10 Hacks Every Apple Music User Should Know

Apple Music has an edge among music streaming services in specific categories, including sound quality, music organization, and lack of ads. While it may not be the best option out there for all users, it offers a solid experience (especially if you're on iOS). Here are the tips, tricks, and hidden hacks to get the most out of Apple Music.

Import songs directly from other streaming services to Apple Music

Moving from one music streaming service to another can be a huge hassle, not least because you won't want to lose all the playlists you've curated in the transition. There are third-party services that facilitate transfers, but Apple Music has a direct import feature powered by SongShift that works with Amazon Music, Deezer, Spotify, Tidal, and YouTube Music.

To import your library, go to Settings > Apps > Music and toggle Sync Library on. Tap Transfer Music from Other Services, select the music app you want to transfer from, and follow the prompts. Apple Music will look for matches in its catalog—if it can't find one, you may need to review and approve an alternate version. You can also do this through Settings in the Music app on iOS and Android or via the web app.

Add songs to multiple playlists Apple Music at once

Apple Music has long lacked the ability to add songs to more than one playlist at a time, meaning that if you had a track you wanted to save in multiple places, you had to go through that process separately for each playlist. If you have a device running iOS 26.4, you can now select multiple playlists at once, eliminating the previous hassle. Open the song, tap the three dot menu, and select Add to Playlist. Tap the multi-select button in the bottom-right corner, select the playlists you want included, and tap the check button in the top-right corner to confirm. (This is iOS only, so you still have to select playlists one by one on Mac.)

Use "Playlist Playground" to generate Apple Music playlists with AI

If you don't like hand-picking songs for your playlists, you can employ AI to do it for you. Apple Music's "Playlist Playground" feature on iOS generates playlists from natural language prompts, so you can simply give AI a vibe and let it do its thing. It'll create a playlist with 25 songs, which you can further customize with additional prompts or manually add and reorder tracks. Sync Library must be enabled in your device Settings, then open Apple Music, go to Library > New Playlist > Create New Playlist, and enter your prompt in the search field. Note that at the time of writing, Playlist Playground is available in beta only for U.S. users on iOS 26.4.

Use Smart Playlists on Mac for automatic updates in Apple Music

Another feature for curating music without having to add songs one at a time is Smart Playlists, which automatically organizes tracks added to your library into playlists based on criteria you specify. You can set as many rules as you'd like using a long list of parameters—everything from genre and artist to sample rate and beats per minute—and a total number of items, and Apple Music will take care of the rest. If you enable Live updating, playlists will update as library items are added, removed, or changed. A few downsides: You can't manually edit Smart Playlists—instead, you have to change the criteria. This feature is also desktop-only, but if library sync is on, you should be able to listen on other devices. To create a Smart Playlist, open the Music app on your Mac and go to File > New > Smart Playlist.

Enable haptics in Apple Music for multi-sensory listening

A small but mighty feature for enhancing your Apple Music experience on iOS is Music Haptics, an accessibility setting that plays haptic vibrations to the beat of what you're listening to. Vibrations work with any discernible beat on supported songs across music genres. Music Haptics was designed for deaf and hard-of-hearing users and introduced with iOS 18. To enable, go to Settings > Accessibility > Music Haptics and toggle the feature on. You can set the vibration intensity (light, medium, or strong) and select whether to play haptics for the entire song or just vocals.

Use Apple Music Sing to turn song lyrics into karaoke

Apple Music has lyrics for singing along with your favorite music (to view, open the song that's playing and tap the Lyrics button at the bottom of the screen), but you can take it a step further with Sing, a karaoke mode that turns down the vocals while highlighting beat-by-beat lyrics. Ensure lyrics are on, then tap the mic icon above the music controls and use the slider to adjust the volume for vocals. Apple Music Sing is supported on iPhone, iPad, and Apple TV 4K.

Use (or create) Shortcuts in Apple Music to curate your listening experience

Shortcuts is one of our top iPhone hacks for automating tasks or workflows you use frequently. You can do everything from opening a music streaming app automatically when you connect to your Bluetooth headphones to automating messages when you leave from or arrive to a specific location. Apple Music users have created and shared ideas for shortcuts for launching specific playlists, shuffling through specific genres, pausing playback at the end of a song, and more. You can also create your own in the Shortcuts app.

Back up your Apple Music library in case you cancel

In the event you stop paying for Apple Music, you'll lose your playlists and downloads, which can't be restored even if you resubscribe. (Access to purchased music isn't affected if you cancel.) However, there is a workaround to back up your library and save it for later, whether in Apple Music or another streaming service. Third-party service TuneMyMusic lets you export from Apple Music to a CSV or TXT file, which you can download and store on your device or in the cloud (or transfer to a different streaming platform). You can then use the same service to upload the file back to Apple Music. Reddit users also endorse the Hezel app for Apple Music library backups.

Manage your device's storage space for downloaded music

You will almost certainly want to download music and podcasts to your device so you can listen offline instead of streaming, but if you add thousands of tracks or have automatic downloads enabled, you may quickly hit the limits of your storage space. Apple lets you choose how much storage you want to dedicate to Music content, and if that limit is reached, your device will offload songs you haven't listened to in order to make space. On your iOS device, go to Settings > Apps > Music > Optimize Storage (under Downloads). Toggle the setting on and select the minimum storage amount, which ranges from 8 GB (1,600 songs) to 256 GB (51,200 songs).

Note that some Reddit users have reported that Apple Music has gone over their set storage limit. You may be able to force offloading by choosing "None" for storage space. You can also remove downloaded content manually, either by item within the Music app or en masse under Settings > Apps > Music > Downloaded Music.

Track your Apple Music listening stats

Apple Music's native Replay feature tracks basic listening stats broken down by month and by year (similar to Spotify Wrapped), but if you want to keep tabs on your activity in a more frequent and detailed way, you'll need to connect to a third-party service. Last.fm, a popular option for "scrobbling," doesn't play as nice with Apple Music on its own as with other streaming services—for example, it only tracks music added to your library, so anything that's streamed has to be scrobbled manually. However, there are a few other apps with Last.fm integrations for iOS, macOS, and the Apple Music web player that will scrobble more seamlessly.