Mac Format - UK (2020-04)

Personalise

your playlist

with a

description

and custom

album artwork

52 | MACFORMAT | APRIL 2020 macformat.com @macformat

Group your tunes in iOS

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

IT WILL TAKE

10 minutes

YOU WILL LEARN

How to create

playlists on your

iPhone or iPad

YOU’LL NEED

Apple Music

subscription; Music

app; iPhone or iPad

with iOS 13/iPadOS

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.

Automatic or manual

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 subcription. 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 £21.99/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 enable you to populate

a list of favourite 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.

Srivats Lakshman

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.