How to add lyrics to the wonderful songs in your Apple Music Library


Stumbled upon a great song on Apple Music that doesn’t have lyrics?

It’s a bummer. You had been planning on jamming to your favorite music, but there are no lyrics to follow.

Thankfully, there seems to be a way that lets you add lyrics to your song on Apple Music. It involves using the Finder on your Mac or iTunes on your PC.

So, fire up your computer and get ready to add some lyrics yourself to enjoy your music better.

Let’s dive right in!

Quick Note: We’ve added a Table of Contents below. So feel free to skip to any section you want.

How lyrics work on Apple Music

Apple Music has one of the most accessible and well-served lyrics of any music streaming platform out there. While listening to a track, you can easily switch to the lyrics view to follow along.

Live Lyrics on Apple Music

Instead of simply showing lyrics in a static format, lyrics on Apple Music are dynamically presented.

This means that when you play a song, the part of the song currently being played is synced with the flow of lyrics in a beautiful presentation.

These are called Live Lyrics and are available on most songs in Apple Music’s growing library.

Note that Live Lyrics are different from regular lyrics. Some songs that have difficult lyrics or those that are available in a foreign language or simply songs that aren’t popular enough to warrant Live Lyrics show static lyrics in the form of regular text.

In order to access lyrics while playing a song on Apple Music, all you need to do is tap the lyrics button (looks like a comment box with double-inverted commas).

Live Lyrics are also interactive, meaning you can tap on a line to jump to that point in a song. This is especially useful when you need to comprehend the lyrics of a song more carefully.

Tapping on individual lines within lyrics is also accompanied by haptic feedback, which is a nice touch. Lastly, the background where the lyrics are presented acquires its colors from the album art, making the lyrics appear unique.

The best place to find custom lyrics

While most songs in Apple Music’s library feature live lyrics, you might come across some that do not. Worse, you might come across songs that do not feature lyrics at all.

Thankfully, you can add your own lyrics.

However, since the internet is a vast bowl of resources, where do you get reliable lyrics?

Turns out, there are tons of websites that offer lyrics. The best way to get lyrics is to type in the name of your song followed by the term keyword “lyrics” into Google and search.

Usually, Google will display a separate box with lyrics.

Some popular websites that also serve lyrics include AZLyrics, Lyrics.com, and Genius, of which AZLyrics is the most useful. Normally, Genius would take the crown, but it doesn’t let you copy lyrics, something that is essential to our process.

On AZLyrics, you can search for lyrics of individual songs. It features a vast library of lyrics that are thoroughly checked by visitors and edited to achieve error-free texts. For the most part, you’ll find the lyrics you are searching for directly from Google. However, for the rare times when you don’t find anything, AZLyrics might come in handy.

To find a lyric for a song on AZLyrics, simply head over to the website and type in the song you are looking for. Then, choose your desired song from the results generated.

Note that The 8-Bit is by no means associated with AZLyrics. The website is only mentioned here for editorial purposes.

Custom lyrics are different from Live Lyrics

It’s essential to note that custom lyrics are different from Live Lyrics on Apple Music and you cannot add Live Lyrics to songs on Apple Music unless you are the artist that created that song.

This means that the custom lyrics that you will add to songs that previously didn’t have them will only appear in the form of static text and won’t change through the duration of the song.

It’s a bummer that Apple doesn’t allow users to add custom lyrics that also act as Live Lyrics, but that is the irrefutable truth here.

This could be because Live Lyrics requires lyrics to be time-stamped in order for them to play alongside the song.

So, do not get disappointed when your custom lyrics do not appear as live lyrics.

How to add custom lyrics to songs

Before we look into the steps of setting custom lyrics for a song on Apple Music, there are a few things you need to note first.

  • You can change the lyrics for songs on Apple Music with custom lyrics.
  • You can also type your own lyrics to an existing song.
  • The changes you make to lyrics to a song will only reflect in your Apple Music Library.
  • You can also change lyrics to a song that you’ve purchased on iTunes or added to your Music library from elsewhere besides Apple Music.
  • You will need a computer for this process. Adding custom lyrics directly is not possible on an iPhone or iPad yet.

That being said, here’s how to add custom lyrics to songs in your Apple Music Library.

Note that this only works if a song is added to your library.

To add songs to your library on Apple Music, search for a song and tap on the “+” (Plus) icon beside the song’s label.

The process is mostly similar for both Mac and Windows users with some minor differences in UI. Note that Windows users will need to install iTunes in order to go through with this process.


For Windows users:

1. Open iTunes and head over to your music library.

Apple Music Library on iTunes running on Windows.

2. Click on the three dots that appear while hovering over a song, then click “Song Info.”

Click on Song Info.

3. Head over to the Lyrics tab by clicking on the “Lyrics” tab.

Lyrics Tab.

4. Check the “Custom Lyrics” box. It will clear off the current lyrics from the screen and let you type your own lyrics in its place. Once done, click “OK.”

You can paste the lyrics that you copied earlier from the web or type in your own lyrics.

5. Finally, as an additional step, on the toolbar, click Edit - Preferences and under the general tab, make sure iCloud Music Library is checked.

Make sure iCloud Music Library is checked. This ensures that your custom lyrics immediately sync to your iPhone and iPad.

How to sync songs with custom lyrics to iPhone and iPad

Now that you’ve added custom lyrics to a song in Apple Music, you need to make sure these sync with your iPhone and iPad.

First off, in order for this to work, both your iPhone or iPad and your computer must be logged in with the same Apple ID. If you are subscribed to Apple Music, ensure that your devices are logged into the same account.

To ensure your custom lyrics are instantly transferred over to your iPhone, head over to the Preferences panel and make sure iCloud Music Library is enabled.

Once you do that, the custom lyrics you add using your computer will automatically become available on all your devices with the same Apple ID.

Sometimes, it may take a while for custom lyrics to appear across all your devices having the same Apple ID, but that’s no cause for concern.

Final Thoughts

Adding custom lyrics to songs on Apple Music is easier than you might have thought.

If you are a song producer, you can add Live Lyrics to your tracks by getting verified on Musixmatch and syncing your lyrics with your song.

You can also easily revert to original lyrics on Apple Music by retracing the same steps, only this time remember to untick the “Custom Lyrics” option.


Note: We do not condone piracy in any form whatsoever.