Since there's no way to automatically back up individual Music playlists on macOS Catalina and Big Sur, this script uses UI scripting to automate the exporting of playlists. Note that your Mac must be awake and the Music app must have focus the entire time that the script is running. To prevent the script from running while you're doing other things, the first thing it does is ask if you want to run the backup. Click "Yes" to run the backup. Click "No," and the script will quit. (If you don't do anything for 10 seconds, the script will quit.)
- Use
backup-playlists-catalina.applescriptfor macOS Catalina. - Use
backup-playlists-big-sur.applescriptfor macOS Big Sur.
The script saves the playlist files in a subdirectory of your Documents folder called Playlist Backup. If the Playlist Backup directory doesn't exist, the script will create it. If you want to change the subdirectory, find this line
set backupFolder to "Playlist Backup"
and replace "Playlist Backup" with another name. The name must be enclosed in quotes.
The script will create a subdirectory for each day that it runs. That directory is named with the current year, month and day in the format YYYYMMDD. For example, if you run the script on July 2, 2020, the playlist files will be stored in ~/Documents/Playlist Backup/20200702.
In version 1.0.0, the files were exported in the last format that had been manually selected. For example, if you manually exported a playlist as an M3U file, the script would also create its backups as M3U files until the format was manually changed.
In version 1.1.0, the export format is explicitly set to XML by default. To change the format, find this line
set backupFormat to "XML"
and replace "XML" with a different format. The format name must be enclosed in quotes. Valid formats are
- "Plain Text"
- "Unicode Text"
- "XML"
- "M3U"
- "M3U8"
The code is released into the public domain. (See the UNLICENSE file.)