Apple’s Music app in iOS 26 gains my favorite feature from the Mac

One major theme of Apple’s software this year is unification, as seen in the new Liquid Glass design and more cross-platform feature parity. In the realm of improving app feature parity across platforms, there’s a great new capability in iOS 26’s Music app that had previously been exclusive to the Mac: playlist folder creation.

Playlist folders can now be created in Music app on iPhone and iPad

More so than most Apple apps, the Music app has a complex history of offering different functionality on the Mac than on iPhone and iPad.

In part, that’s because the Mac version of Music was formerly iTunes.

Apple gave it a facelift and rebrand years ago, but much of the legacy iTunes functionality is still around—yet never came to the iOS Music app.

There’s one prominent example I’ve always wanted on my iPhone and iPad: playlist folder creation.

The Mac’s Music app has long offered the ability to organize your playlists into folders. Those folders would then sync to your other devices, but you could never create or edit them outside of macOS.

Fortunately, iOS and iPadOS 26 have fixed that limitation.

Now, playlist folders can be created and playlists moved between folders right from your iPhone or iPad.

This is the kind of feature I thought would never expand beyond the Mac.

Folder creation has existed for so long on macOS, and Apple year after year neglected to bring the feature to its other platforms. I just assumed that eventually, it would disappear altogether, even from the Mac.

I’m excited to be wrong, because I don’t use a Mac often, and playlist folders are an excellent way to keep my growing music library organized.

When it comes to personal feature requests, this is now the second Music feature I’ve long wanted that Apple added in iOS 26, joining pinned music.

Did you know that playlist folders existed in Apple’s Music app? Do you think you’ll use them in iOS 26? Let us know in the comments.

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