10 Apple Music Life Hacks Every User Should Know
Apple Music has advantages over other music streaming services in certain categories, including audio quality, music organization, and the absence of ads. While it may not be the best option for all users, it offers a decent user experience (especially on iOS). Here are a few tips, tricks, and hidden tricks to help you get the most out of Apple Music.
Import songs directly from other streaming services into Apple Music.
Switching from one music streaming service to another can be very challenging, not least because you don’t want to lose all the playlists you created during the transition. While there are third-party services that make the transfer easier, Apple Music offers a direct import feature powered by SongShift, which works with Amazon Music, Deezer, Spotify, Tidal, and YouTube Music.
To import your library, go to Settings > Apps > Music and enable Sync Library . Tap Transfer Music from Other Services , select the music app you want to transfer from, and follow the instructions. Apple Music will search its catalog for matches—if it doesn’t find a suitable option, you may need to review and confirm an alternative. You can also do this throughSettings in the Music app on iOS and Android , or through the web app.
Add songs to multiple Apple Music playlists at once.
For a long time, Apple Music lacked the ability to add songs to more than one playlist at a time, meaning if you wanted to save a track to multiple locations, you had to do so separately for each playlist. Now, if you have a device running iOS 26.4, you can select multiple playlists at once, eliminating the previous inconvenience. Open a song, tap the three-dot menu, and select “Add to Playlist.” Tap the multi-select button in the lower-right corner, select the playlists you want to add, and tap the checkmark button in the upper-right corner to confirm. (This is only available on iOS, so on a Mac, you’ll still have to select playlists one at a time.)
Use Playlist Playground to create Apple Music playlists using AI.
If manually selecting songs for your playlists isn’t your thing, you can use artificial intelligence. The Playlist Playground feature in Apple Music on iOS creates playlists based on natural language suggestions, so you can simply ask the AI a command and let it do its thing. It will create a playlist of 25 songs, which you can further customize by adding suggestions or manually adding and rearranging tracks. To do this, enable library syncing in your device’s settings, then open Apple Music, go to Library > New Playlist > Create New Playlist , and enter a suggestion in the search field. Please note that at the time of writing, Playlist Playground is only available in beta for US users on iOS 26.4.
Use Smart Playlists on your Mac to automatically update Apple Music.
Another feature for organizing your music without having to add songs one by one is Smart Playlists , which automatically organize tracks added to your library into playlists based on criteria you specify. You can set as many rules as you like, using a long list of parameters—from genre and artist to sample rate and beats per minute—and the total number of items, and Apple Music will take care of the rest. If you enable Real-Time Updates , your playlists will update as you add, remove, or change library items. A few drawbacks: you can’t edit Smart Playlists manually—you’ll need to change the criteria instead. This feature is also only available on desktop computers, but if library syncing is enabled, you’ll be able to listen to music on other devices. To create a Smart Playlist, open the Music app on your Mac and go to File > New > Smart Playlist .
Turn on haptic feedback in Apple Music for a multi-sensory listening experience.
A small but very useful feature for improving the Apple Music experience on iOS is Music Haptics, an accessibility setting that plays haptic vibrations in time with the music . The vibrations work with any discernible rhythm in supported songs across various genres. Music Haptics was designed for deaf and hard of hearing users and was introduced in iOS 18. To enable it, go to Settings > Accessibility > Music Haptics and toggle the feature on. You can set the vibration intensity (light, medium, or strong) and choose whether the haptic feedback plays throughout the entire song or only for vocals.
Use Apple Music Sing to turn song lyrics into karaoke.
Apple Music includes lyrics for singing along (to view them, open the song playing and tap the “Lyrics” button at the bottom of the screen), but you can go even further with Sing, a karaoke mode that mutes the vocals while highlighting the lyrics bar by bar. Make sure Lyrics is enabled, then tap the microphone icon above the music controls and use the slider to adjust the vocal volume. Apple Music Sing is supported on iPhone, iPad, and Apple TV 4K.
Use (or create) Shortcuts in Apple Music to customize your music listening experience.
The Shortcuts app is one of our top iPhone life hacks , allowing you to automate frequently used tasks or workflows. It can automate everything from automatically opening a music streaming app when you connect Bluetooth headphones to sending messages when you leave or arrive at a specific location. Apple Music users have created and shared ideas for shortcuts to launch specific playlists, shuffle tracks of specific genres, pause playback at the end of a song, and much more. You can also create your own shortcuts in the Shortcuts app.
Create a backup of your Apple Music library in case you cancel your subscription.
If you stop paying for Apple Music, you’ll lose your playlists and downloads, which can’t be restored even if you resubscribe. (Access to your purchased music won’t be affected if you cancel your subscription.) However, there’s a workaround for backing up your library and preserving it for future use, whether on Apple Music or another streaming service. The third-party service TuneMyMusic allows you to export your Apple Music data to a CSV or TXT file, which you can download and save to your device or the cloud (or transfer to another streaming service). You can then use the same service to upload the file back to Apple Music. Reddit users also recommend the app Hezel for backing up your Apple Music library.
Manage your device’s storage space for downloaded music.
You’ll almost certainly want to download music and podcasts to your device so you can listen to them offline rather than streaming. However, if you add thousands of tracks or enable automatic downloads, you can quickly exceed your storage limit. Apple lets you choose how much space you want to allocate for music content, and if this limit is reached, your device will offload songs you haven’t yet listened to to free up space. On your iOS device, go to Settings > Apps > Music > Optimize Storage (under Downloads ). Enable this setting and select a minimum storage amount, which ranges from 8 GB (1,600 songs) to 256 GB (51,200 songs).
Please note that some Reddit users are reporting exceeding their Apple Music storage limit. You may be able to force offload content by selecting “None” for the “Storage” setting. You can also delete downloaded content manually, either one item at a time in the Music app or all at once in Settings > Apps > Music > Downloaded Music .
Track your listening statistics in Apple Music.
Apple Music’s built-inReplay feature tracks basic listening statistics by month and year (similar to Spotify Wrapped), but if you want to track your activity more frequently and in more detail, you’ll need to connect to a third-party service. Last.fm , a popular option for scrobbling, doesn’t integrate as seamlessly with Apple Music as it does with other streaming services—for example, it only tracks music added to your library, so you need to track everything you stream manually. However, there are several other apps with Last.fm integration for iOS, macOS, and the Apple Music web player that will work more seamlessly.