Frequently asked questions

It rewrites links while you browse in Safari. Spotify links to songs, albums, and artists open in Apple Music, and Google Maps links open in Apple Maps, without you having to copy, paste, or search. On iPhone and iPad, it can also turn a Spotify playlist into an Apple Music library playlist (see the playlist questions below).

Yes. OrchardRelay only swaps a link's destination when it's confident there's an Apple Music or Apple Maps equivalent. Browsing Spotify, signing in, and playing music on Spotify all work exactly as before. On a Spotify playlist page, the extension simply adds an optional "Add to Apple Music" button. It doesn't take anything away. If you'd rather it stay out of the way, you can turn either relay off in the app.

One of a few reasons, all by design:

• No confident match. We will never send you to the wrong song or album. If we can't confidently identify the Apple Music equivalent, we leave the Spotify link alone rather than guess.
• It opened in the Spotify app first. If you have the Spotify app installed and a link is opened from outside Safari (for example, tapped in another app), your device may hand it straight to the Spotify app before the extension ever sees it. OrchardRelay can only act on links inside Safari web pages. The same is true for Google Maps links and the Google Maps app.
• First time seeing it. The very first time a brand-new link is resolved it may take a moment; after that it's cached and instant.

Yes, Safari extensions are off until you enable them. The app walks you through enabling OrchardRelay in Safari and granting it permission to act on links. You only do this once.

No. OrchardRelay acts on any page you open in Safari, not just spotify.com or Google Maps. If a friend texts you a Spotify or Maps link and you open it from Messages, or you tap one in an email, a search result, or a blog post, it opens in Safari and gets redirected there. A Spotify song, album, or artist embedded on a web page is also swapped for the matching Apple Music player, in place.

The one caveat: if you have the Spotify or Google Maps app installed, your device may open a link straight in that app before Safari sees it, so OrchardRelay works most reliably when you don't keep those apps installed.

On iPhone or iPad, open a Spotify playlist in Safari (or a page with a Spotify playlist embedded) and tap Add to Apple Music. The app resolves each track and builds a new playlist in your Apple Music library.

Creating playlists in your Apple Music library uses an Apple framework (MusicKit) whose library-writing features are not available on macOS. So the button only appears on iOS. (Link redirects work on both Mac and iOS.)

Spotify's public playlist data (the only part we can read without asking you to log into Spotify) is capped at 100 tracks and doesn't reveal the true total. So for playlists longer than 100 tracks, we convert the first 100. We'd rather tell you this plainly than silently drop tracks.

For playlist conversion, yes. Creating a playlist in your library requires an active Apple Music subscription, and you'll be asked to allow Apple Music access. Plain link redirects do not require a subscription.

The only thing that leaves your device is the Spotify link being resolved and the Apple Music link it resolved to, sent to our resolution service so the match can be cached and reused. There are no accounts, no tracking, and no ads, and those records aren't tied to you. See the full Privacy Policy.

No. Google Maps → Apple Maps conversion happens entirely on your device. Nothing about it is ever transmitted.

TourManager is our resolution service. When OrchardRelay matches a Spotify link to its Apple Music equivalent, it reports that match to TourManager so the mapping can be cached and reused, for you and for everyone, instead of being re-resolved every time. It only ever receives link matches, never anything that identifies you.

Spotify and Google Maps links can appear on any site, so the extension needs permission to notice them wherever they are. It is deliberately narrow about what it actually reads: it looks only at link addresses (and, for playlists, the playlist's ID). It does not read page text, form fields, or other content, and the Google Maps path doesn't send anything off your device at all.

• Link redirects (Spotify → Apple Music, Google Maps → Apple Maps): both platforms.
• Spotify playlist → Apple Music library playlist: iPhone and iPad only (see Playlists above).