Filter Support

Filter is available for iPhone on the App Store. On your iPhone, open Filter on the App Store and tap Get.

Have feedback or found a bug? Email us.

Filter needs Apple Music access to work. You'll be prompted to grant it on first launch, and you'll need an active Apple Music subscription to play catalog content. Once you're set up, open the Filters tab and tap Add Filter to create your first filter. Choose a type (Artist, Keyword, or Genre), enter what to match, and choose what happens when it matches.

Filter types:

• Artist: matches the track's artist name exactly (capitalization doesn't matter).
• Keyword: matches the word or phrase anywhere in the track title or artist name (e.g. "remix", "live").
• Genre: matches Apple Music's own genre tags for the track (e.g. "Hip-Hop").

What happens when a filter matches:

• Skip immediately: the track never plays.
• Skip after grace period: the track plays briefly, then skips automatically. The grace period is 2 seconds by default; change it (0 to 15 seconds) with Grace period in Settings.
• Play, but log: the track plays normally, but the match is recorded so you can review it later.

Mood-based filtering isn't available and won't be added. Apple Music doesn't expose per-song mood data through MusicKit, and Filter won't ship a filter type it can't honestly enforce or fake with a third-party service.

When a filter skips a track, a banner at the top of the screen shows the track and the filter that caught it. From the banner you can:

• Undo: go back and play the track this time.
• Always Allow (the shield icon): choose This Song or This Artist so that filter never skips them again, and go back to the track.

An allowance belongs to that one filter. To remove it, delete the filter and add it again.

Sometimes you want a playlist to play differently from everything else, like a guilty-pleasure playlist that ignores your usual filters. Open any playlist and tap the filter icon in the toolbar to manage this:

• Exempt from Global Filters: On means this playlist ignores your regular filters entirely.
• While exempt, you can optionally add filters that apply only to this playlist, replacing your global ones just for it.
• Turning exemption back off returns the playlist to your regular filters, and removes any filters you'd added just for it (Filter confirms first if you have any).

Tap Select in the Filters tab to multi-select filters, then use the bar at the bottom to Enable, Disable, or Delete everything you've selected at once. Bulk deletes ask for confirmation first.

In Settings, tap Export Filters to save your current filters as a JSON file via the share sheet. This is useful as a backup or to move filters to another device before setting up iCloud sync. Tap Import Filters to add filters from a previously exported file; duplicates are skipped, whether they match a filter you already have or another entry in the same file.

Export covers your global filters only. Filters scoped to a single playlist are left out on purpose: a playlist ID from one library means nothing in another, and importing them would quietly turn a playlist-only filter into a library-wide one. Settings tells you how many were excluded.

If you manually skip the same artist early in a track (within the first 10 seconds) three times, Filter will ask if you'd like to add a filter for that artist. Tap Add Filter to create a "Skip immediately" filter for them, or Not Now to dismiss it. Either way, Filter won't ask about that artist again.

Skips a filter performs automatically don't count toward this, only skips you trigger yourself. To stop suggestions, turn off Suggest filters from skips in Settings.

Tap History (the clock icon) in the Filters tab to see every track a filter has skipped or logged, grouped by day, with the filter that caught it. This is separate from the Filtered playlist. History is a timeline of what actually happened during playback; the Filtered playlist is a snapshot of everything in your library that currently matches. Tap Clear to erase your history; your filters themselves aren't affected.

Filter can scan your entire Apple Music library and build a real playlist named Filtered containing every track that matches one of your enabled filters. It's a genuine playlist in your Apple Music library, so it syncs across your devices and you can browse it from the Music app too.

Tap Filtered Playlist (the checkmark icon) in the Filters tab to see scan status and match count. Filter automatically rescans on launch if it's been more than 24 hours since the last scan, or you can tap Rescan Now at any time. Rescanning fully replaces the playlist's contents to match your current filters, so if you disable or delete a filter, the tracks it used to catch are dropped from Filtered on the next scan.

By default, your filters and history stay on this device only. To sync across devices, open Settings (the gear icon on Home or in the Filters tab), tap Sync to iCloud, and sign in with Apple. After signing in, quit and reopen Filter to start syncing. The app rebuilds its storage on launch to switch modes.

Turning sync off works the same way: confirm in Settings, then quit and reopen. Your existing filters remain on the device either way; nothing is deleted by toggling sync.

From the full-screen player, tap Block artist to instantly create a "Skip immediately" filter for the current track's artist. If you already have a filter for that artist but had switched it off, this turns it back on rather than doing nothing.

In the Up Next queue, swipe left on a track for:

• Block 1 wk: removes the track from the queue, and it won't play again for a week, whether or not any filter matches it. If everything left in the queue is blocked, Filter stops after skipping ten in a row and plays the track rather than running the queue to its end; the player shows "Blocked for 1 week" when that happens.
• Block artist: the same as blocking from the player.
• Remove: takes the track out of the queue without blocking anything.

From the player's sleep menu, choose 15, 30, or 45 minutes, 1 hour, or "End of track" to stop playback after the current song finishes.

Check the following:

1. Confirm the filter is enabled. A disabled filter shows an "Off" badge in the Filters list.
2. Check the filter's action. "Play, but log" is intentional: it never skips, just records the match.
3. If you tapped Undo or Always Allow on a skip banner, that track or artist is let through. Undo lasts only for the current queue; Always Allow lasts until you delete the filter.
4. For Genre filters, Apple Music's genre metadata sometimes takes a moment to load after a track starts, especially from a shared queue, so a very brief play before the skip can happen.
5. If several filters match the same track, the strongest action wins: "Skip immediately" beats "Skip after grace period", which beats "Play, but log".
6. If you're playing a playlist you marked Exempt from Global Filters, your regular filters don't apply to it. Only filters you added for that playlist do.
7. If ten blocked tracks came up in a row, Filter stops skipping and lets the current one play instead of running to the end of the queue.

Filter has no backend, uses no analytics or ad SDKs, and never sees your Apple Music credentials or your iCloud data. Your filters and history stay on your device, or in your own private iCloud account if you turn on sync. The "Add Filter?" suggestion feature keeps a small on-device counter of early skips, never synced and never sent anywhere.

Read the full Filter Privacy Policy.

Delete an individual filter by swiping it away in the Filters list. To remove all local data, delete the Filter app from your device.

To remove Filter's iCloud data, open Settings on your device, tap your name, tap iCloud → Manage Account Storage (or iCloud Storage), find Filter, and follow Apple's option to delete its data.