iTunes 12.5: Apple Finally Gets Rid of Horrid “Custom Colors” for Albums and Playlists
“Someone at Apple thought it would be a good idea, a few years ago, to have iTunes display content in certain views using colors extracted from album artwork. Sometimes this is quite attractive. But sometimes, this borders on torture.”
That’s what I wrote in June, showing how ugly iTunes can be when using the “custom colors for open albums, movies, etc.” setting. As I said at the time:
But how did Apple’s designers not see displays like the one above and tweak the algorithm so they simply couldn’t happen? Anytime the dominant color of an album’s artwork is dark, you get these horrid, unreadable contrasts.
Well, Apple is changing this in iTunes 12.5. They’re eliminating this feature entirely. While there is currently an option to turn it off, I suspect that most people don’t bother to look for the setting, or don’t know it exists. And they then end up with a display that is simply unreadable.
Here’s how it looks now, using the custom colors setting; this is the My New Music Mix playlist, which has an icon in an unfortunate shade of pink:
And here’s how it looks in iTunes 12.5:
Note that this change is also reflected in the iOS 10 Music app.
Cleaning this up is a no-brainer. While some colors look good with the current algorithm, most don’t. I’m glad Apple has gotten rid of this.
Apple has developed the bad habit of change for the sake of change. Once they get an app working well, they change it for no reason known to the user. No one knows why.
You may be happy, but the color match feature has been my favorite design element of the otherwise bland flavorless iTunes design. How great is it that my media app is now going to revert to a glaring white spreadsheet look again!
I do agree with you, Hal. I think that you should have the option to disable the feature if it isn’t for you, NOT just get rid of it for the people who do like it. That way, everyone can be happy. I for one like it as well.
Same for me here. I’m a personalization and customisation freak and i loved that feature. I actually ripped my CD albums on iTunes out of curiosity to see what would be the color match for a particular CD cover. Now its bland and boring =/
Same here.. Bland white and boring now. BLAH! Give us the option to enable or disable it please?
Same here. I hate the new white boring design. Bad move from apple, they could at least introduce this like a default off setting, so people like it could have turned it on.
For once, I don’t agree with Kirk. I almost never saw a visibility issue, but I DID enjoy the color selections – much better than my design sense. Too bad it has been removed.
One step forward two steps back, thanks Apple ,please fix it again
Yeah, the “horrid” color match feature was way better than the updated design. So disappointed. Sorry Kirk, you’re dead wrong on this. Apple blows it once again.
Agreed. This was the only interesting design element of the previous version. I enjoyed watching colors change based on the item selected. I’m going snow-blind now. I also wish they’d bring back the window that showed song artwork regardless of whether it’s being played currently. As someone who grew up with record albums, the music has always been tied to a visual element for me. This current look just makes me want to look away.
iTunes 12.5 has the Ugliest. Design. Ever. What year is this, 1955? The interface is so white I think I might be permanently blinded by it.
I absolutely agree with you, Hal. Apple keep removing every drop of life that’s left in its software. And they don’t give you an option to keep things the way you want. It’s funny though, that they never mention these changes in the release notes. If they think so many people are gonna hate the idea and therefore, not update, then why implement these ridiculous changes in the first place?
Yeah I loved it and now I have a white background along with lines in between song titles.
Of all the abominations of the current (and iOS 10) iterations of Music,THIS is your big complaint?!? There are a lot of things that make Music unusable for me, but this color scheme business is WAY down the list.
Thank goodness for apps like Cesium and Ecoute so I don’t have to deal with the horrific Apple Music app. For a company who made their bones with the iPod and music, it’s unbelievable to me that Apple would produce an embarrassment of an app like that. It borders on being physically painful to use.
My article is about iTunes, but the iOS Music app does have the same change. So what “abominations” do you see in the Music app?
How about the hideous misalignment when looking at TV shows in Genre mode? Title and season are center-aligned with each other while the artwork marches to a different drummer.
And after all this time, why isn’t there a way to display episode descriptions the way movies does it? (Same complaint for audiobooks).
On the plus side, maybe they’ll restore CoverPlay.
I can’t believe that everyone doesn’t complain about gray text on a white background. It drives me nuts (and blind)!
Agree, like a printer running out of ink. Another change for the sake of change.
Ugh! Snowblind is the new color.
if I sync my phone with the new itunes does it also get rid of the colours there?
Also is there a way to remove or somehow get back the old itunes because I realllyyyyyyyyyy like the custom colours option
Why Apple!? I miss the color options :(
Me too :(
Agreed. There’s gotta be a way to get this color option back. My iTunes lookw horribly boring now. :(
It may have produced some questionable results, but overall I liked it. Enough to miss it, anyway. I liked having my playlist of unnerving instrumental music be a dark blue, not blast-your-eyeballs-out white. I’d like a way to switch it on/off.
Plus, I don’t even remember updating… does it just do it automatically unless it’s a full number update?
Do you have automatic updates on in the App Store preferences?
It should be an option, clearly, as I totally disagree with your viewpoint.
The colors that the algorithm chose failed sometimes, but most times I loved how it looked, and it was a feature that differentiated it from all other library software on the market.
(I’m an artist myself by the way.)
Another thing about the new iTunes I hate are the bright blue spots that somehow have replaced the star ratings in the movie cover display. At least the spots should have the option of being grey, so they don’t clash with the colors of the movie posters, and we should be able to see the star rating we allocate movies.
I think I am going to take the trouble of downgrading. I’ll give a week, and see if I still hate the new version as such as I do now. I’m pretty sure that I will though.
Well, I’m NOT happy about it. Most of my Playlists are operas I’ve imported from CDs. Because of this, no album artwork comes along (I download artwork from the Internet and apply it to the blank album cover box), so in front of each number is the ghastly blue and pink music note icon! I thought those backgrounds were cool. Why can’t I have the choice?
I want the option to put the colors back on. Current lifeless white is depressing and an eyesore. Let me get my colors back or at least let me downgrade with the possibility to use my itunes library file (since if I currently downgrade I can’t use said file and have to tend once more to my 200go of music, and trust me auto artwork maybe gets it right 40 percent of the time tops).
So, I’m frustrated with the new design and although I don’t normally post sh1t to internet forums, I decided to post the following to the itunes for Windows forum at Apple. My first and only post to their site. It was online for a full 5 minutes with one reply. And then they took it down and sent me a message that it was deemed “unconstructive”. Really? Did I really cross the line as a long time user of Apple products just for having a slightly critical opinion? Guess they just don’t want to hear it. Here is the post:
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Thanks for participating in the Apple Support Communities.
We’ve removed your post Overdoing the clean white thing because it contained either product feedback or feature requests that was not constructive.
To read our terms and conditions for using the Communities site, see this page: Apple Support Communities – Terms of Use
We hope you’ll keep using our Support Communities. You can find more information about participating here: Apple Support Communities – Tutorials
If you have comments about any of our products, we welcome your feedback: Apple – Feedback
We’ve included a copy of your original post below.
Thanks,
Apple Support Communities Staff
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I think you are overdoing the “clean white” look with this one. I used to really enjoy the way that albums and playlists changed background color to match the album art. That was really sweet. Now everything is plain white boringness like the rubber walls in an insane asylum. Also the artwork and fonts are way too big (and blurry too on high dpi screens – i.e. almost all windows computers these days including surface). In addition, the fonts and sizes are inconsistent between different screens in the app, so not only does the new look sacrifice screen space in favor of large, blurry text and pictures, the inconsistency makes the overall experience haphazard as though someone threw together the GUI without thought. It’s fuggly.
Oh, and all my artist images are microphones now. It looks like apple is attempting to ensure that the artist is a picture of a “person” rather than an album cover. Why so literal? Even if I had all artist pics instead of 75% microphones, the tiny pictures of people and bands that display on my phone all with similar white or black backgrounds are pretty useless as a navigational aid. And super boring visually.
I do think that overall, the navigation, browsing and recommendations are improved. And lyrics are pretty cool.
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This is a send-only account. Replies received at this address are automatically deleted.
Those colors were the only *good* thing about this program…
How about #wantthemback!
I missed it right away. Immediately after opening iTunes for the first time after the update. Then I found this thread.
“While there is currently an option to turn it off,” Where is this option? Actually, I want to turn it on.
When I wrote that article, iTunes 12.5 was in beta, and this option existing in iTunes 12.4. Now that 12.5 is out, that option is no longer available.
Why do they do this bring it back white looks outdated like a half done spreadsheet plus it’s too bright. For whinging people there was an option if you didn’t like colours I suppose the cry babies rule not very democratic. Bad move apple think I will look for a more modernised app for music.
Change for the sake of change, an Apple bad habit.
Sucks to getting rid of features that users actually use. I was using this feature. At least give us an option to enable it and have it disabled by default. Sucks
Having Apple clean it up wasn’t a no brainer, what was a no brainer is choosing a particular artwork for said playlist yourself if you didn’t like the one it chose automatically. Now we have sterile, mundane, uninspiring white boringness because numerous people spent the time to moan at Apple and write blog posts rather than spend 20 seconds changing a setting to which they had been given direct control over.
Way to go community! Way to go…
the new design is worse …. the cyan needs to go away…
With the new interface I feel like it’s 2005 all over again!
Why does Apple seem to have this habit of introducing new interface features only to remove them once people start getting attached to them?
Well, you know, that’s just like, your opinion man…