Creating and Using an iPod On-The-Go Playlist

Working with playlists that you create in iTunes is useful, but you can also create a single playlist (called the On-The-Go playlist) on the iPod and listen to that playlist as much as you'd like. This enables you to create a playlist when you are away from your computer to listen to a specific collection of music.

tip

When you are viewing a playlist including the On-The-Go playlist that contains the song that is currently playing, it is marked with a speaker icon.

To add a song to your On-The-Go playlist, view a list such as the list of songs on an album on which the song is listed. Highlight the song you want to add and hold down the Select button until the highlighting on the song flashes. Continue adding songs using the same process until you have added a group of songs to the playlist.

To see the contents of your On-The-Go playlist, select Main menu, Music, Playlists, On-The-Go; the current On-The-Go playlist will always be at the bottom of the Playlists menu. You will see the contents of the On-The-Go playlist you have created. You can play this playlist just like any other playlist on your iPod.

When you connect your iPod to your computer, the On-The-Go playlist will be transferred into iTunes and will be available on the iTunes Source List.

If you want to clear the On-The-Go playlist, select Main menu, Music, Playlists, On-The-Go, Clear Playlist, Clear Playlist (no, that isn't a mistake, you select this command twice, but each is on a different screen). All the songs that were in the playlist will be removed, and it will become empty again. (The songs that were in that playlist are not removed from your iPod; the playlist is just cleared of those songs.)

note

As far as I know, you can't remove just a single song from the On-The-Go playlist; you have to remove all of them or none of them. Also, you can't use the same techniques to add songs to or remove playlists you created in iTunes. This works only for the On-The-Go playlist.

After you have transferred the On-The-Go playlist to your iTunes Library, you can create a new On-The-Go playlist on your iPod by using the steps you learned in this section. When you connect your iPod to your computer again, this version of the playlist will also be added to your iTunes Source List, but a sequential number will be added to its name to keep the versions straight (as in On-The-Go 14).

Each time you synch your iPod with your iTunes Library and these playlists are part of the synch options, each On-The-Go playlist will be added to your iPod. You can listen to them just like other playlists.

No matter how many of these playlists you accumulate, the current On-The-Go playlist will always be the last entry on the Playlists menu.