From creating stations and custom playlists to organizing your favorite music systematically and saving power while on the go, here are the top ten Apple Music tips you should know about.
To help you derive the most value from your Apple Music subscription, we’ve created a list of ten really useful tips that everyone should memorize.
You can watch our top 10 Apple Music Tips and Tricks video or scroll down for a written explanation.
1. Download your entire music library
Apple doesn’t actually let you do this in the iOS Music app, but there’s a workaround that involves leveraging the Smart Playlist feature in the Music app on your Mac.
Create a smart playlist that matches any songs with time greater than zero seconds, basically automatically collecting all existing and new songs you add to the library. Then, in the Music app on your iOS device, select your smart playlist and choose the option to download the entire playlist to your device.
2. Yearly playlists with your top songs
You can create a playlist with your top Apple Music songs of the year by visiting replay.music.apple.com and signing in with your Apple Music account.
3. Automatically organize your music
Smart Playlists can only be created on the Mac, but they do sync across your devices via iCloud. If you invest time in the creation of multi-layered smart playlists which take advantage of multiple criteria, you can pretty much organize your music any way you like.
For instance, you could create a smart playlist of loved songs or tracks in your library that are no longer available for streaming or your Shazamed songs and so forth. As a bonus, you can organize smart playlists themselves by filing them into folders.
4. Love songs you like
Apple Music uses a combination of human curation and algorithms. To help the system better tailor music recommendations to your taste, you’re encouraged to share with Apple what you like and what you dislike. This results in better personalized suggestions. For additional information and concrete steps, read our separate tutorial on influencing Apple Music’s For You recommendations.
5. Create stations
Should you prefer to listen to some tunes that are similar to the track being currently played, you’d be wise to choose Create Station from the three-dotted menu, which will let you hear other related songs (this is also a great way to expose yourself to new music you might like).
6. Auto-download library songs
You can set your device to download all songs you add to the library in order to make them available for offline listening. To do so, visit Settings > Music and enable Automatic Downloads.
7. Stop playlist songs from flooding your library
By default, songs added to custom playlists get automatically added to your library. Thankfully, you can configure Apple Music to stop adding playlist tracks to your library by disabling the option Add Playlist Songs in your music settings. This will not only stop playlist songs from being added to your library but also ensure that nothing from your playlists comes up in shuffle play because it’s not in your library.
8. Wake up to any song
If you’re an Apple Music subscriber, go to the Alarm section of the Clock app and tap the plus sign to create a new alarm. Next, tap the Sound option to choose your alarm sound, and you’ll notice that you have the option to pick a song from your library that you’d like to wake up to.
9. Sing Karaoke
In addition to viewing the lyrics, you can also sing to it. Apple Music will remove most vocals from the songs, and you will have the beats and lyrics on screen so you can sing along.
Related: How to search songs by lyrics on Apple Music
10. Save battery
Streaming is taxing on the battery. What you might want to do instead is add songs you plan on listening to on the go to a custom playlist and download the entire playlist to the device before unplugging.
To see only songs that are available for offline listening, use the Downloaded option in the Library tab. Hit Edit if you don’t see it.
Check out next: How to transfer your liked songs and playlists from Spotify to Apple Music