same flow. They have a menu of the playlists with checkboxes per each playlist, so you can add and remove the video (in their case) from any playlist you want from the same menu, and then hit Save.

This will also help us see what playlists the track is already included in, BTW.

2

If you go to Settings > General, and enable ‘Show playlist links’, this should be easier.

Furthermore, note that a specific release of the track is added to a playlist, and not the release group covering all versions.

3

I don’t know where you are looking, but in the playlist view I see columns to sort by and a filter for each column

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4

I had also noted this in 2021, that you can only delete a song in the playlist itself and not in the album view. I never understood why I can remove entries via “manage tags”, but this functionality is missing in “Add to playlist”. Unfortunately, my wish has not been granted yet.

5

But you can go from the track to the playlist easily

6

That’s true, but the song isn’t even highlighted yet and I have to find it first (via filters, I get it) and then make 2-3 more clicks.

Do you think it makes sense that two similar icons right next to each other behave differently?

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7

Not sure if it matters that they are next to each other - it seems more important that each one has a function that is appropriate for what it does. I mean, there are lots of buttons next to each other that do different things in any non-trivial app.

However, I find the tag list not great either because there are just way too many items with checkboxes. I’d rather have an easy way to go from the track to a proper management page where I can see what things are - in both cases. And yeah, highlighting the track in the playlist after navigating there would be a very helpful improvement, but I still rather go to the proper playlist page where I can see the song in context instead of blindly clicking checkmarks in a list.

8

My experience is: processes should be as uniform as possible. And whether I want to remove a tag or a playlist from a song when I’m in the album view is the same process for me.

Maintaining a complete playlist is a different use case in my eyes.

For me this is not a good usability as it is. Whereby it is certainly not the big thing in itself. But a piece of the puzzle why I personally use roon less and less.

9

Improvements are always possible and welcome, and there are many areas in Roon that need them, but it’s a complex task that certainly won’t be fixed by thinking “this is how I use it and surely everyone else must do the same”

10

Nowhere did I claim that others have to do (or see) it the same way I do. But thank you for implying that I do. It seems you like to transfer your own behaviour to others. For me, this discussion is hereby terminated.

11

Calm down, I didn’t mean to say you did. I was just musing that “this hasn’t been fixed although it’s so easy” is often not so easy when different people want different things

12

Thanks, but this will only help for the desktop app. I’m using the mobile app almost exclusively. And I imagine I’m far from being the only one.

Turned playlist links on, and did not see any difference in the mobile app.

13

I’m looking at the mobile app, which I use most of the time

14

In general, the phone app only provides a small percentage of what Roon really can do. It’s really focused on playback but what does and doesn’t work on the phone can seem rather arbitrary, depending on what one needs. But IMHO the best advice with Roon is not to use the phone app for anything beyond basic stuff - and feature suggestions should mention the platform they are for, because much of what is not possible on the phone is possible on larger devices

15

You’re right that I should have mentioned the platform I’m talking about. Edited my entry to make it clear that the search functionality is missing on the mobile app and possible on the desktop app (albeit somewhat awkwardly).

It is OK to decide what functionality goes to which platform, and I would generally agree that it makes sense not to cram every little feature into the mobile app, which could get cluttered very quickly.

However, I think that if they’re going to allow doing something, they should also allow UNdoing it. And generally speaking, it should be as easy to do as it is to undo.

This is just simple usability. Systems should be designed in a way that prevents errors as much as possible, and allows user to EASILY recover from them if they do occur

Now, if you look at the “Add to playlist” menu in the mobile app, you’ll see that the playlists are just sitting there, one below the other, waiting to be tapped. And as soon as you tap one, you’re done. The track has been added to the playlist, and the whole menu closes.

And what happens if you clicked the wrong playlist by mistake? You now have to:

  1. Navigate to the playlists page
  2. Find the right playlist
  3. Scroll ALL THE WAY to the bottom of the list
  4. Click the three dots icon
  5. Click “remove from playlist”
  6. Click " Yes" in the dialog box

That’s one hell of a “recovery” for a simple mistake. And if you don’t realize your mistake at the moment you’ve made it, it’s even more complicated, because the track may no longer be the last one in the playlist.

I happened to be a UX designer with 17 years of experience. I’ve spent hundreds of hours doing usability tests. These are exactly the kind of scenarios that drive users crazy.

If you’re going to give users the option to do something, you should ALWAYS also think about what they need to do to UNDO it.

Now, it just so happens that there’s an app called YouTube that has a VERY similar use case, where users can add and remove “things” to their playlists. And it just so happens that this app has over a BILLION active users, so there’s a very good chance that many many Room users already know how to add/remove things in YT. And it just so happens that YT’s solution to this use case is about 10 times better than Roon’s.

So even though I’m normally against copying stuff, I think that in this case it just makes way too much sense. The solution, at least in terms of UX design, is (probably literally) under the Roon developers’ noses.

And since the functionality to both add and remove tracks to/from playlists already exists, I imagine (although could be wrong of course) that there’s not a lot of technical difficulty in just changing the user interface.

And this also has some additional benefits, too. It will allow user to see, at a glance, what playlists this track was already added to (something that I don’t think is currently possible unless going to the playlist again). It will also allow adding and removing from several playlists at once, instead of opening the menu again and again as you need to right now.

1 Like
16

Very good point :+1: (as are the others you are making)

17

Actually, if you turn on “Show Playlist Links” in Settings, then when on the album page (since Roon is album centric) you will see all the playlists a track is on.

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The link will take you to the Playlist. What it should do, is take you to the song on the playlist.

18

This is a partial solution.
A. It doesn’t work on the mobile app, which doesn’t show playlist links at all.

B. Even on the desktop app, it’s still a couple of clicks away. If you just added the track to the wrong playlist by mistake, instead of removing it from the exact same panel you used for adding, you now have to find a different link to click, go to the playlist, click the three dots icon, find the “remove from playlist” option and click it.

If you also want to add it to another playlist (perhaps the one you originally meant to) you’ll need to remember to do that BEFORE you remove from this playlist, otherwise the track is gone from it, and you’ll now also have to navigate some more to find it.

C. What happens if the track is in more than one playlist? Which playlist do you navigate to via the link? Or do you have a separate link per each playlist that the track is in? And is so, managing a track over several different lists just becomes even more annoying.

D. I think that technically, it’s harder to implement the solution you suggested, as it requires that clicking on a link will not only navigate to a page, but also scroll that page (which could hold hundreds and even thousands of items) to a specific item (and preferably also highlight the item somehow).

This might introduce performance challenges, especially in long lists and/or weaker hardware.

All of these problems could be avoided by simply adding checkboxes to the already existing playlists panel, and allowing users to add and remove the track to any of the lists at one go.