Collaborative Apple Music playlists, a feature promised by Apple for iOS 17, will not be available until 2023. Apple updated its iOS 17 feature list [PDF] with today’s release to note that the ability to collaborate on playlists has been delayed.
Apple experimented with collaborative playlists in early iOS 17.2 betas before removing the feature in the fourth iOS 17.2 beta. There were probably bugs in the option that Apple could not fix in time to bring the feature to iOS 17.2, and since iOS 17.2 will be the last publicly available update to iOS 17 in 2023, we won’t see collaborative playlists until 2024.
Playlists gained a “Collaborate” option in the iOS 17.2 beta, which created a link to a playlist that anyone with access to could add to. Users had control over who could contribute, with the option to approve each person who inquired about joining and tools for removing users.
It is unclear when collaborative playlists in Apple Music will be available, but an iOS 17.3 update is expected in January, with testing beginning in December.
While collaborative playlists were not included in the iOS 17.2 update, Apple did include a Favorites Apple Music playlist that aggregates favorite songs.
