Quick Links
Transfering your playlists from Apple Music to YouTube Music has always been possible through third-party tools. But now—finally!—Apple is launching a native tool that simplifies the process.
What Is Apple’s Playlist Transfer Tool?
Available onApple’s Data and Privacysite, the native playlist transfer tool is similar to theiCloud photo library transfer toolfor transferring photos to Google Photos. It’s free to use and makes switching to YouTube Music easy.
Here are a few things you should know about the tool:
Unfortunately, there are a few restrictions, but the tool is still super useful.
How to Transfer Your Apple Music Playlists to YouTube Music
Apple has made its playlist transfer tool incredibly easy to use.
Once you make the request, Apple says the tool may take up to 24 hours to verify the request and complete the transfer; the time depends entirely on how many playlists you’re transferring. I had 13 playlists on my Apple Music account, and the tool transferred them in about 10 minutes. When the transfer is complete, you’ll get a notification on your Google account. Go to your YouTube Music account to verify.
At any point, if you want to cancel the request, click onIf you change your mind, you can cancel this requeston theYour playlists will be exportedpage.
Then, hitDo not transferon the confirmation prompt to cancel transferring the playlists to YouTube Music.
Apple’s Tool Is Great—but Not Perfect
Apple’s native tool makes switching to YouTube Music easier than ever. The tool is surprisingly fast, and the transfer happens in the background, so you don’t need to keep the browser open for the process to complete.
That said, it isn’t perfect. For one, it doesn’t let you choose which playlists you want to transfer, requiring you to clean up your YouTube Music library later to remove the playlists you don’t need. And two, it’s limited to transferring playlists to YouTube Music only, so those wanting to switch to Spotify will still need to rely on third-party tools to move their playlists over. I hope Apple brings these functionalities at some point.
