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Feedback, Catalina Music navigation

I recently upgraded my iMac to Catalina OS, and my iTunes music library was safely converted to my new Music library. It consists of about 1200 CD albums with 13,000 tracks and 25 genres. Unfortunately, I’m finding navigating through my library much more difficult in Music compared to iTunes.


The Songs view in iTunes could be configured to display 3 columns at the top (Genres, Artists, Albums), and a large pane at the bottom that listed the tracks for whatever album(s) was/were selected. This configuration made it easy to browse/search efficiently through a large library. In particular, it was easy to scroll through the Albums column because only the album names were listed there, not the associated tracks or artwork. The font size everywhere was small, for efficient display.


In Catalina Music, the Songs view replicates only the bottom pane in iTunes. It does not let me browse through just the album names (or just the genres, or just the artists). The Albums view in Music does display the album names by themselves, but doesn’t let me choose a compact list view (with smaller font) without artwork. The other views (Genres, Artists, Recently Added) display each album name followed by all of its tracks, and they also don’t let me choose a compact list view without artwork. As a result, scrolling through a long list of albums and their tracks in Music is excruciating. I tried using the Filter to find albums, but I much prefer to browse by scrolling, and that was easy in the iTunes Songs view. 


Am I missing something? If not, I’d like to suggest that the Songs view functionality in Music be upgraded to match that in iTunes! Thank you.

iMac Line (2012 and Later)

Posted on Oct 11, 2019 2:45 PM

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Posted on Nov 23, 2019 7:48 AM

I am having the same problem. I have a large library and when I click on an album, I can't go "back" (arrow on top left) without going to the beginning of the library. Makes no sense. And when a song is playing, I used to be able to click "go to album in library"...now it ONLY shows album/song....and again, when I try to go back, it goes to the beginning of the library. I have to scan my entire library again to find the album or albums in that section of my library. Really frustrating. I called Apple support and of course they were completely unaware of the issue and had no way to solve the problem, other than reinstalling Catalina, which did nothing

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8 replies
Question marked as Top-ranking reply

Nov 23, 2019 7:48 AM in response to FL14

I am having the same problem. I have a large library and when I click on an album, I can't go "back" (arrow on top left) without going to the beginning of the library. Makes no sense. And when a song is playing, I used to be able to click "go to album in library"...now it ONLY shows album/song....and again, when I try to go back, it goes to the beginning of the library. I have to scan my entire library again to find the album or albums in that section of my library. Really frustrating. I called Apple support and of course they were completely unaware of the issue and had no way to solve the problem, other than reinstalling Catalina, which did nothing

Nov 23, 2019 4:36 PM in response to phulme1

You're not missing anything, except the Column Browser which Apple removed. I have a similarly large library and without the column browser, navigating through my music is like examining the proverbial elephant with a microscope. Why would Apple remove that simple feature which was already optional?


I've given up hope that there is any chance Apple will restore that feature so now I'm trying to find an alternative. Are there 3rd party apps which can use Apple Music, or is Music the only app that can be used?

Nov 26, 2019 1:59 PM in response to FL14

I’m disappointed with Apple Music. Hard to imagine the rationale behind the loss of many critical features — those you’ve mentioned, along with the ability to size the album thumbnails, it seems to have mangled some of my library with replicas from the cloud, lost album art metadata, loss of ability to control through Remote app on my ipad/iPhone. My faith in Apple has taken a big hit.

Feedback, Catalina Music navigation

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