Albums: Browsing, Playing & Managing
The Album tab in the Library filter row shows every album in your library as a card in a grid. Album cards flip: the front is the artwork, the back is the track list you play from.
[SCREENSHOT: Albums grid — cards showing artwork, title and album artist]
The Album Card
Each card shows:
- Album art (a 🎧 placeholder if the album has no artwork)
- Album title
- Album artist
The grid is two columns on a phone, three columns on medium screens (600pt and wider) and four columns on wide screens such as iPad and Mac Catalyst.
Flipping to the Track List
Tap the card and it flips over to reveal the album’s tracks, numbered and in disc/track order. The list loads a moment after the flip, so you may briefly see “Loading tracks…”.
[SCREENSHOT: Album card flipped to the back — numbered track list]
Tap ← Album Title at the top of the back face to flip the card back to the artwork.
Playing an Album
Tap a track on the back of the card. Homecrate builds a queue from the whole album, jumps to the track you tapped, starts playback and switches to the Now Playing screen. The card flips back to the artwork behind you.
The queue is recorded as an album queue, which is how listening analytics attribute the session — the album you played from, not just the individual tracks. The resulting queue is what you’ll see in Up Next.
Tracks by artists you’ve marked Omit from Recommendations are left out of the album queue and out of the flipped track list. If an album looks like it’s missing songs, check whether that artist is omitted — see Artists.
Album Actions
Long-press an album card to reveal a ring of action chips around the artwork. Only one card can have its chips open at a time — long-pressing another card closes the first.
[SCREENSHOT: Album card long-pressed — Delete, Playlist, Up Next, Reset, Edit and Cancel chips]
| Chip | What it does |
|---|---|
| Delete | Deletes every track in the album and the album entry itself |
| Playlist | Opens the Add to Playlist picker and adds all of the album’s tracks |
| Up Next | Inserts the whole album into the Up Next queue after the current track |
| Reset | Clears listening analytics for this album (play counts, skips, listening time) |
| Edit | Opens the Edit Album Title sheet |
| Cancel | Dismisses the chips without doing anything |
Renaming an Album
Long-press → Edit opens a small sheet with the current title pre-filled and selected.
[SCREENSHOT: Edit Album Title sheet with text field, Cancel and Save]
Type the new title and tap Save (or press return). The rename applies to the album entry, so every track that belongs to it now reports the new album name.
Leaving the field blank, or saving without changing anything, closes the sheet with no change.
Adding an Album to a Playlist
Long-press → Playlist opens the Add to Playlist picker. Pick an existing playlist, or type a name in Create New and tap Create to make one on the spot. Every track on the album is appended to the end of that playlist and you’ll see an “Added to Playlist” confirmation.
You can do the same thing from the album track list on the Now Playing screen — see Album Art & Track List (Flip) — where an Add to Playlist button sits at the top of the flipped face.
Full details on managing the result are in Playlists.
Queueing an Album
Long-press → Up Next inserts the album’s tracks into the Up Next queue immediately after whatever is playing, without interrupting the current track. The chips close as soon as you tap it.
Deleting an Album
Long-press → Delete removes all tracks in the album and then the album row itself. There is no confirmation prompt and no undo, so be deliberate with it.
Deleting a single track from the All Tracks view also cleans up: if that was the album’s last remaining track, the empty album entry is removed too.
Where Albums Come From
Albums aren’t created by hand — they’re a by-product of importing:
- Local import groups tracks using the album and album-artist tags read from your files. See Importing Music.
- Plex import creates one album per unique album title + album artist pair coming back from your server, and stores the Plex artwork URL as the album art. See Importing via Plex.
- Studio mixdowns saved to the library with an album name get (or reuse) an album entry, using the project’s cover image as artwork.
An album only appears in the grid while it still has at least one track that isn’t omitted from recommendations. Delete the last track and the album disappears with it.
Album Artwork
Artwork lives on the album entry, not on individual tracks, which is why editing or deleting an album affects every track under it.
Locally stored art is saved as a path relative to the app’s Documents folder and resolved to a real file location each time it’s displayed — this is what keeps artwork working across app updates. Plex artwork stays as a URL pointing at your server, so it needs the server to be reachable unless the track has been downloaded. See Downloading Tracks for Offline Use.