Missing playlists in Music on iMac

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Level 1

10 points

Missing playlists in Music on iMac

So...for years, I assumed that my iMac just "lost" my playlists. However, today I discovered that they still exist somewhere on my HDD--found this out by clicking on the "collections" tab in the Vox player (which is vastly superior to music, but that's another issue...) and, Eureka!, there were my playlists. So...how can I get them to show up in Music again? One thought: I have ability to save them from Vox as .xpsf files...but don't know how to get the .xpsf file to import into Music. Any ideas, folks?

Posted on Feb 5, 2022 1:30 PM

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Answer 1

Feb 6, 2022 12:48 PM in response to benny w

Hi benny w,

We understand you'd like to import a playlist into the Music app on your Mac. We're happy to offer some guidance.

To import a playlist, open Music then select File up in the menu bar. Choose Library, then select Import Playlist. Choose the playlist file you'd like to add then select Open to add it to the Music app.

Save a copy of a playlist in Music on Mac

Hope this helps. Cheers!

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Answer 2

benny w Author

Level 1

10 points

Feb 7, 2022 9:07 AM in response to barberlives123

Thanks very much for your reply. I attempted to implement your suggestion, which was stated quite clearly. However, after following those steps, the imported playlist does not appear in the sidebar (or anywhere else, best I can tell). In case it matters, I'm on Music 11.6.37 on an Intel iMac running 11.6.1.

Is it possibly not importing properly because it's an xpsf file? I saw several softwares promoted online that purport to convert xpsf to Apple, but am loathe to grab this kind of software from the web...

Any further suggestion you might have would be much appreciated.

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Answer 3

KMB_12

Community Specialist

Feb 8, 2022 6:52 PM in response to benny w

Hi benny w,

Thanks for the follow up post. You would be able to import playlists that were originally created in iTunes/Music and exported. Is this "xpsf" file the file type Music used when you originally created and exported this file? If not, or if the playlist came from somewhere else other than iTunes/Music, it will not import.

As for third party software that imports playlists into Music, you would have to test that out to see if it actually works.

Cheers!

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Answer 4

benny w Author

Level 1

10 points

Feb 9, 2022 5:17 AM in response to KMB_12

Thank you for your reply.

Just to clarify, all of these playlists were originally created within iTunes, and then subsequently "disappeared" after an update from Apple at least two or three years ago. I thought they were truly lost. I discovered that they apparently still live on my iMac (albeit in some hidden--at least to me--location). I made this discovery while using the third-party app Vox. All of these playlists are visible in Vox under their "collections" tab. I can export them from Vox, but the export puts them in xpsf format.

So the real question is two-fold: 1) Is there a way to import an xpsf playlist into iTunes (so far, the answer seems to be "no," OR 2) Can you or another user point me to where these old iTunes playlists may be hidden on my iMac. I have seen some forum posts suggesting that they are in an ".itl" file--the issue here is that I've been in the iTunes universe for quite some time and have a number of old iTunes libraries on the HDD.

Obviously, I could rebuild these playlists, using the lists from Vox as a guide. But that seems rather tedious and labor-intensive if there is a straight-forward way to simply get the original playlists restores to iTunes as a digital maneuver.

Any help much appreciated.

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Answer 5

turingtest2

Level 10

274,564 points

Feb 9, 2022 7:15 AM in response to benny w

It looks like VLC can import .xspf and export .m3u(8), so you may be able to use that as a bridge to recover the playlists. My recollection is that iTunes expects .m3u(8) files to include absolute rather than relative paths, so you might still need to do some manipulation of the files before iTunes/Music will process them correctly.

tt2

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