Match: how to delete songs downloaded to my iphone?

TimWilliam · Nov 16, 2011

So here I am all excited about itunes match and even more excited when I downloaded my first cloud-stored match song onto my iphone...but then I started thinking, how do I delete it? Uhhh...

I haven't seen any threads or mention of this anywhere except some guy said that it can be deleted by swiping, which I tried but doesn't work.

Anybody know anything about this? I'm thinking ahead to after I've downloaded a crapload of songs and need to clean out some to make way for the new.

paulisme · Nov 16, 2011

Swipe left or right on a song, album or artist and a delete button will appear.

JohnDoe98 · Nov 16, 2011

paulisme said:
Swipe left or right on a song, album or artist and a delete button will appear.

What if you need to free a few gigs on your phone to download a new app? Gonna take a while deleting one song at a time. Would also be stupid to delete an entire playlist...

sturdenator · Dec 1, 2011

to delete songs/albums/artists from your iPhone (or iOS device) after downloading them from iCloud, you need to uncheck the "Show All Music" option in the Music Settings on your device. Without doing this, the swipe to delete won't work. once unchecked you can go back to the music app and delete as normal.

i wish that there would be an option to delete songs from your device via a playlist since i rely on playlists to listen to my music. it's cumbersome to delete via an artist or album for me.

Hope this helps!

Maverickster · Dec 1, 2011

sturdenator said:
to delete songs/albums/artists from your iPhone (or iOS device) after downloading them from iCloud, you need to uncheck the "Show All Music" option in the Music Settings on your device. Without doing this, the swipe to delete won't work. once unchecked you can go back to the music app and delete as normal.

This is not true for me. They delete just fine with "Show All Music" selected. Since they're still in iCloud, they don't disappear; rather, once swipe/deleted, the iCloud icon appears next to the song indicating that it is not stored locally, but is available from iCloud.

sturdenator said:
i wish that there would be an option to delete songs from your device via a playlist since i rely on playlists to listen to my music. it's cumbersome to delete via an artist or album for me.

You can delete from within a playlist on the device or you can delete an entire playlist directly on the device -- both using the swipe/delete method. As with the above, so deleting does not make the deleted songs or playlist actually disappear, rather it just puts the iCloud symbol next to the song where there was nothing before (again, indicating that the songs are no longer stored locally, but are available via iCloud)

hokiepokie07 · Dec 1, 2011

What if I go on a 2 hour trip and have about 60 songs that download? Is there an easier way than just swipe/delete for each of the 60 songs?

Tinmania · Dec 1, 2011

hokiepokie07 said:
What if I go on a 2 hour trip and have about 60 songs that download? Is there an easier way than just swipe/delete for each of the 60 songs?

You can turn off iTunes match and then sync a very small number of tracks via iTunes, which should replace the downloaded tracks with the synced tracks. Then turn Match back on. It's a pain but that is the only way I have found to mass delete. And even then there are some tracks left on the device.

We really need a true edit mode for music. Swipe-to-delete does not cut it for anything but a random track here and there. I would also like a select all.

Michael

hokiepokie07 · Dec 1, 2011

Tinmania said:
You can turn off iTunes match and then sync a very small number of tracks via iTunes, which should replace the downloaded tracks with the synced tracks. Then turn Match back on. It's a pain but that is the only way I have found to mass delete. And even then there are some tracks left on the device.

We really need a true edit mode for music. Swipe-to-delete does not cut it for anything but a random track here and there. I would also like a select all.

Michael

Yeah, right now, I don't even feel like using iTunes Match in my car because I'm not searching for random songs that played.

Maverickster · Dec 1, 2011

Tinmania said:
You can turn off iTunes match and then sync a very small number of tracks via iTunes, which should replace the downloaded tracks with the synced tracks. Then turn Match back on. It's a pain but that is the only way I have found to mass delete. And even then there are some tracks left on the device.

We really need a true edit mode for music. Swipe-to-delete does not cut it for anything but a random track here and there. I would also like a select all.

Michael

Agreed. They have to give us a better set of space management tools. Batch delete and/or the ability to set some sort of criteria for what songs should be deleted when space needs to be made available -- e.g when space is needed delete: [oldest downloaded song] + [lowest playcount] (or some other user-controlled criteria; although, frankly, this is what I would set it at).

--Matt

gr8-1 · Dec 10, 2011

Tinmania said:
We really need a true edit mode for music. Swipe-to-delete does not cut it for anything but a random track here and there. I would also like a select all.

If you are trying to batch delete all music on an iOS device, it can be done.

1) Settings > General > Usage
2) Let the Storage settings load.
3) Click on Music...on next screen, swipe and delete.

Note though that all music will be deleted without warning so make sure you have all backups completed first. I was having trouble with iCloud and when I did this, all my music showed up from iCloud as I wanted it to.

Hope this helps.

chrisuab · Dec 20, 2011

gr8-1 said:
If you are trying to batch delete all music on an iOS device, it can be done.

1) Settings > General > Usage
2) Let the Storage settings load.
3) Click on Music...on next screen, swipe and delete.

Thank you Gr8-1 for providing the only viable solution to this problem with iTunes Match. My 16GB iPhone 4 has never had "low storage" warnings until I started using iTunes Match. I wish it would stream instead of download songs. Apple really needs to revamp the way iTunes Match works or else everybody's phone is going to have storage issues.

bej432 · Dec 23, 2011

Not working me.

I just tried the method below to delete an entire playlist of songs from my phone and it completely deleted the playlist with no iCloud icon to re-download. Any way I can get it back or did I permanently delete that playlist?

Maverickster said:
This is not true for me. They delete just fine with "Show All Music" selected. Since they're still in iCloud, they don't disappear; rather, once swipe/deleted, the iCloud icon appears next to the song indicating that it is not stored locally, but is available from iCloud.

You can delete from within a playlist on the device or you can delete an entire playlist directly on the device -- both using the swipe/delete method. As with the above, so deleting does not make the deleted songs or playlist actually disappear, rather it just puts the iCloud symbol next to the song where there was nothing before (again, indicating that the songs are no longer stored locally, but are available via iCloud)

Grandbrother · Dec 31, 2011

bej432 said:
I just tried the method below to delete an entire playlist of songs from my phone and it completely deleted the playlist with no iCloud icon to re-download. Any way I can get it back or did I permanently delete that playlist?

I'm having basically all the same issues listed in this thread and it's really ticking me off. How could the folks at Apple not anticipate the fundamental need to simply and intuitively manage the music downloaded to an iPhone through iTunes Match? This has gone from seeming great at first to being a huge time-suck just to figure out how to correctly free up the gigs of downloaded music that have pushed my phone's memory beyond capacity.

I'm currently having to run a restore on my phone thanks to it all. Why is something that should be so simple actually so difficult?!? Would absolutely love just to know the "official safe way" to do this.

juliocoutinho · Apr 10, 2012

You can delete from within a playlist on the device or you can delete an entire playlist directly on the device -- both using the swipe/delete method. As with the above, so deleting does not make the deleted songs or playlist actually disappear, rather it just puts the iCloud symbol next to the song where there was nothing before (again, indicating that the songs are no longer stored locally, but are available via iCloud)[/QUOTE]

It did not work for me to delete a song within a list. The delete button never shows up!

Any ideas?

Moviemaker27 · May 6, 2012

Delete playlists from WITHIN the playlist, don't swipe

Just to clarify, it looks like you can't swipe delete a playlist. Instead, click inside the playlist, and then scroll to the very top where there will be three buttons just below the search field, marked "edity" "clear" and "delete." If you click the delete button, it delete's the playlist, thus deleting the local songs from your device (but not iCloud) and clearing up space. I totally agree Apple needs to come up with a better way to manage storage as my iPhone is always full above capacity.

juliocoutinho · May 6, 2012

Moviemaker27 said:
Just to clarify, it looks like you can't swipe delete a playlist. Instead, click inside the playlist, and then scroll to the very top where there will be three buttons just below the search field, marked "edity" "clear" and "delete." If you click the delete button, it delete's the playlist, thus deleting the local songs from your device (but not iCloud) and clearing up space. I totally agree Apple needs to come up with a better way to manage storage as my iPhone is always full above capacity.

Thanks for your answer. However these buttin do not show up fie Smart Lists, only normal ones.

Michel Goldberg · Sep 23, 2012

I read in several threads that since iOS 6 it is not possible to remove downloaded music from an iDevice when iTunes Match is on !
Aberrant !!!
It is writenned in iOS 6 user guide : When iTunes Match is turned on, you cant delete music. If space is needed, iTunes Match removes music for you, starting with the oldest and least played songs
Perhaps Mac Rumors could relay and amplify the information ? Don't you think ?

pake · Nov 25, 2012

Michel Goldberg said:
I read in several threads that since iOS 6 it is not possible to remove downloaded music from an iDevice when iTunes Match is on !
Aberrant !!!
It is writenned in iOS 6 user guide : When iTunes Match is turned on, you cant delete music. If space is needed, iTunes Match removes music for you, starting with the oldest and least played songs
Perhaps Mac Rumors could relay and amplify the information ? Don't you think ?

If it's supposed to work that way, then it's not working for me. I tried to take a picture just now and it said something like "cannot take picture because you have not enough space". According to this it should have deleted a song or two and have let me taken my picture.
Without space management, I'm disappointed with iTunes match. I've just turned it off so I can manage my music with my mac.

Debsy44 · Nov 28, 2012

Delete songs off iphone

Hi Matt

If you read lower down under your post you'll see that you need to turn off iTunes match before you are able to swipe songs off.

I turned off Match and "Show all songs" and then went into songs as instructed and was able to swipe and delete

derekS1073 · Nov 8, 2013

Ok, I'm not sure if iOS 7 changes anything but even turning off Match, I can't swipe delete tracks. Anyone tried these steps after updating?

Primejimbo · Jan 20, 2014

yasmanious said:
Hello, I have the same problem.

After upgrade by default it looks like I have some songs on the song list in my iPhone that say they are downloadable.

so I went into music and turned the option off "show all music"

most of them went away, except for a couple.

I would like to get rid of them, but they aren't deletable.

I can swipe to delete for most songs except for those ones.... the delete option won't show up for them so I don't know how to get rid of them! haven't tried using a computer with itunes yet.

I have this issue also and have yet to find a fix. One time I deleted all music from the settings and started over that way.

noahrobert · Jun 8, 2015

If you have iTunes Match on you may not see the Music option under manage storage. To truly remove all music from the iPhone/iPad turn off music match and turn off show all music. Do this under settings > Music > Show all Music & iTunes Match. Then follow the instructions above. When I press delete it closes the settings app instantly. When opening the Music app it is now finally empty.
Not only to delete music, FonePaw iOS Transfer can help you export and import music files on iPhone.
Hope this helps some of you.

Match: how to delete songs downloaded to my iphone?

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