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I have only just started to explore the music potential of Emby. I imagine that Emby playlists are usually created the same as they are for videos: by adding to/creating playlists when browsing individual items. I have been using iTunes/Apple Music for decades & have amassed over 100GB of MP3 files, and curated over 50 playlists out of the music that I own. Since I now keep a copy of the music files on my Synology NAS & made the folders accessible to Emby, a "direct" import function for Playlists would be particularly useful for me. Apple Music allows me to export a list of songs in the playlist to a separate file. It would be great if Emby programmers could look at the structure of one of those files and create an IMPORT function that would read the file & assign the songs in my library to an Emby playlist. I will upload an example of an Apple Music playlist file. The text file I uploaded is what Apple Music exports, but it can easily be imported into a spreadsheet (just open the file in Excel, etc), which divides up the information neatly into rows & columns, making it easy to import elsewhere - Each song has its own row, and data columns could be selected or ignored as desired. I also imagine that other streaming music users (e.g. Spotify, Pandora, etc) might also appreciate being able to import their playlists. I haven't used those services, so I don't know if they allow exporting a playlist or what format those files might be in. However, it may not be much use if they don't have the corresponding MP3 files in their Emby Library. Bistro European.txt

The web player has no option to add the currently playing item to favorites or to playlists. I guess many users here in the forum will answer now that I can do this within the library. Thats right. But when I play an item from the movies overview or from a list directly then going back from web player means to return to originate location, not the media that was played. If you do not exactly remember which media you played, you have to look again for the needle in a haystack. Therefore I suggest to do the following: Preferred: add options for favorites and playlists to web player. or Make sure that the web player always returns the user to the item last played (this is not preferred, because when you are playing from a playlist, and you want to "like" an item, you would have to exit the web player to toggle favorites and come back to your playlist).

Part of my "hobby" in managing my extensive video collection is organizing PLAYLISTS related to various topics (like Film Noir, Martial Arts, Art Films, etc). I find it makes accessing thousands of films easier & more interesting. Some of my subjects include both Movies & TV Shows (like Documentaries). I found that when making them into a Playlist, all the individual episodes of the TV documentaries listed individually. This may be intuitively correct, but it makes for a "messy" and very long playlist listing, When ordering the list by title, the show's episodes got scattered throughout the list (alphabetically). Screenshot(SS) 1 shows a typical listing of a Playlist. If the TV shows have many episodes (and there are many TV Shows), it would make it a very long list to scroll through. I found that when included in Collections, each TV show just show up as a single "poster", alongside the Movies, making a cleaner display, as in SS 2. E.g: Cosmos is a multi-episode documentary series - note the green circle in the top right corner showing the number of episodes. When clicking the single poster of a TV Show, it takes you to the separate screen that lists all the episodes (as you would expect). For my purposes, this makes for a more organized, intuitive display & user interface to find things related to various topics. Playlists works very well for just Movies, and offers the advantage of a description of each video included in the listing (SS 1). It would also work well if you wanted to add only individual episodes of a TV show to the Playlist, and not necessarily bring attention to the entire TV Show. I just wanted to share the observation.

It appears that any playlist that any user creates is public--all other users can see it. I can appreciate the benefit of a public playlist. I could create a playlist called "Harv's Favorite Horror Films" for example, in case other users are interested in checking out what I like. However, the way most of my users are using playlists is to keep track of things they want to watch in the future. They are typically things that the user has not watched yet, so it's not meant as a recommendation to others, just as a way of them personally keeping track of what they want to watch. Having that kind of playlist be public is of questionable benefit to other users. Additionally, it is not clear when you create a playlist that other users will be able to see it. That has the potential to cause some embarrassment. He hasn't created one yet, but I wouldn't want to see my nephew's "movies to fap to" playlist, for example. If I could make a suggestion, I would suggest associating each playlist with the user who created it, and giving that user the ability to make the playlist private or public. For example, the following two checkboxes could be shown when creating or editing a playlist: Allow other users to see this playlist Allow other users to edit this playlist Initially, both checkboxes would be unchecked. Since another user cannot edit a playlist they cannot see, the second would be allowed to be checked only if the first were also checked. (You could grey it out to make that clear.) Depending on your UI preference, it could also be a drop-down menu. Playlist visibility: (Only me | all users can view | all users can view and edit) Thanks for considering this.

I definitely like the new playlist system as it''s nice not having all created playlists show up for anyone with access. Being able to share playlists is definitely a desirable feature, and having that configurable as a per user option was the right approach. Currently the biggest caveat for enabling that option for a user is that they now have a complete list of all user accounts on the server, including admin accounts. This is enough to make me want to keep it disabled for the time being as there are numerous downsides and concerns with providing a full list of all users (especially admin accounts) just for the sake of enabling playlist sharing. I'm not sure if this is something that is already planned, but there should be an additional selection option when enabling this feature to control what other users that particular user can share a playlist with. That kind of granularity in the controls will make it a useable feature for more security conscious setups where a full user list enumeration is not desirable.

I am new to Emby & am switching over from Synology Video Station (which will no longer be supported going forward). I like to create custom playlists (like Age 6-12, Film Noir, Pirates, Historical Fiction, etc). In Video Station, playlists were user specific (each user created their own & couldn't see others). To get around this, I created "custom genres", which could be searched or used in a filter by all users. Before I put in the time & effort to add these custom genres to a large film library in Emby, If I knew that the playlists are available to all, I could edit only the playlists.

Hi guys, I have two questions: 1. Where can I find the playlists in the Emby server folder (version 4.8.8.0 under macOS Monterey 12.7.5)? 2. I have created playlists in the Apple Music desktop player from the same music collection that Emby also accesses. I would like to export these lists in xml format and then insert them into the Emby folder for playlists. Does this work and will Emby load the lists after the next start? Thank you in advance for the support. zenobit06

Hi everyone We are looking at getting a dedicated audio playing app for Emby up for closed testing on PlayStore shortly, and was wondering if people might be interested it trying it out and providing feedback? Features: Android Auto support Chromecast support Download media onto device via WiFi/Mobile for complete offline support - can search, mix and play content without access to your server Filter content, such as genres, artist albums, album artists by years and genre Playlists - create playlists, automatically download new content added - in the case of offline playlists. Resume playback of last positions in playing queues, audiobooks and albums, etc. Open to any suggestion for other features.... Please note: This will not be a free app - it will be a full featured trial, which upon expiry will require a once off purchase At this stage the app will be Android only, no iOS just yet unfortunately Alpha version will be available shortly, pending interest in testing and feedback.

Emby Theater for windows version 1.1.568.0 has an odd issue when playing videos (mp4) automatically "playlist" (via clicking the shuffle button). It plays them ok, but the "up next" link at the bottom of the screen on the left side doesn't show what videos are up next in the playlist. It does nothing. I think it started in this version.

Hi, I can't enable user playlists under Users > User > Access > Playlists The option appears greyed out with all users.

Music is an integral part of our daily lives, and its impact is often tied to the mood it helps evoke or express. I would like to propose a feature that I believe could significantly enrich the music listening experience on Emby: the addition of mood tags for music tracks by reading the mood descriptors from embedded metadata in music tracks, enabling users to filter and create playlists based on their emotional tone.

This might be the wrong place, but I have a script written post Playlist API changes in 4.8.x. This script worked until I upgraded from beta 4.8.0.66 to 4.8.0.69. Testing via REST client I am getting the following: Exception of type 'SQLitePCL.pretty.SQLiteException' was thrown. Has anything in the API changed for playlists between these versions? API call being used for testing: {{baseUrl}}/Playlists/:Id/Items?Ids=2862576 API Key is OK as it works for other API calls and Playlist ID is fine as a query to get all items from the playlist is successful.

Making this official now: Can we find a way of either reading already created playlists eg for WMP or iTunes or import those playlists into MB.

Not sure if what I want to do is currently possible, but here's what I'm encountering. I have a library "Music", in the specified directory is a bunch of audio files and subdirectories. I have some subdirectories ignored with .ignore files, these directories contain audio files that don't come from specific albums, aren't "songs" per se, or are soundtracks or sound libraries from video games and other ancillary media that isn't "Music" and I would rather not have cluttering up the library. What I'm attempting to accomplish is to have certain files within subdirectories of the ignored directory included in playlists, but not scanned and included and cluttering up the "Music" library. I've attempted to create another library with those directories, and ran into the cant have libraries who's target is a subdirectory of another library problem, so then I created a symlink to the desired directory and created a library with that which worked, but then if i remove that library from my user (essentially to hide the library from normal viewing as its unorganized and most of the files don't have any metadata worth using) the playlist with items from the library are gone (likely intended behavior). So I guess what I'm asking is as follows: - Is it possible to add files to a playlist without them being included in a library (or if they're in an ignored subdirectory of the library target) - If not, is it possible to hide a library from a user and not bar them access to it so a playlist can access the files?

Several times it has happened that I have done something (like moving my library around) that has caused items to be removed from my playlists to the point that it bugged me enough to write the following BASH script. What this does is to write out a VERY PRIMITIVE html file for each playlist on the server that the defined user has access to. It also creates an even more PRIMITIVE index file, with the current timestamp as its file name, with each of the playlists hyperlinked in it. In each playlist file, the name of each item on the list is written, and it's hyperlinked to the page on the Emby server for that item. Makes it real handy when you want more info about a particular item on the playlist. This also includes the overview of each item which solves another aggravation of mine which is not being able to see the overview in the playlist unless you go in and edit the metadata. I would point out, the script has to run under an OS that supports BASH and other common linux utilities, HOWEVER, the server can run on any system Emby supports. I'm running this on my linux machine to access the playlists from my Windows server. If you don't have such an OS running, I highly recommend, at the very least, getting cygwin, but preferably grab the FREE Windows version of VM Player and install a linux distro on it (I personally prefer Debian <g>). Also, this script relies heavily on JQ (https://stedolan.github.io/jq/download/) to parse the JSON data from the Emby server so if you don't have it installed already, you will need to do that first. Other than that, this script is VERY simple. Just set the 4 variables at the top and your good to go. If you use this, please let me know. Down the road, I might add more to it if there's a desire for it. One thought I'm toying with now is to zip up a week's worth of backups for archival reasons. Of course, if I did this, would likely also just add the option of deleting old ones, but we'll see down the road. As a final note, I've only tried this on playlists with movies and TV shows in them. No idea how it would handle with music or other such lists. save_playlist.sh

Just wondering if its even a possibility for coverart to help with the collage image of a playlist and then also the items inside of them not being treated?

Hi guys, I was wondering if it was possible to modify the way the playlists behave for movies and TV series. I tend to put movies that I plan to see on various playlists (e.g. Own, Family, ...). When you click on one of the items on the list the video starts playing right away but sometimes it better to get a chance to read the summary or see a trailer. For my use case it would therefore be ideal if selecting an item from a (movies/TV series) playlist would bring you to its Emby site rather than starting playback. What do you think? Would such an approach be feasible? Thanks, Glin

Ok, so I've used emby from way back when it was a windows media server plugin - but I've never used it for music until now. I've decided to drop my spotify account and use emby instead. I uploaded all my music to the music directory and let emby scan it and sort out genres etc. All I can say is what a bloody mess! I have 1 "unknown" genre which contains a single album/song, "Still Crazy After all these years/%0 Ways to Leave Your Lover" - listed as David bowie! If I serch David Bowie - that album is listed as his! also have genres titled 0 through 143 there are a whole load of genre titles with often album images that bear no relevance whatsoever to the actual songs in the genre playlist - example "Dub Techno" has a title cover of The Lion King! then in the synopsis of the genre it refers to Savage Garden's debut album! The title of the playlist is "Melon Collie And The Infinite Sadness (Deluxe Edition"! It has 131 songs in the genre - including "1979" by the Smashing Pumpkins, Big Big World by Emilia, Circle of life from the Lion King by Elton John - now, I know that genres sometime have blurred definitions but there i no way that those three songs mentioned are "Dub Techno" the genre "Dub Techno" appears to have listed everything in the "All Out 90s" directory. So - what have I done wrong and how do i fix the complete mess that emby has made of reading the music directory. My music is all listed in the following directory/file structure root folder (music) L__artist | L__album | L__ track 1 L__ track 2 L__ track 3 L__ track 4 etc is that the wrong way to list it? Is there a "how to" or best practices for best results for emby and music? Where does emby get its "genre" data from? thanks

Until the latest release of Emby server, when viewing songs in my music library it used to show if a particular song was included in any of my playlists. This feature now seems to have disappeared, although it still exists for my music videos library. Was this intentional, as it was a very useful feature, and there doesn't seem to be any easy way to see if a particular song has been included in a playlist without manually searching through every playlist (not practical when you have hundreds).

I use the DLNA plugin to stream my music to another box. This works. But what doesn't work when using DLNA are the following options: - Add to playlist - Play next - Play all from here - Shuffle As soon as I select a song to end up in the playlist, it is immediately selected and played. It's the same with the other functions. If I turn off DLNA or don't use it, then I can use the above features without any problems. For me it is a bug that should be fixed. My Emby version is up to date.

Currently when I go into favorites with a long list, it is always displayed horizontally (using an iPad, and I think the same on ATV), one has to slide horizontally to view the list, while we have plenty of empty space below. I have to click on “see all” to make them fill the screen and to be able to scroll down which is more meaningful. This is especially annoying when having a lot of IP TV channels. Please make the “see all” the default view when one goes into Favorites. Another request for playlists. When I go into them and I choose one to see then decide to go back, the list jumps to the beginning instead of going back to where I left. Again, especially annoying with long IP TV playlists. It would also be nice if the empty space can be better utilized. Thanks

Hi, I am a premier subscription holder. I apologise if this isn't the correct place for this question but I didn't see a place for questions/issues with Apple Car Play. I have a playlist with over 15 hours of music. I can listen to the playlist in the car and on my mobile device up to a certain number of songs (I don't know how many but it isn't more than 50.) Any song I try to choose past that number of songs forces the player to play the first song in the playlist. One reason I really wanted to go with Emby is that I thought my wife and I would be able to get our playlist on there and shuffle them on long road trips. But if we are limited to 50 songs per list that doesn't really fit the bill. Any help you can provide would be appreciated. Thank you.

I downloaded a playlist on Android and the songs were placed in albums. How do I see the playlist when the server is turned off on my pc? If I play by shuffle it plays songs not on the playlist.

I have just set up my Emby Ubuntu server. I have set the music library directory to /data/music as my /data directory is on a RAID and I would like to change the default playlist directory to /data/playlists but I have not found a way of doing this. Can anyone advise - thanks. Robin B

Hello, We use playlists a lot for video files. In fact, it’s the primary reasons we moved over from Plex, because Emby has so many more options for dealing with playlists. However, in using it, I’ve learned that there is an oddity with the way that Emby deals with playlists. When Emby makes a playlist, if more than one version of a file exists, Emby chooses a non-specific or random version of the title that you add to the playlist. The user has no idea which version it chooses or why. It won’t always choose the highest or lowest resolution, or the mkv or HEVC. There’s no apparent rhyme or reason. So, if you have more than one file and make any changes to those files (delete the low res version for instance, leaving the other files intact or rename a hard drive - adding the new location while the first still exists to be sure everything matches up), even though those files are still there under the media title, it wrecks or even deletes the playlist automatically. I find this strange. So, I cannot specify if I want Emby to use the higher def version of a file. It just uses what it wants. However, if that file disappears, instead of just using/playing the alternate file that’s still available for that show or movie title, instead Emby deletes the playlist altogether. Also, for instance, I recently had to move the location of the files on my media drives. I had the files added to my TV Libarary from both drives simultaneously and all the files were pointed to the same titles. However, when I removed the original drive, all my playlists were deleted - even though all the titles were still there, the files were still there, and nothing has changed. I nevertheless lost all my Playlists - once again because they are based on files not titles. What’s more confusing is just now knowing what files it’s choosing to use as the basis for the playlist. This means I have even less control because I have no idea what Emby is using. Is this a bug or was it designed that way for some reason? I’ve not come across playlists behaving like this before. I like Emby better than Plex, which is why it’s our primary media server now but just as a contrast, regardless of the files and drives that one adds to Plex, the playlists don’t change because they are based on the media title, not the specific files attached to those titles. So, if the files for any given title are changed behind the scenes, it doesn’t wipe out the playlist. I’m wondering why Emby, too, isn’t making the playlists based on the titles themselves, not the files. This would allow the files relating to any given title to change while still keeping the playlist intact, if it based upon the title (letting Emby simply look to play whatever files are available for that title). I’d love to hear more about this and perhaps why Emby behaves this way. It’s puzzling, especially as we don’t have any option to choose which files it’s adding to the playlist (for instance the lower or high res, if there are more than one). Any thoughts you could share would be brilliant. Thanks so much in advance!