5 Ways I Organize My Favorite Songs and Playlists in Apple Music

Apple Music is the only subscription that I have kept active for a decade or more. To say that I was happy to see Apple adding improved organizational tools after ten years is an understatement.

Here’s how I use these tools to try to maintain a semblance of command.

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I continue a main “feed” reading list in progress

This is something I did since the day I started using the service, and it was something I did when Spotify (and later RDIO) was my choice listening platform. I mainly listen to albums, because I am an old man who bought them and the old habits die hard.

With a service like Apple Music, I am constantly trying to discover new things to listen to. In addition to a current rotation of new versions, discovered and old favorites that I mainly choose in the “recently added” section of my library, I also like to keep an executed playlist which is documenting what I listen to at the moment.

I called it “randomness”, but as I had a problem at the start of Apple music which made me lose a lot of my library, the name “Random Backup” remained instead. It is an Instagram flow of what I’m listening to right now, like a newspaper but for my musical tastes.

Almost everything goes, almost any genre. George Harrison And MJ Lenderman Sit comfortably next to Annihilator And Death grips. It is not really a playlist that you would like to listen to because it lacks cohesion; It is no longer a navigation tool. He remains in order, because this is the only way things make sense.

Pin artists, albums and reading lists on the original screen

With the arrival of iOS 26, Apple facilitates the personalization of Apple music with pinned items. You can finally pin artists, albums and reading lists on the screen of your library, which facilitates the end of where you are going. The way you use it depends strongly on how you consume music.

You can pin up to six elements at a time. Pinting the items can be a little delicate. The easiest way to do so is to go to the library tab and choose between reading lists, artists and albums. You can do it either by pressing and holding and then choosing “PIN” or using the Ellipsis button “…” at the top of the page while displaying the item you want to pin.

Pinting the “feed” reading list permanently above all allows me to move easily, but I am not the kind of person who listens exclusively to an artist. I constantly bounce around the genres, depending on the mood. The ambient music helps me to concentrate at work, but when I am in the gymnasium, I want something more energetic for me psychology.

This is why I started to turn these pins to turn according to what I listen to today. Unless you are a great fan of an artist or you are very fooled on certain reading lists, you should probably do the same. You can delete an article pinned by pressing it for a long time and choosing “a no”.

Organize the reading lists in the files

It is also new for iOS 26 the capacity (finally!) Organize the reading lists in files. This feature has long been expected on the iPhone, especially if you have used the service for as long as I do. My massive list of disorganized reading lists has become much easier to sail since Apple has made the change.

To do this, go to your library and press the “+” Plus button, then choose “Create a new folder” from the list. Give your file a name and confirm it to create it. You can also nest the files; Just create a new file while you are in an existing file. To move things, go to the folder, then press the ellipsis “…” and choose “Move the folder”.

The real work is to decide to organize everything. Do you organize everything by genre, tempo or even era? Perhaps you prefer to organize your reading lists by activity, such as music for when you are active, music to study and work, or music to create a particular mood.

Personally, I go with a minimum structure that maintains my main reading lists in the “Root” folder (that is to say not at all in a file) so that they are the most accessible. From there, I put all the organized reading lists of Apple in their own file, created another file for the reading lists of the Apple Music community that I have downloaded, and another file for the reading lists to which I subscribed to friends.

Don’t forget your favorite songs

In your Apple Music library, you will find a reading list entitled “Favorite Songs” which contains all the songs you have played. You can add songs to this by pressing the “Star” button on the Now Playing screen. It is a practical way to keep track of your favorite songs of all time while simultaneously improving your musical recommendations.

Not only do you keep a recording of individual tracks, but you also train Apple Music to better understand what you like. This results in more relevant recommendations for “choice for you” on your home screen, but also affects dynamic reading lists such as favorites and the new musical mix. Personalized stations like Discovery and the station that Apple Music also suits you.

In addition to the songs, you can also the favorite artists (by pressing the star on an artist page at the top of the screen) and publish like albums or reading lists (under the “…” ellipsis button while visualizing an album.

Create reading lists to highlight low game accounts

Finally, there are smart reading lists. These do not officially exist on iOS, but I managed to build a bypass solution using shortcuts which allows me to fill out a reading list based on personalized criteria.

Alternatively, you can do this very easily on a Mac with the musical application (or iTunes on Windows) by launching the application, by selecting File> New> Playlist Smart and by creating a set of rules by which you want to sort your music collection. Although the smart reading lists cannot be officially created on an iPhone, they will synchronize with the iPhone if you create them first on a computer (the only exception is when the playlist uses another reading list in its rules).

I am a big fan of the use of these rules to highlight songs that I have never played or that I have only played several times, but the sky is the limit in terms of what you can do. To do this on an iPhone, you will need to use the shortcut application to generate a new reading list each time. Alternatively, you can avoid generating a reading list and adding certain criteria to your game instead.

Let’s go through the process of creating a random choice of music with low game which is added to its own new reading list each time.

First, launch the shortcuts on your iPhone and press the “+” Plus icon to create a new one. The first thing we have to do is create the playlist we fill up. You can do this by looking for the action “Create a reading list” and adding it to the workflow. Press the name field and give it a relevant name. While I create a low game counting list, I went for “LPC” followed by the “current date” variable to make it unique each time.

Look for now and add the Music Find action to your workflow. For my playlist, I changed “sorting by” to “play the number” and “order” for “first of all”. I also activated the “limit” rocking and used controls to limit the selection to 25 elements. You can go higher or lower or use a different set of criteria depending on the reading list you are trying to create.

Look for now and add the “Add to the playlist” action to your workflow. Make sure that “music” is selected as a first variable. Press the second variable and choose the variable “Ask each time” from the list. Unfortunately, it is not possible to add your selection of songs to the playlist that we created in the first step with the current shortcuts actions.

Now press the name of your reading list at the top of the screen, give it an appropriate name and change the icon if you wish. Finally, you can get out of the workflow publisher and press the newly created shortcut to execute it. There will be a slight break because Apple Music collects your list of songs, so you will see a context that asks you to select the playlist you have created. These appear in alphabetical order, with the exact horoding (take a look at the clock in the area to make sure you have the right one).

Whenever you run this shortcut, you will create a reading list and recover a random number of songs with a small number of parts. If you want to avoid creating a reading list, you can omit the first step and choose the action “Add to the next reading” instead to queue a selection of songs instead.

You can refine more this by adding filters to the action “Find Music”, which allows you to specify a genre, an artist, a duration, etc. You can also increase the limit to 50, 100 or more if you want a much larger reading list.

Do you get the best side of your Apple Music subscription? Make sure you consult the best Apple Music features you should use. You can also configure sharing of the Apple family so that you can share your subscription in streaming with others, or even investigate if Apple is worth it to get more value of your monthly costs.