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Transfer Music playlist from old Mac to new

Everything but the playlists transferred to my new MacPro laptop. I've tried to follow Apple support directions but can't find the xml file to import. AppleCare was nice but no help, just sent me links to irrelevant articles and suggested I recreate the playlists (that would take many days). Any advice to a guy who's not too tech savvy?

Posted on Feb 7, 2022 11:54 AM

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Posted on Feb 7, 2022 6:13 PM

If you only need the playlists, you might try the few steps in the 'Save copies of playlists to use on another computer' and 'Import a Music playlist' sections of:

Save a copy of a playlist in Music on Mac - Apple Support


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5 replies

Feb 7, 2022 2:14 PM in response to turingtest2

Thank you for your prompt, thorough response. But I despair. What is simple to you is quite unfamiliar too me. I want to keep the songs on my older computer, an iMac, but also play them on the new MacBook Pro by using my playlists . iCloud connects the two computers.


So I've dragged the Music Library from my iMac to the desktop. Then do I drag that into Music on the new MacBook? It already has the songs. Just not the old playlists.

Feb 7, 2022 3:47 PM in response to Happy Dog

Although the title says move the steps can also be used to simply copy the library. You don't have to delete the original.


When you say cloud connects the two computers this would only be relevant if you had iTunes Match or Apple Music (the subscription service), in which case your playlists should have come over already.


I can't tell exactly what steps you've taken so far but I suspect you've imported the music into a new empty library rather than copying the entire library database over. Are you moving between iTunes and Music, or is the older computer running Catalina or later?


In either case, unless your library has something complicated going on, it should be a matter of copying the entire Music folder from your profile folder on the old computer into your profile folder on the new computer, either by way of an intermediate copy on an external drive, or over your network.


Once that has been done press and hold down option as you launch Music and use the Choose Library... option. If your old computer is running iTunes you need to open ~/Music/iTunes/iTunes Library(.itl), then choose a location for the converted library (which should be ~/Music/Music). Otherwise you need to open ~/Music/Music/Music Library(.musiclibrary).


tt2

Feb 12, 2022 8:14 PM in response to javaliga

Thanks to both of you. Problem solved, starting with Turingtest 2 and then to javaliga. One of the problems was the first time I exported the music library it didn't have the xml at the end, for some reason. And the Apple directions described importing one playlist but not all of them. But I imported the whole XML library and it seemed to work.


Interesting that AppleCare couldn't solve this for me. I called twice, and one of those times it was escalated to a supervisor.


You guys are great!

Transfer Music playlist from old Mac to new

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