Please add a "SIDEBAR LIST" view.

The content currently in the sidebar should be ELSEWHERE, maybe along the top of the screen.

The list of your games should be down the side of the screen, easily accessible as the most consistently visible element of the client when viewing your games.

The point of viewing my game library is to VIEW MY GAME LIBRARY. Let that be the core of what I am doing on MY GAME LIBRARY PAGE.

When you click a game, it opens up in the larger main portion of the screen, but the game list REMAINS visible as the ENTIRE sidebar. Adding this important content, one game at a time, into the mix with a bunch of other content it shouldn't have to be mixed in with is not a sensible solution and should not be a required workaround. Forcing me to go back from the game page every time I want to look at the page for a different game is not a sensible solution and should not be a required workaround.

Give users CONSISTENT access to BOTH a full list of games with the sorting options we want AND a page for the current game we're looking at IN THE SAME VIEW.

This is what we used to have, and what many people would much prefer to have, and its absence is notable by the fact that it's always been and will continue to be a superior view option to what we're being given now.

Would be nice to see installed games automatically appear in the sidebar as an option, yeah. Best available at the moment is to manually bookmark the game items which works but isn't automatic.

Perhaps inside a collapsible group would make sense here, seeing as they have the multi-client implementation (though I'm really only interested in my GOG installs appearing there).

Regardless of what may think of Steam's UI its sidebar list is still very handy for regular use (though it includes all games one owns unlike Galaxy 1's behavior).

What's wrong with clicking on "Installed" on the left sidebar to see all your currently installed games?
If you install another game from your library it also automatically appears there.

That is not what I was suggesting, no. And that would not achieve the result I'm wanting, or the result many other users are very obviously wanting with all the complaint topics addressing the issue without providing suggestions for how to fix it other than "revert" (which, to be fair, with the current state of 2.0, SHOULD still be an option for now at least).

We currently have:
-Grid view. The normal 2.0 sidebar with a grid view showing all, or just installed, games using whatever sorting options the user has chosen. When you click a game title, the grid view is replaced by the game page.
-List view. The normal 2.0 sidebar with a list view showing all, or just installed, games using whatever sorting options the user has chosen. When you click a game title, the grid view is repaced by the game page.

What we NEED:
-Sidebar List view. The normal 2.0 sidebar is MOVED to the top of the screen or REMOVED entirely in this view. Instead, the sidebar PERMANENTLY shows your list of games AND ONLY GAMES as the entire sidebar. This list can be sorted and grouped using the usual options, setting it to display only installed games, or all games, as with the other views, except it's the sidebar, NOT the central portion of the client which is being sorted. The central view will now instead show only a game page. On launch, this should preferably be the most recently-viewed game page, or if that's too complex to implement, the most recently-played, or the first game in the (sidebar) list with whatever sorting options the user had selected. Or it could even default to having the grid or list view screen in the central view until you've clicked a game title, although that would be less than ideal, imo. And yes, Steam, and Galaxy 1.2, and several other game launchers, have used this sidebar list style view to great effect in the past. It would be a significant benefit to the new GOG client to support a similar feature.

That said, at least Galaxy 2.0 isn't an active health risk for many users like Steam's new client has been for the past 6 months (in spite of Valve knowing about it for basically that entire time). So I guess there's that much to be grateful for here...

This is absolutely true. I have the same problem as the OP with G2.0.
I don't know who made the design choice, but wonder if he REALLY used the launcher. I mean to check a game you have to click it and when you go back then all your previous sorting options are gone ... Who designs something like this if he even USES his own work?

Ummmm... the fact that they don't appear in the sidebar?

But it's just, like, one additional click to get the old view. I can't see whats too wrong with it.
I haven't used it myself yet but as far as I know if you use the new community integrations like Steam or Uplay they each get a new entry on the left sidebar for filtering the games. If users are using many such integrations the left sidebar was probably the only space to fit them in. How would you have arranged all that on top of the window.

All I'm saying is that I can understand the design decision and don't feel impaired by clicking on "Installed".
However, this does not change the fact that I also miss features like sorting by purchase date or the tags that did not get imported to the new client.

It's not as straightforward. If I want to use the client as a manager to save time (instead of just launching via Windows shortcuts) I'd prefer a more easily accessed list of installed games. As I said, it's currently possible by manually bookmarking them but not ideal. I was talking about a compromise between the prior Galaxy UI and the new one, seeing as how the Galaxy team has traditionally been slow to respond to requests it seems a more feasible suggestion.

One can of course ask for anything but if you've noticed the forum or issue tracker requests it can take a lot of time and enough posts to see movement on features or issues, if any.

I'd also recommend submitting feature requests and any bugs via their Mantis tracker, since it's what they use to track progress on things.

And I'm pointing out that your compromise would not be acceptable for myself or many other users. There is no good reason to rely on a compromise on core UI functionality when it's entirely reasonable to expect better. I am happy with Galaxy 2.0 AS A BETA BUILD of a new interface. But it is not ready for full release yet, should not have been pushed onto everyone yet, and does not meet basic standards for launch yet. This is one element of why it's not ready, and should really have been fixed before it was pushed live onto all users.

Having the option to add installed games, and ONLY installed games, into the sidebar without being able to move the other content that's currently in the sidebar is not an acceptable solution. If it was, then being able to manually add every game into the sidebar one by one and still not being able to remove the unwanted non-game content from the sidebar would be an acceptable solution. These are not suitable and if it existed, it would be a minor improvement that is a decent temporary workaround AT BEST, not a permanent solution for the absence of an actually user-friendly UI view setting.

I only mentioned installed games since I'd forgotten 1.2 allowed showing all purchased games in the sidebar, that's all. I've only ever shown installed games in my sidebar setup.

One has to consider how games from other services would appear in such an exclusive, games-only sidebar as well. Would each service be within its own collapsible grouping or just sit among the rest of the games? Would they be denoted by store icons? Things to consider with the new focus on being a quasi multi-client.

The obvious answer is:
The same way the show in list view.

If you set up grouping to separate them, it separates them. If you don't, it doesn't.