These Spotify Hacks Will Help You Organize All Your Music And Playlists

Spring cleaning szn is upon us, which means nothing is safe from a major decluttering — including your music apps. You might not think organizing your Spotify music and playlists will make too much of a difference, but with a few simple hacks, you’ll be able to find that one song you loved for two weeks in 2018 in no time. To experiment with tidying up your app, check out these little-known Spotify organizational features that can help make finding your favorite songs a breeze.

There’s no need to put off cleaning out your music library for another year, because on April 6, Spotify dropped some helpful hacks on how to make organizing, deep cleaning, and rearranging your music quick and painless (unlike actual cleaning). The hacks dropped alongside Spotify’s best spring cleaning tips — and songs to add to your playlist (FYI “Golden” by Harry Styles and Post Malone’s “Sunflower” made the list of best jams for a cleaning session) — but there’s really never a bad time to make sure your Spotify app is working most effectively for you.

How To Organize Your Spotify Music

With features like folder playlists, the ability to search your entire Spotify catalogue, and reorganizing your saved songs with the push of a button, there are a bunch of different ways you can tidy up your digital storage unit. And then, you’ll be ready to tackle your actual cleaning responsibilities once your music’s all taken care of — and you’ll have some seriously clutch playlists to get you through.

Hide Old Spotify Playlists

Playlists are kind of like digital scrapbooks — each song reminds you of a specific time and place, and even if you don’t keep that playlist on repeat like you used to, you probably don’t want to toss it away either. If your list of playlists continues to grow, making it hard to find the one you’re looking for, you can hide some of your older mixes in a folder without deleting them altogether.

All you need to do is create a folder to store your playlists and hide them from the collection of playlists you use more often. You can also use folders to separate your playlists by genre or occasion, so you can quickly find a girls’ night out soundtrack or crank your favorite holiday tunes. Here’s how it works:

1. Open Spotify (Note: folders can only be created in the desktop app or web player).
2. Navigate to your playlists on the left side of your screen.
3. Right-click on any playlist.
4. Select “Create folder.”
5. Give your folder a name (e.g. “Old Summer Jams”) and hit enter.

To add playlists to your folder, all you have to do is drag and drop into the folder and you’re good to go. You can even make a folder within a folder by right-clicking a playlist folder and selecting “Create folder.” Folder-ception. All the folders you create will show up in your playlist section (including on your mobile app), and any playlists you add to folders will be removed from the playlist section and stored in the folders.

How To Navigate Your Library In Spotify

If you’ve had your Spotify account for a while, you’ve probably accumulated more songs than you can keep track of. In April 2021, Spotify added a feature that lets you sort through your entire library — all the tunes you’ve liked, the artists you’ve followed, and the playlists you’ve created — with a simple search. To find that one song from 2016 you can’t get out of your head:

1. Open the Spotify app.
2. Navigate to the “Your Library” tab.
3. Tap the magnifying glass on the top of the screen.
4. Search the name of the artist, song, playlist, or podcast in the search bar.
5. To enhance your search, you can also select the filter that best applies, like Downloaded, Artists, Podcasts & Shows, and more.

You can also search through your saved songs, playlists, artists, and more on the desktop app, but you won’t be able to access them all at the same time. To do so:

1. Open Spotify on desktop.
2. Navigate to your Liked Songs to find a song, or Your Library and select the category you want to search through (either Playlists, Artists, Albums, or Podcasts).
3. Tap the magnifying glass above your saved songs.
4. Search the name of the artist or song in the search bar.

How To Rearrange Your Library In Spotify

Looking for a method to the madness that is your music library? There’s a way to restructure your music to make sorting through your years-old collection much more manageable, and you don’t even have to do it yourself. Here’s what you need to do:

1. Open Spotify.
2. Navigate to the “Your Library” tab.
3. Underneath the search bar, tap the organizational filter that says “Recently Played.”
4. Select how you want to sort your music, either by Creator, Alphabetical, or Recently Added.

You can also use these filters on each category (Playlist, Artists, Albums, etc.) to curate your order preferences even further.

Like Songs To Easily Find Them Later

It happens to everyone — you’re listening to your Daily Mix playlist and come across a song you really like, but after it ends, you don’t remember what the song was called or who it was by. Luckily, there’s an easy work-around for times like these that’s been sitting in front of you the whole time. Next time you hear a song you want to return to, follow these steps:

1. Tap the three dots either next to the song title or in the top right corner of the song page.
2. Tap “Like.”
3. Later, when you’re struggling to remember the title, go to the “Your Library” tab.
4. Select the “Liked Songs” filter.
5. Tap the sorting option that lets you organize your music by Alphabetical, Creator, etc., and select “Recently Added.” (Note: This only works on the app, not the desktop version.)

If you liked the song recently, it should be waiting for you at the top of the list.

Spring cleaning or not, these hacks are ideal for keeping your Spotify library in order all year long.