When I did a google search for the exact same topic, I found more than a few Toyota forums discussing the exact same thing, with long, multi-page threads.

As you recently mentioned, entune doesn't do playlists in any way, shape or form. Which is really too bad, because it does a great job of taking a large gob of mp3s on a USB stick and organizing them within the entune app. Some courageous folks even went so far to change the tag data on files to get them to coelesce on the device as a single album, so a playlist would appear as an album. I've got over 40gb of music on a 64gb stick, so no way I'm wasting my time on that.
It's good that entune organizes this stuff itself, but it's bad because modern entune ignores the folders or any type of structure you put on the USB stick. It used to be more basic, and you could browse folders on the stick. This would make playlists a non-issue....


Anyway- I learned to live with it. I collect records, so I usually listen to an album in it's entirety as a habit. I'm happy to say, I can find an album in seconds with the buttons on the steering wheel.

The other suggested alternative is to load your phone up with music and take advantage of the playlist option of your phone through Bluetooth. I'm not a phone guy, so that doesn't work for me either.


Tl;dr. : not recognizing playlist formats of ANY type is a drawback of entune at a toyota level. It's well documented on many Toyota forums

Thanks for the reply, Ray. I've contacted Toyota customer care and am trying to get the issue escalated. I've also been to a dealer, and they're baffled. They say the Playlist menu item should be displayed along with the Artist, Album, Composer, etc. at the top of the display.

When I first got through to the Entune group at Toyota, they also said that playlists don't work through USB. Yet they couldn't explain why Entune gives me a voice command option of "Browse Playlists" while I'm listening to music on a USB flash drive, or why they don't say that specifically in the manual, while saying .m3u playlists aren't compatible. It all smacks of unfinished software.

Oddly, if one digs deep enough into this, they'll find that the Entune system is based on the QNX operating system. Documentation for the QNX software development kit indicates there are plugins for .pls, .m3u, .wpl, xspf and other playlist formats. Given other owners, with older 4Runners, have reported that they have been able to use playlists on USB drives, I suspect that somewhere along the line a bug was introduced, dropping that functionality for those of us with newer vehicles. From my perspective Toyota just has to fix this and/or document which playlist formats they DO support.

My phone is on Virgin Mobile, which Entunes doesn't support, so Bluetooth is out form me. If by 'mini SD', you mean the Micro SD card slot in the newer 4Runners, that's for navigation only.

When I give it the voice command "Browse Playlists", its response is "No playlists are available." This implies it can deal with playlists, just not the ones I've got on the drive. So, all I need is for Toyota to tell me, and the rest of the world, which playlists their Entune system recognizes.

Yes, the Micro SD is what I meant by "mini SD". Thank you for the clarification and information.

I was very excited to have Bluetooth in this car as I was using an external bluetooth device for calls. An old school player in my tape drive that plugged into my phone's aux 3.5mm port was used for music and podcast listening.

Now, I'm a little frustrated at the lack of versatility and difficulty in attempting to utilize the technology. I've experienced connectivity issues while listening to podcasts thru podcruncher if another phone app is open. Then the entire head unit seems to freeze and then I can't listen independently to my phone because it is still "connected" to the head unit.

Anyway, my mini rant is over. I don't have the time to mess w/ attempting to troubleshoot this, but will gladly try some of the suggestions on this great board.

Thanks.

Yes, there seem to be many complaints about Entune's handling of bluetooth, which makes me glad I can't use it. I'll continue to pursue the playlist issue and hope it's my only problem with my new 4Runner.

Another bump hoping for some input.

So I heard back from Toyota today. It turns out, if all their case managers are like the one I spoke to, their case managers know little about their product. He didn't take the time to understand the issue. As he put it, “I'm not here to troubleshoot, just to make sure the dealer followed the proper steps to try to resolve your case.” If this guy doesn't know what the problem is, how can he know if the proper steps were taken? And when I politely asked to talk to his supervisor, the reply was, “Oh, sorry, I'm the end of the line here, I'm the Case Manager, and what I say goes.”

This customer is definitely not impressed with Toyota customer care.

Shameful bump

Here's what works for me. First, you must use a 8 GB flash drive, - no higher. Format the drive as Fat32. Then, using Mp3tag (google it), adjust the tags on your mp3 songs so that the "Album" field is the playlist name. Then copy these modified mp3's directly onto the 8 GB drive. Don't use any folders. When you plug in the drive, hit browse and the Songs, Artists and Albums choices come up - select Albums and you got 'em. This works for my 2018 Toyota Avalon XLS Entune. It is not an Entune 3.0 but I don't know what version I have. If you use a flash drive greater than 8 GB, you can play the songs individually, but not playlists disguised as Albums.