Existing playlists not showing up when adding songs on MacBook Air

I am having the same problem. Clearly it is related to the latest software update. C’mon Apple. Folks have been experiencing this problem for over two weeks with a comment from Apple.

Same problem here. I fixed it by duplicating (right click playlist and choose duplicate) my existing Playlists and they now show up when I right click to add to playlist. Once you've duplicated them, just delete the old playlist and remove the copy from the title in the new playlist.

Same exact thing happened to me after updating to Sonoma.

I had to actually find a way around this -- "The file "Application.musicdb" cannot be read. An unknown error occurred (-54)."

Before it would even read my Apple Music library.

Long story short, I just created a new one and replaced the old one, and it worked apparently.

The only thing now is when I right click and choose "add to playlist" it only lists 8 playlists, and I have at like 50 playlists.

And the 8 playlists it lists are totally random.

I've been using Apple like 25 years, and never dealt with a single bug until the M2 chip.

I like how my laptop no longer overheats, or makes weird fan noises, but just about everything else went downhill.

It took them almost a year to finally address and fix this major bug that wouldn't recognize files that were put into a new folder.

Now the GUI makes weird glitches when moving files.

The latest update also messed with my Bean writing app.

It's like they make us buy a new laptop every 5 years because of planned obsolescence. And then they replace it with something even worse.

Itunes was so much better than what we have now for example.

I can't use that old photoshop Cs6 that I loved and spent years learning.

It's like that old phrase if it aint broke don't fix it, but in reverse.

I hate it when they force us to use new apps or technology just to get more money out of us, but replacing it with something even worse is like pouring salt in the wound.

Joey,

I tried to follow your instructions, but when I right click on Playlist in the sidebar at the left in Music, I don't get an option to duplicate. I get New Playlist, New Smart Playlist..., New Playlist Folder, Services>. Clicking on New Smart Playlist... opens a window to create a new smart playlist, but there is no option to Duplicate anything. Putting the cursor on Services> opens a secondary menu that does not offer Duplicate.

Please explain in more detail what you did. It sounds promising, and I would like to try it.

Same thing - after last Mac update, right clicking and selecting "Add to Playlist" doesnt show any of my existing playlists. Only option shown is "New Playlist."

Not sure if this is the same bug, but I have only one(?) list that doesn't show up when I try to add an album to it. Conversely, when I click Edit on that same list, "Add Music" doesn't appear either. 😐

Ya this is happening on my iPhone 15 Pro Max as well.

Really annoying.

I am having the same problem. I discovered that I can do a right-click-copy on the song, scroll to the playlist I want to add it to, then do a right-click-paste. Perhaps this will work for you too.

Same problem. I'm on an iMac M1, 2021. I can still access my playlists in the left-side nav column, but adding new songs to them is no longer possible. "Add to Playlist" only shows two playlists that I created a week or two ago. I had organized my older playlists in Playlist folders, and two of those folder appear in "Add to Playlist" but they are both greyed-out, so I can't access playlists within those folders from an individual song.

What a bummer. All those years of creating and fine-tuning my playlists... Am I supposed to recreate them all from scratch now?

I'm also having this issue, it's a real pain in the backside having built up numerous lenghty playlists which I can still see (Left panel) & play but can longer add to? - do we know if there is any talk of a fix?... Was contemplating rolling back to last release via a backup but not totally sure I actually have one - not good !!

Same problem. Must be a bug in the latest version of the OS. I presume it will be fixed soon. In the meantime, you can add songs to a playlist by an alternate method. In Music, select the songs you want to add to the playlist by highlighting them, then drag them to the appropriate name of the playlist in the sidebar on the left. That will add the songs. I just did it, and it worked.

You have to click on the actual playlist you are having issues with like in this example.

Any idea how to fix this? My older Macbook didn't have this problem. This Macbook Air doesn't allow adding to existing playlists. Just shows "new playlist".