Tip: Share a Groove Playlist

Groove has recently picked up a new playlist sharing feature on both Windows 10 and iPhone. Here’s how it works.

Note: Yes, I assume this is coming to Groove for Android as well.

I wrote about the arrival of playlist sharing in Groove for Windows 10 last week and then spent several days waiting to actually use this feature for reasons that I’d rather forget. But there are some caveats that all Groove users should understand.

First, you need the latest version of Groove. On Windows 10, this will work with both Windows 10 version 1607 (the Anniversary Update) and 1703 (the Creators Update). To share from Groove for iPhone, you just need to have the latest version of the app: This feature was added in version 11.0221.1837.

Second, you basically need to have a Groove Music Pass. If you share a playlist with someone who does not have a Groove Music Pass, they won’t even be able to save it. And if they play the shared playlist, they will hear 30-second clips of each song, not the full songs.

If you qualify, Playlist sharing works identically on both platforms: Simply navigate to the personal playlist you wish to share and locate the Share button.

Note: You cannot share Microsoft-created dynamic playlists like those in Your Groove directly. The workaround is to save such a playlist as a personal playlist (choose Add to > New Playlist) and then share that playlist. Put another way, only those playlists that are available in the Playlists list can be shared.

What you see next will depend on the platform.

On the iPhone (and soon, I bet, on Android), Groove will display the system Share pane and you can choose which app you’d like to use to Share the playlist. (You can also copy a link to the playlist to the clipboard and then paste it elsewhere.)

On Windows 10, you will see a pop-up menu with Share to Facebook, Share to Twitter, Copy link, and More options.

The More options choice will launch the system-wide Share interface. In Windows 10 version 1607, this is the old Windows 8-style Share pane that appears on the right side of the screen. But in Windows 10 version 1703, you get the new Share interface, which appears as a floating window in the center of the screen.

Regardless of the platform, sharing works as expected. If you share via an email application, for example, a new email message will be created with a link to the playlist.

On the receiving end, selecting the shared item will of course open the Groove app and display the shared playlist. This works the same on Windows 10 and iPhone. To save the shared playlist to your own account, select Add to > New Playlist (or whatever).

It’s possible that playlists that include personal music saved to OneDrive may not share completely. I have not tested this yet, however. (It’s possible that Groove will match some personal songs to the Groove cloud collection. I will test this for Windows 10 Field Guide in the near future.)

One final note: If you receive a shared playlist on a platform for which there is no Groove client, like the Mac, the playlist will instead load in the Groove web client. (Or, it will try to. I assume this will work correctly eventually.)