Playlists
A playlist is an ordered list of references to tracks already in your library. Adding a track to a playlist doesn’t copy or move the file, and removing it doesn’t delete anything — the playlist is just a pointer list.
The Playlists tab in the Library filter row shows all of your playlists.
[SCREENSHOT: Playlists grid — playlist cards with cover art and track counts]
The Playlists Grid
Each playlist appears as a card showing:
- A cover image, picked at random from the album art of one of the playlist’s tracks
- The playlist name
- The track count in place of the artist line
Playlists are ordered by when they last changed, so the one you most recently added to sits first.
A playlist whose tracks have no artwork shows the 🎧 placeholder.
Opening a Playlist
Tap a playlist card to open it. The header shows the playlist name, the number of tracks, and a Back link that returns you to the grid.
[SCREENSHOT: Open playlist — header with name and track count, track rows below]
Each row shows the track’s album art, title and artist, in playlist order.
Playing a Playlist
Tap any track in the playlist. The whole playlist becomes the playback queue, playback jumps to the track you tapped, and Homecrate switches to the Now Playing screen.
The queue is recorded as a playlist queue, which is how listening analytics attribute the session. The resulting queue is what you’ll see in Up Next.
Tracks play in playlist order, not album order.
Creating a Playlist
Playlists are created from the Add to Playlist picker, which appears whenever you’re adding music to a playlist.
[SCREENSHOT: Add to Playlist picker — Create New field with Create button, list of existing playlists]
- Type a name in the Create New field
- Tap Create
The playlist is created and immediately used as the target for whatever you were adding, so a new playlist is never empty.
You can reach the picker from:
- The Albums view — long-press an album card → Playlist. See Albums.
- The Now Playing flip view — flip the artwork to the album track list and tap Add to Playlist. See Album Art & Track List (Flip).
Library AI also creates playlists directly, without the picker.
Adding Tracks
Adding happens an album at a time: whichever album you invoked the picker from has all of its tracks appended to the playlist you choose. Tracks go on the end, in album order.
A track can only appear once in a given playlist. Adding an album that’s already partly in the playlist moves those tracks to the end rather than duplicating them.
Removing a Track
Open the playlist, then long-press the track row to reveal its action chips and tap Delete.
[SCREENSHOT: Playlist track row long-pressed — Up Next and Delete chips]
This removes the track from this playlist only. The file and the library entry are untouched, and the track stays in every other playlist it belongs to.
The same chip row also offers Up Next, which drops that single track into the Up Next queue without changing what’s playing.
Playlists can hold streaming Plex tracks alongside local ones, but the Download button for a Plex track only appears in the All Tracks view — see Downloading Tracks for Offline Use.
Deleting a Playlist
There are two ways:
- From the grid — long-press a playlist card and tap Delete. This happens immediately, with no confirmation.
- From the Add to Playlist picker — tap the trash icon on any row. This one asks “Are you sure you want to delete …?” first.
Either way, only the playlist and its ordering are deleted. Your tracks stay in the library.
AI-Generated Playlists
Library AI can build a playlist from a request like “something mellow for the evening”. It picks artists from your library, names and describes the playlist, saves it, and starts playing it.
How many tracks you get depends on the shape of the request:
- One artist — every matching track by that artist
- Several artists — up to 25 tracks, balanced across the artists rather than front-loaded with one of them
The result is a normal playlist afterwards. It shows up in the grid and you can add to it, remove from it, or delete it like any other.
What Playlists Don’t Do Yet
To set expectations, a few things the playlist UI doesn’t currently offer:
| Not available | Workaround |
|---|---|
| Renaming an existing playlist | Create a new one with the right name and re-add the albums |
| Dragging tracks into a new order | Tracks stay in the order they were added |
| Adding a single track to a playlist | Add the album, then long-press and delete the rows you don’t want |
| Nested folders or smart/auto playlists | Use Library AI to regenerate a list on demand |