How to Share a Spotify Playlist on Mobile and Desktop

If you create a Spotify playlist and share it with your friends, they are likely to become Spotify listeners too. But how exactly do you share a playlist from Spotify, and what are the differences between the mobile and desktop experiences? Whether you have a free Spotify plan or a premium one, you can create and share playlists. Here is how to do it from the mobile app, the desktop app and the web-based player. How do you share a Spotify playlist? Let's take a look together!

How Do You Share a Spotify Playlist on Mobile?

• To share a Spotify playlist using the mobile app, first choose a playlist from the Home, Search or Your Library tabs. The first thing you will see is the playlist's name and cover image. Under the description you will see a heart, a download icon and three dots.
• Tap the three dots and a menu will open. You will also notice that just below the cover image, next to the Spotify logo, there is a colored bar that looks like a sound wave graphic made up of a series of long and short vertical lines. This is your playlist's share code, a unique identifier anyone with the Spotify app can use to jump straight to the playlist. Just tap that share code image and let your friend scan it using their smartphone's camera. Alternatively, you can save that screen to your camera roll and send (or post) it to whoever you want. Of course, not everyone wants to give the Spotify app permission to use their camera, and no matter how cool this way of sharing is, not everyone can be bothered to do it.
• For more sharing options, keep scrolling through the list under the playlist's cover image until you find Share, which will probably be the second-to-last option. When you tap Share, a new screen will open, this time with all your sharing options. Keep in mind that these sharing options may not be the same on every device. Currently on iOS, the sharing options include:

1. Snapchat
2. Messages
3. WhatsApp
4. Instagram Stories
5. Facebook Messenger
6. Facebook
7. Twitter

• Follow the prompts each option gives you to share your playlist through these services. Remember, they do not all share the same way. For example, Twitter uses a URL link and automatically pre-fills a tweet with it. There is no option to send a DM instead. Sharing through Facebook, on the other hand, sends an image to the Facebook app with a customized Play on Spotify button that you can then share in your feed or on your Facebook Story. People who click the button will be taken to the same web-based Spotify player as with Twitter.

How Do You Share a Spotify Playlist on the Web?

There are two ways to share playlists in the Spotify desktop app. The first is to find the playlist you want to share in the Playlists section of the app's left-hand navigation column. Right-clicking any playlist in this section opens a context menu with various available actions, including Share. When you hover your cursor over the Share option, a second layer appears with all your sharing options:

1. Snapchat
2. Messages
3. WhatsApp
4. Instagram Stories
5. Facebook Messenger
6. Facebook
7. Twitter

Similar to the mobile app, each of these sharing options works slightly differently. The most notable difference in the desktop sharing options is in the last two: Copy Embed Code and Copy Spotify URI.

• Copying the embed code lets you paste a piece of HTML into a web page or sometimes a social media site like Facebook. Doing so embeds a standalone Spotify web player, pre-filled to play the playlist you shared, into a web page. With the Spotify URI, you copy a smaller piece of code, like a kind of web address or URL but one that only works in the Spotify mobile or desktop apps. You can send someone a Spotify URI by email if you know they have one of the apps on their device, but otherwise the regular playlist link is a safer bet.
• If reading about this second process gives you déjà vu, it is because the desktop and mobile versions of the app are very similar to each other - a thoughtful design feature. If you want to share your playlists from your desktop, here is what you need to do: click the three-dots menu as you would in the mobile app. Select Share and review your various options, then choose the one you want.

Now that we have given you several methods to share your Spotify playlists, you can start sending music recommendations to your loved ones.