How to Enable Automatic Downloads for Music on Mac

Do you listen to a lot of music on your Mac when you’re browsing, working on your documents, or doing anything else? In that case, you may be interested in learning about the Music app’s automatic downloads feature that allows you to store your songs locally for offline listening.

Apple Music subscribers get access to an extremely handy feature called iCloud Music Library which allows them to conveniently store their entire song collection on the cloud and sync it across all the Apple devices that are logged in to the same iCloud account. By default, when this feature is enabled, all the songs that you add to your music library are automatically stored on iCloud rather than your device to save storage space. However, for those Mac users who like to listen to music when they’re traveling and not always connected to Wi-Fi, this might not be the ideal setting.

If you’re one of these users, we got you covered. In this article, we’ll be guiding you through the necessary steps on how to enable automatic downloads for Music on Mac.

Enabling Automatic Downloads for Music on MacOS

Note that this procedure is only useful for those who use iCloud Music Library which relies on an Apple Music or iTunes Match subscription. Here’s what you need to do:

1. First of all, launch the stock Music app on your Mac from the Dock.
   
   
2. Now, make sure the Music app is the active window, and then click on ‘Music’ from the menu bar.
   
   
3. Next, select ‘Preferences’ from the dropdown menu to bring up the settings panel for the Music app.
   
   
4. Make sure you’re in the General section of the menu. Here, you’ll find the Automatic Downloads option right below Sync Library. Simply check the box next to “Automatic Downloads” and click OK to save your changes.
   
   

That’s all you have to do. If you don’t click OK in the Preferences panel, the changes you made will revert and you may fail to notice it.

From now on, all the songs that you add to your Apple Music library will be locally stored on your Mac in addition to iCloud, so they’ll be readily available for listening even if you’re not connected to the internet.

Note that this will only affect the songs that you add to your library once you’ve changed the setting. The rest of the existing songs that are stored on iCloud will remain on the cloud unless you manually download them to your Mac.

Do you use a PC instead of a Mac by any chance? Although there’s no Music app for Windows, you can make use of these exact same features using iTunes on PC. Simply go to Edit -> Preferences in iTunes and head over to the Downloads section to access these options. Feel free to check out the detailed guide here.

Did you set Music app to automatically download all your new songs? Did you do this to make sure your music is easily available for offline listening? How often do you listen to music offline on your Mac? What are your thoughts on this hidden feature? Do share your personal opinions and don’t forget to leave your valuable feedback in the comments section down below.