[3 Methods] How to Recover iTunes Lost Playlists

Recently, I met an issue that I lost all my iTunes playlists, but I did nothing. So I resorted to Apple Community for help. The same thing happened to lots of people, but most of them represented that the issue happened after updating iTunes. Whatever, I had to solve this problem. I browsed quite a few posts on Apple Community about similar issues like “don’t see entire library after updating iTunes”, “empty/corrupt iTunes library after upgrade/crash”, and “how to recover iTunes lost playlists”. With my several attempts, I solved this issue and concluded 3 ways to fix it. Just follow me to know more details.

• Why does iTunes lose playlist accidentally
• Method 1: Recover iTunes lost playlist from iPhone/iPad directly
• Method 2: Recover iTunes lost playlist using iTunes backup
• Method 3: Recover iTunes lost playlist through library.xml file

Why does iTunes lose playlist accidentally

As most of Apple users mentioned, it always happens after you upgrade iTunes. But it’s not the only reason. As for me, I didn’t upgrade iTunes but still lost my playlist. So it can also be caused by other programs or computer errors. Some file clean-up tools may delete iTunes file by accident. And computer virus can also damage your iTunes library.
Certainly, there may be other reasons. But you can still follow below ways to fix it with ease.

Method 1: Recover iTunes lost playlist from iPhone/iPad directly

If you have ever synced iTunes library with iPhone/iPad, you can transfer playlist from iPhone to iTunes directly, but it only allows to transfer purchased music. So here recommend a powerful iOS data transfer program – Leawo iTransfer. It can help you to transfer purchased and non-purchased songs/playlist to iTunes with simple clicks. Moreover, you can resort to it to transfer up to 12 kinds of data including App, Music, Movies, TV Shows, Books, Ringtones, Camera, Photos, Contacts, SMS, Bookmarks, Notes, USB Storage. More convenient thing is that it can process transfer task among iOS devices, iTunes and computer freely and it offers an easy to use UI for the novice and advanced users.

1. Launch Leawo iTransfer and connect your iPhone/iPad to computer with USB cable.
2. At the left sidebar, choose “iPhone > PLAYLIST” and select a playlist that lost in iTunes. Then choose all of songs in this playlist and right click on the songs. There will pop up a menu and choose “Transfer to > iTunes”.

3. With the progress of transfer done, you can see iTunes lost playlists are back.

Method 2: Recover iTunes lost playlist using iTunes backup

If you have ever backed up iTunes library, it would be easy to recover your iTunes lost playlists. Just follow below steps.
1. Drag iTunes folder you backed up to default location of iTunes library. In general, the path is C:\Users\[your username]\Music\iTunes
2. Launch iTunes while pressing Shift key (Windows) or Options key (Mac).
3. The window “Choose iTunes Library” will pop up, choose “Choose Library”.

Method 3: Recover iTunes lost playlist through library.xml file

1. Find library.xml file
In general, you can find it in this path: C:\Users\[your username]\Music\iTunes. Then find a file called iTunes Music Library.xml and make a copy to computer desktop or another folder.

2. Delete the file called iTunes Library.itl.
3. Launch iTunes and go to the File menu. Select Library > Import Playlists... and choose the iTunes Music Library.xml that you saved.

In this case, you can see the lost playlist again.