How to make a playlist using a Mac

Hey everyone - I finally managed to figure this out with the help of some forums and with some fiddling on my own. Bear with me – this method looks a little scary but it’s actually pretty fast & easy (I am NOT a computer person and I figured this out! It works!) 

To make a Sansa clip playlist:

(**First make sure you already have the songs loaded onto your Sansa clip, in the “Music” folder)

  1. Open the application “TextEdit”

  2. In TextEdit, go to “format” on menu bar and click “plain text.” Now it should look a little different. 

  3. In the space where you can type, type “#EXTM3U” (without the quotations) and skip a line.

  4. Stay with me here! Move the TextEdit window to the side for now. Then open whichever folder has the songs you want on your playlist.  The songs have to be in mp3 format. So if you’re picking songs from iTunes, make a playlist in iTunes and then go to “File” –> “Library” –> “Export playlist,” and choose to export the playlist to your desktop.  This step is easy if your songs are already in mp3 format on a thumb drive or external hard drive. 

  5. Open the new folder on your desktop, highlight all the songs, and copy/paste them into your TextEdit window. The song titles should automatically list like in the example below. 

  6. Save the TextEdit window to your desktop with a “.m3u” extension. (example: Test.m3u) 

  7. Go to your desktop, and drag and drop this new folder into the Sansa Clip –> “music” folder.

  8. Now you should see your new playlist on your Sansa Clip. All done, enjoy! 

(PS if any of you are having trouble with those pesky files that show up as “._songtitle,” leave me a message here and I’ll get back to you. I found an easy 10 second fix for that)

An example of what you should see in your TextEdit window: 

#EXTM3U

Song1.mp3

Song2.mp3

Song3.mp3

Song4.mp3

Song5.mp3

Thanks for posting your tutorial!  :slight_smile:

Nicely written if I may add. This should be added in the knowledge base(KB).

Hi

I’m struggling with the process to create a playlist from mac to clipzip.

I followed your directions, but when it comes to saving the text edit file as NAME.M3U I get an error message saying: "you cannot save this file with extension “.m3u” at the end of the name. The required extension is “.rtf”.

It will allow me to save the text edit document as NAME.m3u.rtf (both extensions) but I doubt this is doable. In fact, I just checked it on the Clip Zip and each playlist is empty.

Also, the songs come along with all the details, like album, date, etc. NOT the way I expected per your sample.

so, any help you can provide will be MOST WELCOME!

The whole reason why I purchased this mp3 player is to make specific playlists with specific songs in a specific order…and it’s just quite frustrating to have already spent 2 hours messing with this to no avail.

Thanks again if you can provide any help.

Hi

I’m struggling with the process to create a playlist from mac to clipzip.

I followed your directions, but when it comes to saving the text edit file as NAME.M3U I get an error message saying: "you cannot save this file with extension “.m3u” at the end of the name. The required extension is “.rtf”.

It will allow me to save the text edit document as NAME.m3u.rtf (both extensions) but I doubt this is doable. In fact, I just checked it on the Clip Zip and each playlist is empty.

Also, the songs come along with all the details, like album, date, etc. NOT the way I expected per your sample.

so, any help you can provide will be MOST WELCOME!

The whole reason why I purchased this mp3 player is to make specific playlists with specific songs in a specific order…and it’s just quite frustrating to have already spent 2 hours messing with this to no avail.

Thanks again if you can provide any help.

Try the VLC Media Player on your Mac. It’s supposed to make .m3u playlists, which is what the Clip uses. I’m not in the Mac universe, but VLC is also great on Windows. 

http://www.videolan.org/vlc/download-macosx.html

I am still having trouble getting my Sansa Sport to load my playlist.

I use your steps and my file looks like your sample.

The songs in mp3 format are alreadyloaded in the Music folder.

When I turn on the Sansa Sport, click music, then click playlists,

I see my playlist title under Playlists, but when I click on it, the display indicates (Empty)

The playlist is a list that points to the locations of the songs.

The playlist you made on your computer points to the songs on your computer. It probably  needs to find the songs on the unit.

Also, make sure you transferred the songs themselves and not the Finder files that Mac makes, which are ._1.FirstSong.mp3  (starts with period underscore) and are 0kb in size. Those aren’t the songs.

Hello,

Thank you for the making a playlist post.  I do have the “._playlist” files showing up along with the regular playlist flies. The normal looking files work fine but the “._” files don’t work and are taking up space. You said you have a fix for them?

You can just delete the finder files from the unit–though they’re not very big, less than 1kb.  Don’t forget to empty the Trash on the Mac before disconnecting. 

I followed your directions.  It didn’t show up in a nice list like you showed .  I will still be trying to get this to work

Hi. When I paste the text edit file it doesn’t look like yours. It looks like this: 

#EXTM3U

<?xml version=“1.0” encoding=“UTF-8”?>
<!DOCTYPE plist PUBLIC “-//Apple Computer//DTD PLIST 1.0//EN” “http://www.apple.com/DTDs/PropertyList-1.0.dtd”>
<plist version=“1.0”>
<dict>
<key>Major Version</key><integer>1</integer>
<key>Minor Version</key><integer>1</integer>
<key>Date</key><date>2019-04-13T01:12:16Z</date>
<key>Application Version</key><string>12.9.4.94</string>
<key>Features</key><integer>5</integer>
<key>Music Folder</key><string>file:///Users/xx/Music/iTunes/iTunes%20Media/</string>
<key>Library Persistent ID</key><string>B07E87AB5619B5F6</string>
<key>Tracks</key>
<dict>

When opening the xml file on my desktop, which app do I use to open it? I used text edit and got the above.   Thanks much!

Pete

Maybe take a look at the messages in this related topic on the SanDisk Forum.

https://forums.sandisk.com/t5/SanDisk-Clip-Sport/Creating-m3u-Playlists-for-Clip-Sport-on-a-Mac/m-p/355154/highlight/true#M3056

I know im super late to this post and no one will probably respond, but whats the fix for if the playlist is showing up as ._name ? I’m trying to load some songs on my ancient mp3 player

Hello, I still like to check into this Forum a few times a week to see what’s happening…

From your short comment, I think you are seeing some dot-underscore “._” files. These are created by Mac OSX when copying files to a FAT32 drive.  I like to use the OSX app “HiM” to delete these files as the last step in file management with my Clip Sport or Clip Jam.  Here is a weblink to read about the HiM App.

https://www.macupdate.com/app/mac/52076/him 

As for your question about Playlists, maybe take a look at my comments in this message link on this Forum.

https://forums.sandisk.com/t5/SanDisk-Clip-Sport/Creating-m3u-Playlists-for-Clip-Sport-on-a-Mac/m-p/355154/highlight/true#M3056