Add to Up Next missing in iTunes 12.5.1.21

This is really confusing and an absolute pain to manage. The Play Next and Play Later menu options are not always available and it's not clear why. After playing one song or album you then have to add another to the up next list at which point it will only go to the top of the list. At which point the Play Next and Play Later menu options tend to reappear allowing the top of the list to be reordered. iTunes is a really poor interface.

Seriously? Drag and drop it? That's the answer?

I have been kicking myself figuring out how to do this stupid, basic, feature. To drop it from the context menu is a colossal failure of your UX and QA department.

I swear iTunes makes me want to poke a stick in my eye sometimes. Time to go compare Google play and Spotify

Well I can’t seem to even get the “play next” option to even appear with the most recent update... so if your listening Apple please let us use it, like it was, I had absolutely no problem with how it worked before you removed the option from both the iPhone and iTunes....

Add a song or an album to the list: Drag the item to the top center of the iTunes window until a blue border appears.

While Apple has provided a work around to this missing feature, adding music to the queue while you are looking at the music without having to take extra steps to drag the music files up to the top of the iTunes interface and then returning to where you were is not necessarily the best solution.

If the drop and drag option were available in addition to the "Add to Up Next" that would have been a better option, and accomplished what appears to be Apple's goal of moving to a completely touch compatible interface across all platforms.

Sometime making everything drop and drag the only solution does not make it better, it just makes it harder.

Please fix.

Using my PC version of iTunes, I have tried the other suggestions in this thread, to no avail. Clicking "Play Next" for an album, or dragging the album to the top of the screen, both added the album to the top of the queue, not the bottom.

And, after adding it to the top of the queue, clicking "Play Later" from the augmented context menu that becomes available, simply added the album a second time to the queue, above the songs that were originally listed, instead of below them.

On my PC, the only solution that I found, clunky as it is, is to click "Play Next" on an album (or drag it to the top center of the window), and then, once that step has added the album to the top of the queue, instead of the bottom where I want it to be, I go into the queue and hold Shft-Ctrl, then select the top and bottom songs of the album so as to select all its tracks, then drag and drop the tracks onto the bottom of the queue, thereby moving them all down. It's a pain but I found nothing else that works. The obvious fix would be putting the "Play Later" option (back?) into the original context menu, and (obviously) making it work the way it should.

I have the identical problem. The old 'Add to Up Next' is gone, and 'Play Next' is the only option to modify the order in the queue. I have Apple Music, and tried to add one of their albums to the end of the Up Next queue ... and it will only add to the top of the queue, and not at the bottom. I cant find anything that works. ?

Any advice?? Dr Bernie

Underneath Play Next is Play Later. Does exactly the same as Add to Up Next.

More precisely it seems Play Later only appears after you have used Play Next.

Not exactly the same as "if the queue contains songs".

Try this to check it:

- empty the queue (tap Clear)

- point an album and click the play icon that surfaces at its center

- the album starts playing

- the queue now contains songs, YET, Play Later still does not show in menus

I think Apple burden themselves with unnecessary constraints here. The availability of Play Later does NOT need to depend on whether you've done Play Next before or not, whether the queue is empty or not. It should just mean "enqueue this and don't ask why". Maybe that's how it should be named, Enqueue.

This play next, play later business is all good and well. I can deal with that. But where exactly is the queue. I can't figure out how to find where the list of items I put in my queue can be found now. Why is Apple changing things that already working, making so much frustration for its customers?

There's a button right next to the status window

it looks like three lines with bullet points

It displays your queue (up next) / history / lyrics

While it would be nice if Play Later (and I preferred the old terminology of Add to Up Next, myself) appeared whenever there were items in the queue, if Play Later is missing, there is a simple "solution". Select a single track (it doesn't matter what track it is) and select it to Play Next. Then, select the album you want, and click Play Later to add the album to the bottom of the queue, and then delete the one track from the top of the queue. No need to shift-click or drag.

Play Later does not appear even if there are songs in the queue.