Group your tunes in iOS

Create a playlist of your favorite music for that road trip or party

REQUIRES

Apple Music subscription; Music app; iPhone or iPad with iOS 13/iPadOS

YOU WILL LEARN

How to create playlists on your iPhone or iPad

IT WILL TAKE

10 minutes

PLAYLISTS ARE A great way to group your vast music collection. They enable you to enjoy a select number of songs, without being interrupted by other tunes you might not want to hear. Whether it’s a road trip with family, house party with friends or just some tunes to keep you company, a playlist is a handy feature to have.

You can create personal playlists in one of three ways: On your Mac using the Music app in Catalina (or iTunes if you’re on Mojave or older); on your iPhone, iPad, or iPod touch using the New Playlist option in iOS’s Music app; and anywhere you can access Apple Music if you have a subscription. Playlists created on Apple Music are automatically available across all your devices. However other playlists will either need to be manually transferred (from Mac to iPhone, say) or you’ll need to pay $24.99/year for an iTunes Match subscription, which also makes your music and playlists available via the cloud.

One more thing: On Mac, you can create Smart Playlists. These let you populate a list of favorite tunes automatically using rules–based criteria; on iOS you can only add to playlists manually, making it a much more long–winded process.

Hopefully iOS 14 will bring smart playlists to iOS too. Don’t hold your breath, though.

PERSONALIZE YOUR PLAYLIST WITH A DESCRIPTION AND CUSTOM ALBUM ARTWORK

You can add up to 100,000 songs to a single playlist, but you might be better off creating a number of smaller sets for different occasions and moods.