Microsoft has just rolled out a massive update to the Groove Music app for Windows 10 Mobile, adding a plethora of fixes and improvements, as well as support for Continuum. Here’s a breakdown of what’s new in this update.
- Songs and albums in your collection now sort by the date you’ve added them by default. You can still switch to sorting alphabetically (or by artist in the case of albums).
- You can now swipe from the left to bring up the hamburger menu. It makes it easier to use the app with a single hand!
- Press-hold to re-order tracks within a playlist.
- Previously only plays from your collection would appear in Recent Plays – now it also includes things you’ve played directly from Explore.[Groove Music Pass Required]
- We now show download progress in the title bar, and also provide an entry point to the download manager from within the left nav menu. This aligns with what the Movies & TV app includes.
- Tell Cortana to ‘Play Electronic’ and she will shuffle all your electronic music for you. [where Cortana is supported]
- In the event that, during an upgrade, we need to rebuild the database (this should be very infrequent), we’ll show a little explanatory dialog explaining what’s happening.
- If we detected songs which are duplicated between OneDrive and Music Pass we pop a notification asking if you’d like us to automatically remove them.
- We reverted the recent change to the font size of the song title in Now Playing. It’s smaller now.
The following new features were added for Continuum:
- We’ve updated the layout of the artist gallery to have proper spacing, alignment and remove the color-matched square backgrounds.
- We’ve added the Explore modules to the Artist Details page at larger resolutions. [Groove Music Pass Required]
- We’ve updated the layout of Explore at higher resolutions to look correct, and also respond better to scroll wheel. The modules also have a flipper control to allow scrolling within the page. [Groove Music Pass Required]
- Updates to the Search results page layouts to look good at higher resolutions.
- Updates to the layout of the Add to menu at higher resolutions.
- Updates to the layout of the Recent Plays gallery at higher resolutions.
Microsoft is actively listening to consumer feedback, and this huge update is obviously welcomed! If you are a Groove Music user, give Microsoft feedback via the Feedback app, in-store reviews, and even on Twitter! You can snag the updated app from the download link below.
