Playlists & Ratings

Playlists

Create manual playlists, add tracks from anywhere with drag-and-drop, reorder, and dedupe. Playlists are first-class parts of the library — not disposable streaming mixes.

On Mac, Export Playlist saves a zip of the audio files plus an m3u.

Smart playlists

Build rule-based playlists that stay current as your library changes. Rules can match title, artist, album, genre, format, year, rating, play count, duration, date added, or last played — all conditions or any of them — with an optional limit and sort (newest, highest rated, most played, alphabetical, or random).

Ratings

Tap stars to rate tracks. Ratings are stored in the library index for browsing and, like other metadata edits, written back into file tags so they travel with your music.

Settings → Display → Rating System chooses how that stored rating is shown:

• 5 Stars — the full 0–5 scale. On Mac, the number keys 0–5 set the rating of the focused selection.
• Favorite — one star. A song rated 4 or 5 stars shows as a favorite. Marking a favorite saves it as 4 stars; tapping a favorite clears it. Switching modes does not rewrite the library. The file still stores a 0–5 rating.

Rating a track from a shared library sends the change to the device that holds those files. That library updates its index and writes the stars into the tags — the same path as editing on the library device itself.

Play counts

A listen counts after 50% of the track or 4 minutes, whichever comes first, on the owning library — the device whose folder holds the file. Play counts live in that library’s index (not in file tags).

• Playing a local track bumps this device’s count.
• Playing a shared-library track reports the play to the library device, so counts stay shared instead of siloed on the player.

There is no cloud sync of listening history.

Undo

Playlist edits can be undone: add, remove, rename, reorder, and delete, including a playlist on another device. On Mac, use Edit → Undo. On iPhone, shake. On iPad, use the undo and redo buttons. Removing several songs is one undo. Undoing a delete on another device needs that device still reachable.

The same undo covers the Live Queue.

Playlists from a shared library

A shared library brings its playlists with it: manual playlists mirror live, and smart playlists arrive as resolved snapshots that refresh with the catalog. Playlists you create stay on the device that made them — tracks from someone else’s library can’t join a local playlist yet.

Offline playlists

Pin a playlist from a shared library — the heart on its row in the Library list — and its tracks are copied into this device’s library folder, under *Playlists → playlist name***. It keeps playing when the library that holds the files is asleep, away, or switched off. And because the copies are ordinary files in your library, your other devices see them too when this folder is shared: pin at a friend’s house on your iPhone, and the songs appear under your iPhone’s library on your Mac at home.

A pin holds the playlist as it was when you pinned it; unpin and re-pin to pick up changes. Unpinning removes that playlist’s folder. Your files elsewhere are untouched. On iPhone with the default folder, the copies are in the Files app at On My iPhone → Icoustic → Music → Playlists.