it's the little things: Google Play Music ditches swipe-to-delete gesture after user backlash

by Peter Kostadinov / Nov 23, 2017, 8:08 AM

it's the little things: Google Play Music ditches swipe-to-delete gesture after user backlash

A negative Google Play Music review

A few days after a vocal minority of users voiced their complaints in a Reddit thread, a recent update to the Google Play Music app for Android finally resolved one of the more annoying features of the app that 'allowed' users to accidentally delete songs from by swiping.

Apparently, version 8.5.6542-1.Y of Google Play Music does away with the quite annoying gesture-based song deletion, which has also been a cornerstone of the majority of negative reviews for the app in the Play Store.

What makes things worse is that while the action is theoretically reversible, that sacred Undo button only appeared for a tiny fraction of time, making interaction with it pretty unintuitive - you were more likely to miss hitting it than not.

The notorious gesture was probably intended to provide ease of access for those willing to quickly remove songs from playlists and playback queues, but what could have been a beneficial gesture for many turned out to be a major aggravation for many others. No longer will you get rid of the coveted "Africa" by Toto when you're simply swiping through your favorite playlists.

If you have the app installed, the update should be hitting your device anytime now. Play Music users, how do you feel about the change?

Download Google Play Music on the Play Store

source: Reddit

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4 Comments

1. skips

Posts: 477; Member since: Oct 04, 2015

about time. i was so confused by this feature i purchased few songs lately and as i was getting excited to listen to them POF THEY GONE and everyone is wondering why am i so sour all the time

posted on Nov 23, 2017, 12:16 PM 1

2. palmguy

Posts: 979; Member since: Mar 22, 2011

Oh yeah. Ethan Hunt you have to hit undo or your music track will self destruct in 3 seconds. Do you comply, oops too late.

posted on Nov 23, 2017, 3:56 PM 0

3. szymonurai

Posts: 5; Member since: Sep 19, 2017

Oh my gosh. This was causing me so many problems. I've deleted so many songs accidentally. Id try to scroll up and my song would get deleted. Glad complaints we're noticed.

posted on Nov 24, 2017, 3:22 AM 0

4. Gourdman

Posts: 1; Member since: Nov 24, 2017

Swipe to delete often misfired, but it wasn't my top complaint with the app. Worse in my mind is the fact that the app is almost unresponsive on my iPad, to the point that I've stopped using it in favor of Amazon music or YouTube. It also becomes so bloated that I have to clear data once a day. Google Play Music has a fantastic library and the best autogenerated playlists, but its app developers ought to be taken back to the woodshed for a whuppin'.