Playlists on MacOS

[simoncn]

You don't open your .flac files in a text editor. A .m3u8 playlist file is a plain text file containing a list of file paths for audio files. The file paths can be absolute or they can be relative to the folder containing the .m3u8 file.

Here is an example with absolute paths:

The playlist file path is /Users/myUser/myMusic/myPlaylists/example1.m3u8. It contains the following lines:

/Users/myUser/myMusic/Album1/file1.flac
/Users/myUser/myMusic/Album2/file2.flac
/Users/myUser/myMusic/Album3/file3.flac

Here is an example with relative paths:

The playlist file path is /Users/myUser/myMusic/myPlaylists/example2.m3u8. It contains the following lines:

../Album1/file1.flac
../Album2/file2.flac
../Album3/file3.flac

Using relative paths allows the playlist file and audio files to be moved to a different location without needing to edit the playlist file.

Here is an example with audio files on a mounted volume and absolute paths:

The playlist file path is /Users/myUser/myMusic/myPlaylists/example3.m3u8. It contains the following lines:

/Volumes/myHDD/otherMusic/Album1/file1.flac
/Volumes/myHDD/otherMusic/Album2/file2.flac
/Volumes/myHDD/otherMusic/Album3/file3.flac