How to add Apple Music albums, playlists, and artists to your iPhone Home Screen to play them in one tap

In this tutorial, we’ll show you how to add your favorite Apple Music playlists, albums, or artists to the your iPhone or iPad Home Screen so you can play them directly from there in just one tap.

These will also work if you are not an Apple Music subscriber but have songs saved locally in the iOS Music app.

Apple Music playlists, albums, and artists added to the iPhone Home Screen to listen to them in just one tap

Optional customization tip: Before you begin, download the album art from the web and use that as the album, artist, or playlist icon on the iPhone Home Screen (step 8 below).

Add music playlist to Home Screen

1) Open the Shortcuts app on your iPhone or iPad and tap Gallery.

2) Type Play Playlist in the search bar and tap the Play Playlist shortcut that has a red tile.

Play playlist shortcut on iPhone

3) Tap Set Up Shortcut.

4) Touch Choose and select one of your playlists.

5) After that, tap Add Shortcut.

Choose your playlist for shortcut

6) Now, tap Shortcuts from the bottom right to see all your added shortcuts.

7) Touch & hold the Play Playlist shortcut and tap Share > Add to Home Screen.

Add playlist shortcut to iPhone Home Screen

8) Optional: You can customize the icon and make it meaningful. To do that, tap the smaller icon > Choose Photo > select the album art you downloaded earlier or any other image > Choose. You can also change the Play Playlist name to something precise like Play Daft Punk, Daft Punk PL, or Morning Playlist.

9) Finally, tap Add.

Set cover art for playlist shortcut

10) Now, go to your iPhone Home Screen, and you’ll find the shortcut here. Just tap it, and it will automatically start playing the chosen playlist. It won’t open the Music app or anything. Just one tap, and your songs start!

One tap playlist play button added to iPhone Home Screen
Tap the shortcut on iPhone Home Screen to play it.

You can follow the above steps for your other playlists and have a few on the Home Screen.

Add artist and album to iPhone Home Screen

Just like playlists, you can have your favorite artists and albums on your iPhone or iPad Home Screen and play them with a single tap. The basics are the same as above, but here’s a quick recap:

1) Open the Shortcuts app > Gallery.

2) Search for Play an Artist or Play an Album and tap it.

Play an artist and Play an album shortcut on iPhone

3) Tap Set Up Shortcut and enter the name of the artist or album precisely. Tip: Open the Music app and note the correct artist or album spelling and type that here.

4) After that, tap Add Shortcut.

5) Now, go to the Shortcuts section of the Shortcuts app, tap & hold over the Play an Artist or Play an Album shortcut and choose Share > Add to Home Screen > Add.

Enter artist or album name in shortcut

Make the shortcut button bigger

The playlist, album, or artist album you add to your iPhone Home Screen will have the same size as a regular app icon. But you can make it bigger by using the Shortcuts app widget.

Note: You can’t use a custom album cover image when you show a shortcut in the widget.

1) Follow the regular steps to add the shortcuts widget to your iPhone Screen: Tap & hold over an empty area of the Home Screen > plus button > Shortcuts and tap Add Widget below the first option of a square shortcut. You can go with the second or third widget sizes if you have many shortcuts.

Add shortcuts widget to iPhone Home Screen

2) Tap the shortcut while still in editing mode.

3) Now, tap the current shortcut name and pick any other shortcut you want to show on the Home Screen.

4) After that, return to the Home Screen by touching the area outside the shortcut tile and tapping Done.

Choose Play Playlist shortcut for widget on Home Screen

Now, you have a big Shortcuts widget on the iPhone Home Screen. Tapping it will trigger the chosen shortcut. In our case, this is the Play Playlist shortcut.

Play Playlist shortcut as widget on iPhone Home Screen
Tap this shortcut widget to listen to the playlist.

Besides using shortcuts (which we saw above), you can also add the Music widget to your iPhone Home Screen. But this widget can’t be customized to your liking and will only show content your iPhone thinks you might want to listen to.

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