I want to create a shortcut for Apple Music to play multiple playlists on shuffle at once. I know there is a way to create a shortcut to pick one playlist and play that on shuffle, but I see no way of selecting multiple lists. I'd be happy if I create a static shortcut to always shuffle the same few playlists, but ideally it would work with a list of my playlists and select multiple playlists once you run the shortcut.
Any ideas?
A shortcut couldn't play multiple playlists.
The first idea that comes to mind would be to create a shortcut that creates a specific playlist (named "My Composed Playlists", for instance) composed from selected playlists. The shortcut would delete this playlist if it exists and create a new one (with the same name). You could then play this special playlist in shuffle mode.
You are correct: there are no actions to empty an existing playlist or to delete a playlist.
If you don’t want to have to delete the existing composed playlist manually, there are 2 avenues. First, you can have several playlists with the same name. The shortcut would create a playlist with the same name every time. That may be confusing. The second solution is to append the date to the playlist name. This may be more appealing.
Note that playlists do not require much storage space. So you wouldn’t have to manually delete the composed playlist every time you run the shortcut if you are concerned about storage space.
I created the following shortcut: Create Composed Playlist. It prompts you for the playlists to select and creates a new playlist named “Composed Playlist [today’s date]”.
This shortcut requires that you download the Actions app from the App Store: App Store - Actions. The Actions application adds several actions for the Shortcuts application, in particular actions related to playlists. It is important that you open the Actions app after downloading it and that you restart your device.
Thanks for the response! I tried your approach and ran into some problems.
First I tried with "Create playlist". I don't see how I can get this to work. When I add this action to the shortcut I enter a name of the desired playlist and then it says "with Music" and "Music" is greyed out. There I can choose between clipboard, current app, current date, device details and shortcut input. My idea was to use shortcut input, so I should first collect the playlists and then I can use this as input here. However, that shortcut input lets me pick media, but not playlists. And I don't see how to select media. I had a dead end here.
Second I tried a different approach based on your idea.
This worked fine. It started playing all the songs on those three playlists in shuffle mode.
But I've got a few problems with this:
Many thanks for this!
I installed Actions, restarted my device, downloaded your shortcut ans tested it. It lets me choose several playlists and it creates the playlist, but the songs don't end up in the playlist. Not sure why.
With all the new actions I might be able to create something else, without creating a new playlist each time. It should be possible to select multiple playlists, get all the songs from those and play all those songs on shuffle, right?
leprousfan wrote:
It lets me choose several playlists and it creates the playlist, but the songs don't end up in the playlist. Not sure why.
That’s odd. The shortcut works well on my iPad (iPadOS 26.2) and iPhone (iOS 26.2). To test it, I created 3 test playlists, each with a single album. I was able to create a composed playlist based on any combination of the 3 test playlists.
I did have an issue on the iPhone the 1st time I ran the shortcut. I had used existing playlists instead of the test playlists. The shortcut returned an error. I then created the 3 test playlists. The shortcut ran well with those 3. I then reran the shortcut with the “existing playlists” and it ran without errors.
Long story short: try to run the shortcut multiple times to see if it corrects the issue.
leprousfan wrote:
I thought something like this one below should do the trick, but it doesn't play the selected playlists. It just start playing where I was left the last time.
You are using the wrong variable in the Repeat loop. Try this shortcut: Play Combined Playlists.
**** yeah! That's exactly what I needed. In that case I don't even need to create a temporary playlist. My library is already flooded with way too many playlists and I try to keep things organised. Huge thanks for your efforts!!
I thought something like this one below should do the trick, but it doesn't play the selected playlists. It just start playing where I was left the last time.
You are most welcome!
Short cut for Apple Music to shuffle multiple playlists
