Why Playlists on iPhone
Playlists on iPhone provide several key benefits for organizing and enjoying music. By creating customized playlists, users can easily group together their favorite songs or albums into coherent mixes for different settings or moods. Playlists are a convenient way to organize a large Apple Music library and provide quick access to customized sequences of songs.
One major advantage of playlists on iPhone is the ability to organize and arrange music how you want. Instead of shuffling through an entire library, playlists let you pre-select songs and set the order. This allows listeners to curate mixes for specific activities, like working out or relaxing, by choosing music that creates the right vibe. Playlists can also be used to group together songs for particular events, like parties or road trips.
Another benefit is the ability to customize listening experiences. Playlists provide a simple way to tailor music to your current mood or activity. By manually selecting songs and arranging the order, you can create highly personalized playlists adapted to your tastes. The customizable nature of playlists gives listeners control over their music.
In addition, playlists provide easy access to your favorite song sequences. Once created, playlists live in your library for instant playback whenever desired. Rather than having to locate and queue up songs each time, a customized playlist offers one-click access to your preferred mix of music. This allows you to quickly start listening to music that matches your intent.
Playlists also enable music sharing experiences. You can send playlists to friends and family to share music discoveries and customize mixes for different groups. Shared playlists provide a fun way to bond over favorite songs and artists.
Overall, the key benefits of creating playlists on iPhone include organizing music, customizing listening experiences, easily accessing saved song sequences, and sharing mixes with others (Source). Playlists empower listeners to shape Apple Music to their personal preferences.
Creating Playlists
The first step in building a playlist on an iPhone is to actually create the playlist itself. To create a new blank playlist in the Apple Music app, simply follow these steps:
Open the Music app on your iPhone and tap on the “Library” tab at the bottom. This will bring you to the Library section where your playlists, artists, albums etc are stored.
Next, tap on the “Playlists” section. You will see any existing playlists you have already created.
Finally, tap on the “+” icon in the top right corner labeled “New Playlist”. This will generate a new blank playlist for you to start adding songs into.
You can immediately rename the playlist by tapping on the default title, which is normally “New Playlist” followed by a number. Give your playlist a descriptive name to easily find it later.
That covers the basics of creating a brand new empty playlist to add music into on an iPhone. The Music app makes it quick and simple to start a new playlist in just a few taps. Refer to Apple’s iPhone user guide for step-by-step instructions with visuals.
Adding Songs
To build your playlist, you’ll need to add songs. There are a few easy ways to do this on iPhone:
Tap the + icon while viewing a song to add it to the playlist. This allows you to browse your music library and tap to add songs one at a time.
You can also drag and drop multiple songs at once. Just press and hold on a song, then drag it onto your playlist name at the top of the screen. All selected songs will be added.
Finally, you can use Search to quickly find songs to add. Just tap the search icon at the top right and type in a song, artist, album etc. Then tap the + icon next to results to add them.
This gives you flexibility to easily add songs, whether browsing your library or searching for specific tracks to include.
Editing Playlists
Once you’ve created a playlist on your iPhone, you can edit various details like the name, description, and album image.1 To edit playlist details:
- Open the Music app and tap on the Library tab.
- Select the playlist you want to edit.
- Tap the More button (the 3 dots) in the top right corner.
- Tap “Edit” from the menu.
- Here you can rename the playlist, change the description, and select a new album image to represent the playlist.
- Make the desired changes, then tap “Done” to save the edits.
The updated details will be reflected across all your devices where you’re signed into your Apple ID. You have full control to customize playlists with names, descriptions, and images that suit your preferences.
Deleting Playlists
To delete a playlist directly on your iPhone, complete the following steps:
1. Open the Apple Music app and tap on the Library tab at the bottom.
2. Scroll down and tap on Playlists to view your list of created playlists.
3. Swipe left on the playlist you want to delete.
4. Tap the red Delete button that appears.
5. Confirm the deletion by tapping Delete Playlist again when prompted.
This will permanently delete the playlist from your Apple Music library and remove it from all your devices. However, deleting a playlist does not delete the songs within it (source: https://discussions.apple.com/thread/254454192). The songs will remain saved in your library or Apple Music subscription and can be accessed through other playlists or by searching.
Effect on Songs
When you delete a playlist on your iPhone, the songs contained within that playlist are not deleted from your library or iPhone storage. The playlist itself is simply removed, but your songs remain intact in your music library and can be accessed as normal.
As confirmed on Apple’s community forums, “Deleting the playlist does not in any way delete the included tracks or albums. Just the playlist itself.” The songs are not tied to or dependent on the playlist in order to exist on your device.
Therefore, you can rest assured that deleting a playlist will not cause any of your downloaded or purchased songs to be erased. The playlist removal only gets rid of that particular ordered sequence of songs, not the songs themselves. Your music library remains unchanged.
Recovering Deleted Playlists
Unfortunately, there is no native way to recover a deleted playlist on an iPhone. Once a playlist is deleted, it is permanently gone from the device.
Apple states, “There’s currently no way to recover deleted playlists on your iPhone… Your only option is to restore your iPhone from a backup that contains the playlist you want to recover” (Source).
Essentially, if you don’t have a backup of your iPhone from before the playlist was deleted, there is no way to get that playlist back. The deletion is permanent. Some users have reported trying third party apps or connecting to iTunes, but with no success (Source).
The takeaway is that iPhone does not have a native “undo” function or playlist trash bin. Once deleted, playlists are gone for good unless you restore an earlier backup. So be cautious when deleting playlists to avoid losing anything important.
Alternative Recovery
If backing up your iPhone and restoring the device does not recover your deleted playlists, there are some third party tools that may be able to help. For example, iMyFone iPhone Data Recovery is a program that scans your iPhone to recover lost or deleted data including playlists. Similarly, tools like FoneLab and Dr. Fone offer advanced scanning of your device to find deleted playlists and recover them. The advantage of using these specialized programs over simply restoring an iPhone backup is that they dig deeper to find lost data rather than relying on what was included in your last backup.
That said, these third party tools don’t always guarantee success, and it depends on whether the deleted playlist data still exists on your device. The sooner you run one of these programs after deletion, the higher the chances of playlist recovery. Additionally, these tools tend to cost money, with the program fees ranging from $20 to $60 typically. While no option can recover deleted playlists 100% of the time, third party iPhone data recovery software offers another option when backups fail you.
Preventing Accidental Deletion
There are a few precautions you can take to avoid accidentally deleting playlists on your iPhone:
First, enable playlist syncing between your iPhone and iTunes on your computer. This will ensure you have a backup copy of your playlists if something happens on your iPhone (Source).
You should also regularly back up your iPhone using either iCloud or iTunes. That way you can restore your device if needed and recover deleted playlists (Source).
When deleting playlists, consider renaming them first instead of deleting. That way the playlist will still be recoverable if you change your mind later (Source).
With a few simple precautions, you can avoid accidentally losing playlists on your iPhone.
Key Takeaways
Deleting a playlist on an iPhone does not delete the songs in that playlist from your music library or device storage. The songs will remain available in your library to add to new playlists or listen to individually.
When you delete a playlist, it is removed from the Playlists section in the Apple Music app. The playlist itself will be gone but the songs will still be there.
You can recover a deleted playlist within 30 days through Recently Deleted Playlists, or by using iTunes sync or an iCloud backup. To prevent accidental deletion, you can enable the setting to confirm before deleting playlists.
In summary, deleting an iPhone playlist only removes the playlist itself – not the songs. The songs stay in your library unless you take further action to delete them.