I went through the trouble of making a killer playlist on my Apple iPod. This playlist took quite a bit of time to create and contained hundreds of songs I currently love listening to. After jamming out to this playlist, I thought “Wow, these songs I selected would make a great playlist for when I listen to music on my computer!”
I attached my iPod to my computer, fired up iTunes and created a new playlist called “Morgan”. I then selected the playlist on my iPod and tried to drag and drop them to the playlist on the computer. It didn’t work though. iTunes doesn’t let you copy a playlist from your iPod to your local computer. Nor will it allow you to drag individual songs to from an iPod to a computer playlist.
What a bummer! I just had to find a workaround for this. Fortunately, I was able to find one rather quickly. You can do the following.
Note: This tutorial has been revised to reflect iTunes version 12.
- Connect your iPhone, iPod, or iPad to your computer.
- From iTunes on your computer, select the icon for your device at the upper-left portion of the window.
- Select the playlist you want to export under the “On My Device” section.

- Select “File” > “Library” > “Export…” to export the playlist to a text file. Give the export a name, then select “Save“.

- Select the Music icon located at the upper-left portion of the screen to switch back to the computer’s library view.
- Select “File” > “Library” > “Import Playlist…“, then select the text file created in step 5.

There you have it. You have successfully added a playlist from your Apple iOS device to iTunes on your computer.
FAQ
Why do I get an error that says “Some of the songs in the file were not imported because they could not be found”.
This tutorial assumes that the actual music files exist on your PC as well as the device. If they don’t, you will need to transfer the music files to the PC you’re working with. If they only exist on your device, you will need to research how to extract music files from your device.



Thank you so much
First day with iPod and kicking myself for creating playlist on iPod not PC
May karma smile on you
Thanks it worked!
At last, thanks to you, I have got all my playlist songs copied back to my PC from my i-pod after losing over a thousand of them.
I’m SO HAPPY!
Thank you Thank you Thank you!
x
Just did this. Worked flawlessly.
Thank!
Awesome content – appreciate you sharing the how-to with screen shot examples!
Note: This worked when exporting/importing in xml format, but it did not in m3u format.
Brilliant! Thank you. I never would have worked that out on my own!!
Cheers Mate, I like it when instructions are easy to understand and work like they’re supposed too.
Nice sharing! But I think iTunes 12 is not as friendly use as it supposed to be.
Perfect reply.. works like a breeze.. thanks for sharing this
Thanks! Worked like a charm :-) Very thankful for the advice!!!
Clear and clean instructions – that worked!
Thanks a bunch. You just saved me many hours of recreating my personally perfect playlist(s). Such a simple thing too. Keep up the good work, brother.
Thank you!!! From a very technically challenged music lover and playlist compiler. Your directions were so easy to follow!
Worked perfectly. I had to create the playlist from the ipad to the ipod. I was able to follow your directions to put the files onto the computer, then it was a simple drag and drop from the computer playlist to the ipod device.
Thank you.
Thanks dude, great post and really useful
Thank you very much. I’ve been looking for this ever since my PC crashed half a year ago.