At long last, you can search for songs within a playlist in Apple Music. Until now, if you had long Apple Music playlists on your iPhone, you couldn’t use the search bar to find a specific song, making it difficult to quickly find the song you really wanted to listen to. It may be overdue, but Apple has finally added the ability to do so to the Music app on both iPhone and iPad.
Though Apple has actually let you search for songs in playlists on Mac for a while, it doesn’t work quite as it does on iOS and iPadOS. We’ll discuss the differences below.
How to search for songs in a playlist in Apple Music for iPhone and iPad
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To get this new feature, update your iPhone or iPad to iOS 15.2 or iPadOS 15.2, respectively. Once you have installed iOS 15.2, open the Music app and go to any Apple Music playlist (to locate them, tap the Listen Now tab at the bottom of the screen and select any playlist).
Now, swipe downwards to reveal the search bar. Type in the song or artists you’re looking for. Boom: Your 1,000-song playlists suddenly feels less chaotic.
How to search for songs in an Apple Music playlist on older versions of iOS
If you can’t update to iOS 15.2 because your device is too old, you can still search within playlists in Apple Music on your iOS devices. To do this, you’ll have to use a third-party app. Cs: Music Player ($2.99) is the one we’d been using until iOS 15.2 came along, and it’s the one you should try too.
When you fire up Cs: Music Player for the first time, it’ll ask for access to Apple Music. When you’ve done that, tap the Playlists tab at the bottom of the screen, open your favorite playlist, and use the search bar labeled Search Playlist Songs to find the song you need. This search bar is located between the album art and the first song in the playlist.
Cs: Music Player works perfectly well as an Apple Music player for music that’s already in your library. If you want to discover new music, go to the Music app and add all the playlists you need, and Cs: Music Player’s focus is on the songs already in your library. Bonus: It’s much faster than the Music app.
How to search for songs in Apple Music playlists on Mac
If you use the Music app on your Mac to listen to Apple Music songs, you can easily search within playlists, though the feature is hidden behind a keyboard shortcut. To search for songs within a playlist on Mac, open a playlist in the Music app and press Option + Command + F.
This will reveal a search bar you can use that to find specific songs or artists within your playlists.