Many people have a diverse selection of music on their iPhone or iPad. There can be a wide variety of music ranging from Rock, Jazz, Classical, or whatever. All the songs are saved together in the music library. As the variety of music increases, you may want to play only a certain type of music at a given time. An easy way to group songs together is with a playlist.
A playlist is simply a customized list of songs in your music library. You can create multiple playlists to help organize your music. Playlists can be created for a certain type of music, new music, or however you choose to group songs. When listening to a playlist, your device will only play music from that list instead of selecting songs from the entire music library.
Create a Playlist
Playlists can be created directly on your device or within iTunes on your computer. For convenience, this article will focus on creating playlists directly on the iPhone or iPad.
With the Music app open, select the Playlists icon at the bottom of the screen. If the Playlists icon is not visible, select More and then tap Playlists.
Select Add Playlist from the list.
A window will appear for you to enter a name for the new playlist. Type in a name and tap Save. For this example, I will call the new playlist “iAnswerGuy Hits”.
You will then see an alphabetical list of all the songs on your device. Tap the songs to automatically add them to the playlist. When you are finished adding songs, tap Done in the top right corner of the window.
In the main Playlists window, you will now see your newly added playlist.
Listen to a Playlist
Once the playlist has been created, you can listen to the music by tapping the playlist to open it and selecting a song. Playback will continue through the songs in the playlist.
Edit a Playlist
When a playlist is opened on the iPhone, three buttons will appear near the top of the window: Edit, Clear, and Delete.
Clear – removes all songs from the playlist
Delete – removes the playlist from the iPhone
Edit – allows you to add, delete, or rearrange songs in the playlist
- Add songs by tapping the “+” plus button in the top left corner.
- Delete songs by tapping the “-” minus button to the left of the song title. Deleting a song from the playlist does not remove it from the iPhone.
- Rearrange songs in the list by dragging the three gray bars at the right of the song title.
Playlists on the iPad can be edited in a similar manner. When a playlist is opened on the iPad, you will see a button to Add Songs, the “-” minus button to the left of the song title will delete the song, and the gray bars to the right of the song title will rearrange the order of the songs in the playlist. To remove a playlist from an iPad, you must close the playlist by tapping Done, which will return you to the main playlist window. Tap and hold your finger on the playlist icon until an “X” appears in the top left corner of the icon. Tapping the “X” will delete the playlist from the iPad.
Sync to iTunes on Your Computer
Any playlists created on your device will be synced to your computer the next time the device is synced to iTunes.
