Shortcut for playing an up-to-date playlist on homepods

I need some help creating a shortcut to play music from a playlist that stays up to date with said playlist.


I created a simple shortcut to play music on a couple of my homepods. In the shortcut I selected an entire playlist within the Music app and set my shuffle/repeat options as desired. I then created an automation to run this shortcut at a certain time every day so I can wake up to music in that playlist.


It's been a couple months and I thought things were good, until I heard a song that I deleted from that playlist. How can I make a shortcut that plays the current songs in a playlist? I've also tried fetching a playlist, adding it to play next, and then switching audio to my homepods but that has its own issues that are even worse than playing an out-of-date playlist.


I have many frustrations with shortcuts and I've been finding the limits of what it can do and each time I'm unpleasantly surprised just how poorly implemented the entire shortcuts experience is. I'm a software dev with a decade of experience and am not afraid of getting more programatic with my solutions, but even when I try building more complex shortcuts they either don't work as intended, work for a short time before breaking, or the tools I need don't exist.


Does anyone know of an alternative to shortcuts & IFTTT? Even IFTTT doesn't meet my needs and I really don't want to pay for a product I know won't work for me.

Posted on Dec 3, 2025 6:48 AM

Reply
1 reply

Dec 7, 2025 7:12 PM in response to irate_apple

Use a URL Scheme to tell Music to play the live playlist

This works because Apple Music URLs always point to the current playlist.

Steps

  1. Open Apple Music → right-click the playlist → Share → Copy Link
  2. Example:
  3. https://music.apple.com/us/playlist/my-morning/pl.u-xxxxx
  4. In Shortcuts:
    • Add Open URLs
    • Paste the playlist link
    • Add Set Playback Destination → [Your HomePods]
    • Add Play/Pause if necessary

This forces Music to:

  • open the latest version of the playlist
  • stream it to your HomePods
  • obey shuffle/repeat based on your default player state

🎉 Songs added or removed update instantly.

This is currently the most reliable “Apple-supported” method.

Shortcut for playing an up-to-date playlist on homepods

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