Import YouTube Music into Sonora

Open Library → Import music (the import icon in the library header). Import is a one-time copy into Sonora’s local database. It does not change your Google account or keep the two libraries synchronized.

Public or unlisted playlist link

1. Copy the playlist’s share link from YouTube Music or YouTube.
2. Paste it under Import a playlist link, then choose Preview playlist.
3. Review the title/count and choose Playlist, Favorites, both, or neither.
4. Tap Import selected music. Open Library → Playlists to play it.

Sonora follows subsequent pages, preserves source order and skips duplicate/unavailable entries. If a page fails, nothing is saved; retry or use an export. Account-only Likes (LM/LL), Watch Later and dynamic radio/mix links are not supported through this route. Sonora does not request credentials or bypass access restrictions.

Private playlists, library songs and likes

1. Open Google Takeout in your browser. Deselect unrelated products and select YouTube and YouTube Music.
2. In the available data options, include playlists and music-library data. Leave uploaded videos and unrelated data out to keep the export small.
3. Request a downloadable ZIP. Download it when Google makes it available. Google’s export instructions describe delivery options.
4. Return to Sonora and choose Choose ZIP / CSV files. Select the ZIP, or extracted playlist/music CSV files. Multiple CSV files can be selected together.
5. In the preview, choose Favorites for the list containing your liked songs. Familiar names such as Liked Music suggest this automatically; review the choice because export names and contents vary. You may also keep those songs as a named playlist.
6. Tap Import selected music and keep Sonora open until it finishes.

Google’s direct transfer-to-another-service flow excludes Liked Music, among other playlists; it is not this ZIP/CSV workflow (Google’s transfer documentation). Downloaded Takeout content can also vary. Sonora can import only songs actually present in a supported file; it cannot recover omitted likes. If a supported playlist contains your liked songs, selecting Favorites imports those hearts regardless of the filename.

No sign-in occurs inside Sonora, and no Google password, cookie or API key is needed. Albums/artists without individual video references, watch-history JSON/HTML, uploaded audio files and arbitrary third-party export formats are not imported. Importing songs never adds them to listening history.

Preview, offline use and reimporting

Nothing is written before Import selected music. Preview reports duplicates, invalid/unavailable entries and ignored files. Unselect both destinations to skip a list.

Files containing only video IDs can be imported offline: disable Look up missing titles online. Songs are saved as YouTube track <id> and remain playable if the source is accessible. Optional lookup has a 20-second timeout per request, at most three concurrent requests, and stops further lookups after repeated network/restriction failures. Failed lookups retain the video reference. Reimport with lookup enabled to retry. Audio streaming still requires a connection.

Reimports add missing entries and likes. They never remove existing entries, unset hearts or modify listening history. Existing order stays intact; newly seen tracks are appended. The same track occurs once per playlist and once in Favorites. The transaction rolls back on failure. Cancel import is available while reading/preparing; the brief final database transaction cannot be cancelled from the screen. Import is not scheduled as a background job and is not resumed after process death.

Online playlist IDs and IDs present in older Takeout metadata identify the destination. CSVs without playlist IDs use their filename (without .csv or -videos), so importing the same named file merges it. Renaming such a file creates another playlist; different exports with the same name merge. No deletion in YouTube is mirrored in Sonora. Deleting a playlist in Sonora preserves favorites and history.

Supported CSV data and limits

UTF-8 CSV, with or without BOM; comma or semicolon separator; quoted fields, escaped quotes and embedded newlines. Supported reference headers include Video ID, YouTube ID, Song URL, Video URL, Track URL and URL; common Spanish aliases are accepted. References must be 11-character YouTube IDs or recognized YouTube/Music video URLs. Optional title, artist and duration columns are used when present. Older Takeout files with a Playlist ID/Title metadata section followed by a Video ID section are supported.

Example (synthetic reference; not a bundled catalog):

Video ID,Title,Artist
abcdefghijk,Example song,Example artist

• Up to 20 selected files and 10,000 track entries per import.
• Up to 32 MiB decompressed data per selected file/archive, including ignored ZIP entries.
• Up to 500 ZIP entries; 25,000 CSV rows, 100 fields per row, 16,384 characters per field.
• ZIP contents are read in memory; no archive paths are extracted to storage. Oversized/malformed files fail before saving.

For a larger Takeout archive, extract it yourself and select only the relevant CSVs in smaller batches. Some export format variations may require parser updates; report the column headings and a redacted synthetic example, not your private archive.