Where to look for a playlist in a Xiaomi phone: 5 storage places in MIUI

You downloaded music on Xiaomi, but you can't find the saved playlists, or you want to transfer your favorite tracks to a new smartphone, but you don't know where they are stored? The problem is that in MIUI, playlists can be hidden in different places, depending on the firmware version, the phone model and the music player you use, and in this article we'll look at all possible locations, including hidden folders and cloud services.

It’s important to understand that a playlist is not just a folder of songs, but a separate file (usually with the extension.m3u,.pls or.wpl) that contains links to tracks. At Xiaomi, such files can be created automatically or manually, but their location often causes confusion. We will show where to look for ready-made playlists, how to export them and what to do if they disappear after updating.

1. Standard application "Music" (Mi Music Player)

By default, all Xiaomi, Redmi and POCO smartphones have a proprietary Mi Music Player (newer versions of MIUI may simply be called Music) and this is where all automatically created playlists, such as "Favorites," "Recently Added," or "Frequently Played," are stored.

• 📱 Open the Music app** (note icon on white background).
• 🔍 Go to the Playlists tab (usually second left in the bottom menu).
• 📋 And you can see all the saved lists here, and if you want to see the tracks inside, you can tap the title.

If there are no Playlists, update the app via Google Play or the MIUI App Store. In older versions of MIUI (up to 12.5), playlists could be displayed in the My Music → Collections section.

⚠️ Note: In some regional firmware (e.g. India or China), the Music app can be replaced with Mi Music with a different interface. → Playlists.

To create a new playlist in a standard player:

1. Open any track or album.
2. Press three points (⋮) near-name.
3. Select Add to Playlist → Create a new one.
4. Set a name and press Ready.

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If the playlist doesn’t show up in the app, try rebooting your phone – sometimes MIUI doesn’t immediately index new files.

2. folder with playlists in the file manager

All playlists created in the standard Mi Music Player are stored as files in the phone's internal memory, and can be found through any file manager (e.g. Google's Files** or the standard MIUI File Manager).

/storage/emulated/0/Android/data/com.miui.player/files/Playlists/

In this directory you will see files with extensions:

• 📜.pls – format for Winamp and some other players.

If you don't have a Playlists folder, you haven't created playlists manually yet, and auto lists (like "Favorite") are stored in the app's database and not exported to files.

⚠️ Warning: Do not delete files with the.db or.dat extension in this folder, because they contain playlist metadata.

3. Cloud playlists in Mi Account

If you use a Mi Account and you've enabled sync, your playlists can be stored in the cloud, which is convenient for transferring music between Xiaomi devices, to check:

• 🌐 Open the Settings. → Accounts. → Mi Account.
• 🔄 Make sure that sync is enabled for the Music app».
• 📱 In the player, go to the Cloud or Mi Cloud section (if you have one).

The cloud does not store the tracks themselves, but only the structure of the playlists (the titles and order of the songs), and for the music to be played, the files must be accessible on the device (either in memory or through streaming).

4 Playlists in third-party applications (Spotify, VLC, Poweramp)

If you don't use a standard player, playlists can be stored elsewhere.

🎧 Spotify

At Spotify, playlists are stored on the company's servers and linked to an account, so you can see them:

1. Open the Spotify app.
2. Go to the Library. → Playlists.
3. Local playlists (with your files) will be displayed in the "Your Music" section.

🎵 VLC

In VLC for Android playlists are saved in:

/storage/emulated/0/Android/data/org.videolan.vlc/files/playlists/

The file format is.m3u8 or.xspf.

🔊 Poweramp

In Poweramp playlists are exported to:

/storage/emulated/0/Music/Poweramp/playlists/

To see them in the file manager, turn on the display of hidden folders.

⚠️ Note: Some players (like JetAudio) store playlists in encrypted form. They can't just be copied, you'll have to export them through the app menu.

Make sure the application has access to the phone memory | Check account sync settings | Update the player to the latest version |Export the playlist to the file (if there is such an option)

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5. Hidden system folders with playlists

In some versions of MIUI (especially older models like the Redmi Note 4 or Mi 5), playlists can be stored in hidden system directories to find them:

• 🔍 Use a file manager with access to root folders (e.g, FX File Explorer or Solid Explorer).
• 📁 Enable the display of hidden files in the manager settings.
• 🔎 Look for the following paths: /data/data/com.miui.player/databases/ /data/data/com.miui.player/shared_prefs/

These folders store databases (.db) with playlist information, and you can only extract playlists from there using special utilities (for example, SQLite Browser), but this requires root rights.

If you don’t have root, try an alternative method:

1. Make a backup of the Music app data via Settings → Apps → Music → Backup.
2. Transfer the backup file to your PC and unpack it (usually an.ab or.bak archive).
3. Inside, find files with playlists (see playlist, m3u keywords).

6.Recovery of lost playlists

If playlists have disappeared after resetting, updating MIUI or uninstalling the application, you can try to restore them.

🔄 Recovery through backup

If you’ve previously done backups through Mi Cloud or Google Drive:

1. Go to Settings → System and Device → Backup and Reset.
2. Select Recover Data and specify the source (cloud or local file).
3. Check the box settings of the applications → Music.

🛠️ Manual file recovery

If the playlists are missing, but the music files are still:

• 🔍 Check the folder. /Android/data/com.miui.player/files/Playlists/ file-access.m3u.
• 📋 If there are files but don’t appear in the player, open them through the text editor and check the paths to the songs (they should match the current location of the tracks).
• 🔄 Reboot your phone so that the player re-indexes files.

⚠️ Note: If you reset your phone to factory settings without backup, you can only restore playlists manually by creating them again. Automatic listings ("Favorites", "Recently added") in this case will be empty.

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Export playlists to.m3u files regularly, which is the only way to guarantee you can save them when you reset or replace your phone.

7. Frequent errors and their solutions

Xiaomi users often experience problems with playlists, and here are the most common errors and ways to fix them:

If none of these methods worked, try:

• 📥 Install an alternative player (such as Poweramp or Musicolet) and import playlists through it.
• 🔧 Reset the Music app settings in Settings → Annexes → Music. → Warehouse → Reset.
• 📧 Contact Xiaomi Support through Settings → Passport → Feedback (specify phone model and version) MIUI).

FAQ: Answers to Frequent Questions