Free online M3U to TEXT converter

Some editors, scripts, and archive systems require a playlist with a .txt extension instead of .m3u. Because M3U is already plain text, the usual conversion copies or renames the playlist without changing its entries.

What the M3U format is

M3U is a text-based playlist format that stores media file paths, stream URLs, and optional metadata. A basic playlist commonly contains one path or URL per line; an extended playlist begins with #EXTM3U and can place #EXTINF metadata before each entry, including duration and title.

Music and video players, playlist managers, IPTV applications, and media centers such as VLC, foobar2000, Winamp, and Kodi can create or read M3U files. Relative paths depend on the playlist's location, while absolute paths and URLs identify media independently of that location. The related .m3u8 extension normally identifies UTF-8-encoded M3U data and is also used for streaming playlists.

What a TEXT file is

A TEXT file is a generic plain-text document, usually saved with the .txt extension. Notepad, TextEdit, Visual Studio Code, command-line tools, and scripts can open it without playlist-specific software.

Changing an M3U file to TEXT does not extract songs, download streams, remove playlist directives, or turn paths into media content. It normally changes only the filename extension, allowing the same character data to be inspected, edited, searched, or archived as ordinary text. A program that expects an M3U extension may not recognize the renamed file even though its contents are unchanged.

How to convert M3U to TEXT

Using a plain-text editor

1. Make a backup copy of the original .m3u file.
2. Open the copy in Notepad, Notepad++, Visual Studio Code, or another plain-text editor. In TextEdit, choose Format → Make Plain Text before saving.
3. Choose File → Save As, enter a filename ending in .txt, and select UTF-8 when the editor offers an encoding setting.
4. Check the saved file for the original paths, URLs, #EXTM3U, and #EXTINF lines. Keep the lines beginning with # if another playlist application needs the metadata.

By changing the extension

If the contents do not need editing or encoding conversion, enable visible filename extensions in the operating system, rename playlist.m3u to playlist.txt, and accept the extension-change warning. This is sufficient when the receiving program accepts generic text; it does not modify the file data.

Using the command line

On Windows Command Prompt, make a copy with:

copy /b playlist.m3u playlist.txt

On macOS or Linux, use:

cp playlist.m3u playlist.txt

These commands copy the bytes without changing encoding. If the source uses a known legacy encoding and must be converted to UTF-8, use an appropriate source encoding with iconv, for example:

iconv -f WINDOWS-1252 -t UTF-8 playlist.m3u > playlist.txt

You can also convert the file for free on 101convert.com without installing software.

Compatibility and quality limits

Renaming or copying preserves references, not the referenced media. Relative paths can stop working when the playlist or media files move, and URLs can expire or become unavailable. A text file containing IPTV or streaming URLs does not contain the stream itself.

M3U has no single mandatory encoding across all older implementations. Use UTF-8 for .m3u8 files and verify accented or non-Latin filenames after saving. Do not remove comment or metadata lines unless the receiving script or device accepts only paths and URLs. If the destination requires a valid M3U playlist, retain the .m3u extension rather than renaming it to .txt.