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How to copy music to the Galaxy S8 or S8 Plus from Mac, PC or iTunes

Want to transfer music from your Mac or Windows computer, or your iTunes account, to your Samsung Galaxy S8 or S8 Plus? Here’s how to copy all of your albums from your computer onto the new Galaxy phone’s storage or microSD memory card.

Prefer to listen to high-quality downloaded music tracks on your mobile, rather than streaming via the likes of Spotify? Here’s how you can copy your music files to your new Galaxy S8 or Galaxy S8 Plus phone, to enjoy wherever you roam.

Check out our complete Samsung Galaxy S8 and S8 Plus hub for everything you need to know about these mighty mobiles, including our in-depth S8 tips and tricks guide.

How to copy music from Mac OS to the Galaxy S8 or S8 Plus

Android devices such as the Samsung Galaxy S8 don’t communicate well with Apple computers, which makes copying files between them quite annoying. 

Mac users will need to install something called Android File Transfer on their Mac computer or Macbook laptop before music can be copied over. This is a nifty bit of software created by Google to get around the whole communication problem. Thankfully Android File Transfer (AFT) is completely free to download from Google’s website.

Once AFT is installed on your Mac computer, grab the Type-C USB charging cable that came with your S8 or S8 Plus. Make sure that your phone is turned on and unlocked to the desktops. Next, plug Samsung’s handset into your Mac using that USB cable.

AFT should automatically start when the phone and computer are paired. However if this does not happen, just go to the Mac’s Launchpad to manually open the app.

If AFT is complaining that it can’t access the mobile’s storage, make sure your phone is definitely switched on and unlocked. You’ll also need to check that the Galaxy S8 is ready to transfer files. A message reading ‘allow access to phone data’? should have popped up on the phone’s display; just hit ‘allow’ to accept.

Still having issues? Open the Galaxy S8’s notifications panel by swiping a finger down from the top of the display. If this is listed as ‘USB Charging’ or similar, change it to Transfer Media Files.

When the window pops up, you’ll see a list of available folders on the S8 or S8 Plus. This is your Galaxy phone’s internal storage, where all of your files (including apps, photos and the rest) are all stored. Find the Music folder and double-click it to open it up.

From here it’s just a case of dragging your music files from your Mac device to your smartphone. This works best if your music is sorted into folders by artist or album, just to keep things nice and organised – but you can simply bung a huge selection of disorganised tracks onto the S8 and your music app should semi-sort them by singer and so on.

Once the music transfer is complete, just close AFT and disconnect your phone.

How to copy music from a Windows PC to the Galaxy S8 or S8 Plus

While you need extra software to transfer files from a Mac computer to the Galaxy S8, copying music from your Windows laptop or PC is much simpler.

First, turn on and unlock your S8 to the desktop. Connect your Samsung Galaxy phone to your PC using the bundled Type C USB charging cable and then open a Windows Explorer window. This can be accomplished by pressing the Windows key and the E key at the same time. In the Explorer window, click ‘My Computer’ (or ‘This PC’) and train your eyes on the Devices and Drives area. Your Galaxy S8 or S8 Plus should be listed here, with a phone icon to set it apart.

If you can’t see your S8 there, make sure it’s definitely switched on and unlocked. If there’s still no sign, ensure that the Galaxy S8 is in transfer mode. To check the connection type, swipe down the notifications panel by dragging a finger from the very top of the phone’s display. If this is listed as ‘USB Charging’ or similar, change it to Transfer Media Files.

Once your phone appears in Windows Explorer, double-click that icon and look for a folder called Music. Find the music files you want to transfer over to your S7 and then simply drag and drop them into the S7’s Music folder window. They will be copied across and once complete, you can close the Explorer windows and disconnect the micro USB cable.

How to copy music from iTunes to the Galaxy S8 or S8 Plus

If you’ve invested in some albums from Apple’s iTunes store in the past, you’ll likely want to get this onto your new Galaxy S8 or S8 Plus.

If these tracks are already stored on your Mac computer or Windows PC, you can simply use the drag and drop methods above. Just browse to the iTunes directory on your machine and drag your chosen tunes over to your S8 handset.

Don’t have the tracks downloaded already? You can do this through the iTunes app. Just login to your account and any purchased songs should appear in your iTunes Library window. Tap the download icon (a cloud with a downwards facing arrow) and the chosen song will be saved to your storage. Note that you will have to authorise your machine through iTunes first, if you haven’t already.

Where is the iTunes directory on your computer? Well, on a Mac this tends to be in the Users > (User Name) > Music > iTunes Media > Music folder. You can access this in Finder; just go to the View menu and tap ‘Show Path’ and you can browse to this directory easily.

In Windows, you tend to find the iTunes folder in This PC > Music > iTunes > iTunes Media > Music.

How to copy music to the Galaxy S8 or S8 Plus’ MicroSD memory card

One of the most significant features that Samsung reintroduced after its absence on last year’s S6 line was microSD expandability, which is a great alternative means of physical file transfer that doesn’t require any special software on either Mac OS or Windows.

If you already have a microSD card in your S7 or S7 Edge, (ensuring the phone is switched off) use a SIM tray removal tool to pop the phone’s SIM tray out and remove the microSD memory card. Then insert the microSD card into your Mac/PC (you might need a microSD to SD or microSD to USB adapter depending on your machine).

Once your computer recognises a memory card has been inserted a window should automatically open up, however, if it doesn’t, open a Finder window on Mac OS or an Explorer window on Windows 10 and look for the SD card as you would any other USB storage device or flash drive.

Then it’s simply a matter of finding the desired music files on your computer and copying them onto your microSD card. Once the copying process is complete, safely eject your microSD card from your Mac or PC, place it back into the hybrid microSD/SIM tray of you S7 or S7 Edge, slide the tray back into the phone and power it on.

You should then be able to find the music you just copied onto your microSD card from within the phone’s music player and file manager.

Too many words? Try our video ‘how-to’ instead:

You can pre-order the Samsung Galaxy S8 from O2 right now from £55 per month, to claim a free speaker worth £120.

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