How to · Serato DJ

Export crates to USB in Serato DJ.

Open the Files panel, click the crate you want, drag it onto your USB drive inside that panel, and choose Copy when the prompt appears. The detail that matters: Serato also writes a hidden _Serato_ folder onto the drive, and that folder, not the audio, is what carries the crate name, the cue points and the beatgrids to the next laptop.

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Export crates to USB in Serato DJ, step by step.

Serato copies crates from inside the app, not from Finder or File Explorer. Here is how to export Serato crates to USB so the crate, its audio files and its analysis all land on the drive together.

01

Check the drive can be written to

Serato writes cue points, loops and overviews back to the drive, so it has to be writable by the computer you plug it into. macOS can read the Windows NTFS format but cannot write to it, which is the usual reason tag data silently disappears. Right-click the drive and choose Properties on Windows or Get Info on macOS to see the file system before you start.

02

Analyze the tracks first

In Serato, click the Analyze Files button with Set Auto BPM and Set Beat Grid checked, and let it finish. Analysis data lives in the Serato library, so anything you copy before it runs arrives on the drive without a BPM or a grid. On a large library this takes a while, so do it the day before, not in the taxi.

03

Open the Files panel

Click the Files button to the left of the search bar. The Files panel lists common locations plus every drive currently connected, so your USB stick shows up there by name. Any external drive that is not plugged in when Serato starts will not appear, and neither will the tracks you added from it.

04

Drag the crate onto the drive and choose Copy

Click the crate you want in the crate panel, then drag it onto your USB drive in the Files panel. Serato prompts you with Copy, Move and Cancel. Choose Copy: your library keeps pointing at the original files and the drive gets its own set. Move would repoint every crate at the stick, which breaks your library the moment you unplug it. Subcrates drag across the same way.

05

Wait for the progress bar to finish

A progress bar appears in the lower right of the software. Click it to open a status window, where you can also cancel the transfer. Do not unplug the drive while it runs. When it is done, eject the drive the way you normally would, so the database Serato just wrote is flushed properly.

06

Test it on the other laptop

Plug the drive into a second computer running Serato DJ and open the app. Serato stores the library information for files on an external drive on the drive itself, so the crates and their tracks appear in the library on their own, with cue points and grids intact. Eject when you are done and nothing is left behind on that machine.

The catch

Smart crates cannot be transferred to a portable library, so anything built from rules has to become a normal crate before it will travel. Serato also creates a separate _Serato_ folder on every drive you pull music from, so a stick that already has one needs the two merged, not overwritten, or you lose crates.

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The faster way

Decide what goes on the stick before you open Serato.

The drag itself takes a minute. Choosing which forty tracks deserve the drive is the part that eats an evening. Vibes imports your existing Serato library, analyzes BPM, key, energy and sections, and tags everything into vibes with Auto-Tagging or by hand in Vibe Sort, so a gig crate becomes a filter instead of an hour of scrolling. Build the running order in Set Designer, export it back to Serato as a crate, then do the drag above.

See how it works

Import Wizard reads your existing Serato crates, so you start from the library you already have

Auto-Tagging and Vibe Sort put every track into vibes, so the gig crate is a filter, not a manual hunt

Set Designer with Energy Flow sorting settles the running order before the crate leaves Vibes

Export back to Serato as a folder tree, with optional Camelot key or BPM sub-folders

Organize in Vibes, export to Serato DJ.

Your playlists, tags, ratings, and cue points travel back to the gear you play on, so nothing you do in Vibes is locked away.

Frequently asked questions

The honest answers, including the trade-offs.

Exactly the same way as to a USB stick. Open the Files panel, find the external drive in the list, then drag the crate from the crate panel onto it and pick Copy. Copy leaves your library pointing at the original files, while Move repoints it at the drive. If you want the whole library rather than a few crates, take the full backup route instead. WAV masters fill a stick fast. Where the booth does not need lossless, the WAV to MP3 converter shrinks them without uploading anything.

For a few crates, copy them onto a drive from the Files panel and plug it into the other machine. Serato keeps the library data for those files on the drive itself, so the crates show up on their own. For everything, Serato says to move three things: the _Serato_ folder in your Music folder, the Library folder in Application Support on macOS or AppData > Local > Serato on Windows, and your music folder. Setting up a new laptop walks it through.

Serato has no text export for a crate. The export formats live in the History panel instead: select a session, choose txt, csv, m3u or Serato Playlists, and click export. Exported files land in the History Export folder inside your _Serato_ folder. So the practical route to a text tracklist is exporting the history session that matches the set. Exporting played history covers that panel.

Drag it inside Serato. Copying the files in Finder or File Explorer moves the audio but leaves the crate, the cue points and the beatgrids behind, which is why the stick then looks empty in Serato on the other laptop. Dragging the crate onto the drive in the Files panel is what makes Serato write its own database onto the stick next to the audio files.

Work off the drive instead of copying to it. Add music from the USB stick into your library, and Serato creates a _Serato_ folder on that drive and keeps the library information for those files there. New crates, cue points and grids for those tracks are written to the stick as you go, so the drive stays self-contained. The trade-off is speed: a slow stick makes browsing and analysis feel sluggish.

Back up the drive first, because formatting erases everything on it. On macOS, open Disk Utility, select the drive, click Erase and choose Mac OS Extended (Journaled) or MS-DOS (FAT32). On Windows, right-click the drive, click Format and choose NTFS, exFAT or FAT32. Pick a format the computer can write to, or Serato will fail to save your cue points and loops on that drive.

It depends on what reads the stick at the other end. If you are playing off your own laptop with Serato, the crate drag above is the whole job. If you are plugging into club players, they read a library exported from their own software: rekordbox for Pioneer gear or Engine DJ for Denon gear. Prepare that export at home, never in the booth.

exFAT for a stick that only ever meets laptops. Serato notes that FAT32 supports files of 4 GB or less, which rules it out for long recordings and large lossless files. FAT32 stays the safer pick when the same stick also goes into club players: Pioneer lists exFAT support only on the CDJ-3000X, CDJ-1500X, CDJ-3000, OPUS-QUAD, OMNIS-DUO, XDJ-AZ, XDJ-AN, XDJ-XZ and XDJ-RX3.

It depends on the booth, not on the music. exFAT lifts the 4 GB per-file limit that FAT32 has, but rekordbox troubleshooting tells you to format to a file system other than exFAT if your DJ equipment is not on Pioneer's exFAT list. So exFAT for laptop-only sticks and current players, FAT32 for a drive that has to work in any booth you walk into. Prepping a gig drive goes deeper.

Three usual causes. The drive was copied in Finder or File Explorer instead of dragged inside the Files panel, so no _Serato_ folder came with it. The crate was a smart crate, which Serato states cannot be transferred to a portable library. Or the stick already had a _Serato_ folder that was overwritten rather than merged, which loses crates. Rebuild rule-based crates as normal ones first: managing crates and subcrates.

From a Vibes customer

The import worked perfectly. Have created several sets now and my life is so much easier

Danny

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Methodology

How we keep this honest.

Reviewed by Ben Modigell, founder of Vibes and a working DJ in Cologne.

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Every step is checked against the current version of Serato DJ.

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We make Vibes. We show the native way first and honestly, then where Vibes genuinely helps, and we say when it does not.

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Last reviewed June 2026.

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