Ever since launch, there has been a disparity in features between the Windows 10 PC and Mobile versions of the Groove Music app. However, this is set to change soon as Microsoft has pushed out a major update to the app making it 'truly universal' across Windows 10 devices.
Groove Music has been bumped up to version 3.6.1886.0, however, it is important to note that not everyone will receive the update. Microsoft has pointed out that the update will be rolled out to Fast ring users on the PC, but in the case of Windows 10 Mobile, users on the Fast, Slow and Release Preview rings will be able to get hands on the latest version of Groove Music. Alongside various performance improvements and bug fixes, several new features have been added to the application too, detailed below:
- When unplayable tracks appear in Now Playing, we properly gray them out and jump over them without displaying an error
- We prevent you from playing unplayable content (for instance, if you are offline and try to play a streaming album we won't try to play it, we'll immediately tell you it can't be played and why)
- We added extra telemetry to playback errors so that we can continue to improve the app
- We removed the app’s dependencies on Xbox Live which means you don’t need an Xbox Live account to use Groove (and sign-in is much faster and more reliable)!
- It’s easier to tell what’s happening when Groove is sync’ing your collection for the first time.
- You’ll see “Unknown Artists” less often in your collection because the app looks at both song artist and album artist metadata.
- The process we use to show additional metadata to what’s in your local files is 10x faster and gives better results
- The app defaults to Explore for search results if you have a Groove Music Pass and you have don’t have a limited data plan.
- When viewing artists, you can view their work by albums or songs. Try it by selecting “Songs view” when viewing an artist.
- Radio stations can be started from albums and songs – the app will start the radio based on the artist.
- The app now shows your collection size at the top of the collection views.
- On mobile, background art fills the screen so that it’s seen under the system icons at the top.
- You can use ‘Refine’ to filter your collection by source (OneDrive, Pass, Purchased, On this device only).
- If something gets really out of whack in your collection, you can now choose to ‘Reset’ your cloud collection.
- We added jumplist support for collection views organized by release year.
- The ‘hotlinks’ in Album reviews and Artist bios now work on mobile.
- We added a simple lockscreen setting for Continuum. We made lots of styling updates for Continuum too!
While the update brings along a host of new features and improvements that will certainly delight Windows Insiders on both PC and Mobile, the company has cautioned that there are some known bugs in the Groove Music application as well which includes:
- Tapping on the text in the system media transport controls stops playback – just don’t click on the text.
- Music playback error (0xc20200ae) in Groove right after cold start – give a minute and everything should be fine.
- Your file associations may default back to Windows Media Player after this update. You can always reset them by going to Settings/System/Default Apps/Music Player.
- Download of DRM-protected content may fail if your device name contains some non-unicode characters. A workaround is to adjust your device name.
However, Microsoft has stated that it plans to fix these issues in future updates, but has also implored users to continue sending feedback via the Feedback Hub.
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