Back up and transfer playlists

Playlists & Collections, updated October 27, 2026

Your playlists live inside Luma. To make them survive a reinstall or a new device, you save them with the Luma Data backup as a small file and read them back in later. Collections, likes and listening stats come along too.

What's in the backup

The backup is a JSON file with your playlist names, their order, and for every song its title, artist, album, length and track number. Plus the cover style and the settings of a generated pattern cover. Since Luma 1.5.1 and Luma for Mac 1.0.1 it also contains your collections and every song's likes and listening stats, and since Luma 1.7 and Luma for Mac 1.2.0 your dynamic playlists with their rules.

The audio files themselves aren't included. That keeps the file tiny, but it means the music has to be imported into Luma on the target device as well. A photo cover is saved as a mosaic, because the photo never leaves your device. Your settings are not part of the backup. Every field of the file and a comparison with the library export are in Export and backup: What's included?

Export

• All playlists: Settings › Library & Storage › Backup › Export Data. On the Mac, File › Export Data… (⇧⌘E) or Settings › Library › Backup.
• A single playlist: in the playlist's menu (•••), choose Export Playlist. That file only contains the playlist.

Then save the file wherever you like, for example in iCloud Drive. The default name is “Luma Daten” with the date, or the playlist's name for a single playlist. Up to Luma 1.5 the export was in the menu of the Playlists tab.

Import

1. Music firstImport your music first, so Luma can match the songs. The other way round works too, see below.
2. Read in the backupChoose Settings › Library & Storage › Backup › Import Data and pick the file. On the Mac: File › Import Data… (⇧⌘I). This also works for the file of a single playlist and for older files such as Luma Playlists.json.
3. Check the resultLuma reports how many playlists it imported and how many songs aren't in your library yet.

Luma matches every song against your library by title, artist and album. Small differences in spelling, such as a guest artist written differently or “(Deluxe Edition)” in the album name, don't get in the way. How it works in detail is in How Luma matches songs.

Playlists that already exist (same name) aren't created twice. Luma only adds the songs from the backup that are still missing in them. If you read in the same file twice, nothing changes: Everything in this file is already here.

Grey songs: not in your library yet

If Luma can't find a song, it appears greyed out at the end of the playlist in the Not in Library section, with the title and artist from the backup. Luma remembers its place in the order.

• Import the song later: as soon as you import it, Luma recognizes it and puts it back in its place in the playlist automatically.
• Remove one: touch and hold the grey entry (Mac: right-click) and choose Remove from Playlist.
• Remove all: tap Remove All next to the section heading. After that, these songs no longer come back into the playlist by themselves, even if you import them later.
• Match by hand (Mac): double-click the grey entry or right-click it and choose Match Song…, then pick the right song from your library. It takes the entry's place.

Tutorial: Moving to a new iPhone

If you restore your new iPhone from an iCloud or computer backup, Luma comes along with your music and playlists, see Storage, backup & a new iPhone. For every other case:

1. Export on the old deviceSettings › Library & Storage › Backup › Export Data, save it to iCloud Drive.
2. Import the music on the new deviceEasiest from the same folder as the first time.
3. Import the backupSettings › Library & Storage › Backup › Import Data. Your playlists, collections, likes and stats are back.

More workflows, such as moving from iPhone to Mac or reinstalling, are in Tips and special cases.

Still have a question or found a mistake? Email hello@suenavus.com.