How to Use Apple Music Emoji Reactions in iOS 18

Collaborative playlists in Apple Music allow multiple users to curate shared tracklists, and iOS 18 utilizes emoji reactions as an interactive feedback and voting mechanism. This guide explains how to enable collaborative playlists, cast emoji reactions on specific songs, view feedback from other contributors, and use those reactions to collectively curate your music.

Setting Up a Collaborative Playlist

To use emoji reactions, the playlist must have collaboration enabled:

  1. Open the Music app on iOS 18.
  2. Select an existing playlist or create a new one.
  3. Tap the Collaborate icon (a silhouette of a person with a plus sign) in the top-right corner.
  4. Toggle on Approve Collaborators if you want to manually verify who joins, then tap Start Collaboration.
  5. Share the invite link with friends via Messages, Mail, AirDrop, or other sharing options.

Once participants accept the invitation, all members gain the ability to add, reorder, remove, and react to tracks.

How to React to Songs with Emojis

Collaborators can react to any track on the playlist directly from the playlist view or the Now Playing screen.

  • From the Playlist View: Look for the small smiley face reaction button next to any track in the list. Tap it to open the quick-reaction menu.
  • From the Now Playing Screen: While playing a song from the collaborative playlist, tap the smiley face reaction icon located below the album artwork.

The quick-reaction tray displays commonly used emojis, such as a heart, thumbs up, fire, crying-laughing face, and thumbs down. Tapping the + button allows you to choose any emoji from your standard iOS keyboard.

Using Reactions as a Voting System

Apple Music does not automatically delete or reorder tracks based on reactions; instead, emoji reactions serve as an active visual polling system for the group:

  • Visual Popularity: Every reaction applied to a track appears as a small badge beside the track title. Popular tracks accumulate multiple visible badges.
  • Contributor Breakdown: Tapping on an existing emoji badge displays a list showing exactly which collaborator left each specific reaction.
  • Group Consensus: Collaborators can use positive emojis (like fire or thumbs up) to signal approval, and negative emojis (like thumbs down) to suggest that a song should be skipped or removed by the playlist owner.

Editing or Removing Reactions

You can change or remove your vote at any time:

  1. Tap the emoji reaction next to the song or on the Now Playing screen.
  2. Tap your existing reaction to deselect and remove it, or tap a different emoji to replace it.