How to reset or delete music from iPhone

Apple smartphones are always released with a fixed amount of internal memory. Unlike most Android devices, they do not allow for the use of SD cards for expansion. Modern iPhones have a minimum capacity of 32 GB, but there are quite a lot of models 4S, 5 and 6, which have 8 or 16 GB of memory. In terms of hardware capabilities, these are still current smartphones, but their owners have to think about how to delete music or other data from the iPhone to free up space.

Introduction. Apple and music

Before we learn about how to transfer music from a computer to an iPhone, let's discuss a little the company's policy regarding downloading this kind of content to its devices. When launching its products, Apple from the very beginning provided users with such large services as the AppStore and the iTunes Store, with which you can download games, applications and media files, respectively, to any device from this company. This was a real breakthrough in its time, because the content presented on these services is of the highest quality. But today we will only talk about music, so let’s first talk about Apple’s music store.

iPhone is a mobile device that's perfect for listening to your favorite music

The iTunes Store has always occupied a high position in the global music market. Sales from this service show how in demand a particular artist, his album or individual composition is. That is, it has global significance, and this cannot be taken away from it. Many users in our country initially complained about the company’s pricing policy in this industry, although the cost of content in Russia is much lower than in other countries. For example, if one average song in America costs 99 cents, which is almost 60 rubles, then you can purchase it from us for a symbolic 19 rubles. The difference is simply colossal, so Apple cannot be blamed for anything regarding the price.

Currently, streaming services have become increasingly popular, to use which the client pays a monthly subscription to the service and gets access to the entire library of the streaming service. This is a very convenient and profitable offer, especially for those people who have a music collection of hundreds of tracks. The Apple company does not lag behind and follows fashion trends, so it introduced the Apple Music service to its users.

You also cannot do without third-party programs and applications that also offer you to listen and download music to your phone without using iTunes. But, as a rule, not all songs can be found there. Particularly popular today are applications that allow you to listen to music on the VKontakte social network, where it is quite difficult to find an original composition. But this method has every right to exist, and we will talk about it at the very end.

So, we found out that there are four ways to download or upload music to iPhone. Let's look at each of them in more detail so that you don't have any questions or problems. So get ready, because soon you will be listening to your favorite tracks directly on your device. Please note that at the end of the description of each method, we will tell you how to delete music from iPhone.

How to download songs for local playback

If you'll be going offline, including flights or subways, or inter-regional travel without Wi-Fi access, you can download songs, albums, playlists, or entire artists locally to your device to make sure they're available to play. Anywhere, anytime.

Click the More button (looks like •••) to the right of the artist, album, playlist, or song.
Click the Make available offline button.
Click Downloads tab to see and manage caching.

Music available for offline playback has a small device icon in the top right corner of the More button.

iTunes program

First, let's look at the method by which you can transfer music from your computer to your iPhone using iTunes. Please note that you will need to first download and install the latest version of this application on your computer or laptop. You can download it from the official Apple website completely free of charge. If you have done this, then you can move on:

Create a folder on your computer with all your music (if you don't have one). Everything that will be in it will then be displayed on your phone in the standard “Music” application. Therefore, transfer files carefully.
Launch iTunes. In the window you will see the main menu, which contains the tabs “File”, “Edit”, “View”, “Management” and others. Click on the very first one - “File”.
Next, select “Add folder to media library” and find the one created earlier (step 1). Wait while the program scans and adds songs to its collection.
Connect your iPhone to your computer or laptop using a USB cable. Wait until the utility detects your device, which will become available in its window.
Below the main menu buttons there will be shortcut keys to music, video and other content. To the right of them you will see an iPhone icon that you will need to click on. This will take you to the main settings page of your smartphone.
Among these settings, which are located on the left toolbar, there is a “Music” tab - click on it. Now check the box next to “Sync with iTunes Library.” Then click on the button at the bottom of the “Synchronize” page and wait for the operation to complete. The program may warn you that all songs on your iPhone will be deleted and replaced with your iTunes library. There is nothing wrong with this, so we calmly agree. Unless you already have music downloaded on your phone, in which case it will be deleted!

Now you will have on your device all the songs that were in your iTunes library. To delete music from iPhone, you just need to erase the necessary songs from your iTunes library. Then connect your phone to your computer or laptop and sync it using this program. You can also delete them directly from the device itself, however, with further synchronization they will be added to the collection again if you leave these songs in the program’s library.

How to delete all music from iPhone

A complete music library wipe is usually used after purchasing a used device to get rid of the previous owner's archive. The entire process is carried out through internal actions.

The use of this method is permitted for all Apple devices running an iOS operating system higher than 5.0. Models that do not support it will have to be connected via a cable to the computer and manually delete the library.

Process to delete all music:

You will need to open the “Settings” section and go to the “General” item.
Scroll down the screen and select the “Statistics” section.
After selecting this item, the system will start analyzing all available data and display statistics on the space occupied by programs or files.
In the window that opens, you will need to click on the “Music” tab, in which the owner will receive complete information about the music files.
In the “All Music” field you will need to swipe from right to left. As a result, a red button with the inscription “Delete” will appear.
Next, you only need to confirm your choice, and all music from the device will be physically deleted and the music library will be empty.

It should be remembered that it will be difficult to restore deleted items (you will need to connect to your computer via iTunes), so completely wiping your iPhone is done as a last resort. Using a similar method, all music that was downloaded to the phone from Apple’s proprietary cloud, iCloud, is deleted.

iTunes Store

You can also download music to your iPhone without using a computer or laptop using the special iTunes Store. This program is pre-installed on your device. Find it using Spotlight search or yourself by scrolling through the screens on your phone.

After launch, you will have access to purchase millions of songs that are available on the service: you can purchase artist videos, entire albums, publications. You can also pre-order new music, which will be downloaded to your device after sales start. To purchase content in the iTunes Store, click the “Buy” button located on the page of the selected song and enter payment information - this can be a bank card, billing address, and mobile phone number (available only for Beeline subscribers). After you pay for your long-awaited purchase, the song or album will appear on all your devices that have automatic music syncing enabled through your Apple ID.

Please note that you can download songs to your computer or laptop and sync this library with your device using the previous method (you can delete music from iPhone using the same method). Or you can set up the above-mentioned automatic download of purchased content on all your Apple devices. Agree that this is quite convenient. However, buying music from the iTunes Store involves a lot of expense for those people who listen to hundreds, or even thousands, of tracks. They will prefer the Apple Music streaming service, which you can learn more about below.

Delete a single song from iPhone

Deleting an individual composition will not take much work and time. The method is suitable for deleting a small number of songs. Extensive cleaning will be time-consuming and inconvenient.

You will need to do:

Go to the branded music gallery “Music”.
In the window that appears, scroll to the desired composition.
Swipe from right to left on the line with the selected song.
A red “Delete” key will appear on the right side of the line.
Confirm action.

A simple algorithm will allow you to get rid of the composition that is in your personal iCloud profile, but you will not be able to delete works from the device’s memory directly.

A video will help inexperienced users

Remove songs by artist, genre or album

If you need to remove the creativity of certain groups, genres or even styles, it is recommended to use the auxiliary functions of Apple gadgets.

You will need to go to iTunes, open the control panel and select the Music section. There, re-check the selected playlists, albums, artists and genres.

A check mark is placed next to those performers who should remain on the phone.

Apple Music

Apple Music is a huge online library of songs, videos and other music products. The service provides a large number of opportunities for its listeners. Immediately after registering with Apple Music, the program refines your musical taste in order to further suggest selections and playlists from leading publications that you might like.

Although it is a streaming service, Apple Music still allows users to download songs to their device for offline listening. This way, you will not depend on Internet access if you want to listen to your favorite song. Online broadcasting will be interesting for those who have a small amount of memory on their device and almost always have the opportunity to access the network. We can say that the service will be to the liking of every user.

The cost of a monthly payment is 169 rubles, which is quite acceptable regarding not only the quantity, but also the quality of the services provided: you receive fully licensed content directly, as you would with iTunes. The only difference is that when purchasing in a store, you pay once and use the content for as long as you like. In the case of a streaming service, you listen to music while your subscription is active. Today, the company offers all users a free trial of Apple Music for three months from the date of subscription activation. If you don't like the service, you can unsubscribe at any time and listen to music in another way.

To record music on your iPhone, just enter the name of the artist or song in the search field. Go to the page of the song you need and click on the plus sign - this will add the song to your collection, which will be automatically included in all media libraries that use your Apple ID. That is, if you log into your Apple ID in iTunes on your computer, you will see all these files. To download music to your iPhone from the service, just on the same page, after adding the song to the collection, click on the cloud icon. After that, you can listen to it offline. Please note that you can download not only individual songs, but also entire albums or collections with playlists.

iOS Features

In 2015, the Apple Music streaming service launched, expanding the capabilities of working with music on the iPhone. Users can now do without the constant synchronization of new songs through iTunes, replacing it with a cloud one. With the latest iOS updates, smartphone storage management has become more flexible. To work with multimedia files, a PC is practically not needed.

Music app

Music control on iPhone is concentrated in the application of the same name. In it, you can change various playback settings, interact with the cloud, and delete unnecessary content.

On the main settings page, we go down to the last block containing multimedia applications. Below it will be only programs independently installed by the user.

Using the switch indicated by the arrow, we can immediately erase from the smartphone all previously downloaded tracks for offline listening, turning off communication with the cloud. The music will remain on other devices and will be available for listening online, but it will not take up space on the device. Numbered items allow you to selectively delete tracks or limit the maximum space occupied.

Swiping in the direction indicated by the arrow on any composition opens the delete menu. If you use this gesture on an item indicated by a frame, you can quickly delete all saved songs at once.

The second item activates the preliminary blocking of free space, the maximum allocated on the device, to download music. The space limit is fixed and ranges from 6.25 to 50 percent of the total internal memory.

Storage management

With the release of iOS 11, Apple changed the minimum amount of preinstalled memory. Now for the iPhone 7 and other previously released models it is 32 GB, and last year's 8, 8 Plus and X received 64 GB. In the operating system itself, compared to the previous iOS 10, the storage management area has been completely redesigned.

Open the smartphone settings and go to the “General” section.

Find the item marked in the screenshot.

Here we see a general scheme for filling memory, setting the behavior of unused programs and the media library. The “Music” item we need is located first among the system application parameters.

The numbers mark two sections of the control menu, which allow you to completely delete all music in one movement. The first item “Download” makes it possible to restore content if necessary. The program along with the data is downloaded to the cloud, freeing up most of the occupied space. Its icon remains on the device, but is displayed with a small cloud icon. After some time, such an application can be installed back, and the music will be saved during this operation. The second point is intended for complete and irreversible removal. The boxed interactive control in its initial state is called "Edit". The screenshot shows it in action. By clicking on the minus sign shown by the arrow, you can delete all content or individual albums. The previously discussed swipe, performed from the right to the left edge of the screen, also works in this area.

Media library

You can quickly delete any songs directly in the iOS music player interface.

Open your media library in album view mode. Sorting is done by artist or by title depending on the user's previously defined preferences. Having selected the album to be deleted, long press on the icon to open the context menu.

For music downloaded to the device, it looks as shown in the screenshot. An album located in the cloud and intended for online listening will have the “Delete” option instead of the one indicated.

Third Party Applications

There is no need to say much about them: most of them offer to listen to music online for free, and for a fee they provide the opportunity to download to your device. But, of course, there are also completely free ones, with advertising in the application. Some simply allow you to play content that you download into the program itself via iTunes on your computer. Perhaps this is convenient for some people: there is no dependence on any services in which it is impossible to find any live recordings of a certain artist. Or it may not be there at all (if the artist is unknown in wide circles), which is quite rare.

As noted above, you can record music on iPhone using third-party programs both from the application itself and through iTunes. In the first case, you will simply need to select the “Download” icon or inscription (depending on which application you are using; you can always find out more in the description). In the second case, you will have to do the following:

Create a folder on your computer with all the necessary compositions (so you don’t have to search for them for a long time).
Launch iTunes and connect your iPhone to your computer or laptop using a USB cable.
Below the main menu buttons there are shortcut keys to music, video and other content. To the right of them there will be an iPhone icon that you will need to click on. This will take you to the main settings page of your smartphone.
Among the settings that are located on the left toolbar, click on the “Programs” item and in the bottom panel find the name of the downloaded third-party utility. Left-click on it once.
On the right you will see the folder for this application. Click the “Add” button and use the explorer to select all the songs from the first paragraph. Then click OK.
Now you can disconnect your device from your computer and check for songs in your program. Ready! You can delete these songs both from the device itself and using iTunes.

The last word

iOS is widely known as the world's best mobile operating system because Apple truly thinks and optimizes one aspect of its features and processes. As you can see, there are different options for getting rid of all your songs, temporarily or permanently.

In truth, not having such options would be unimaginable as we all know how reluctant Apple is to allow third party apps access to the operating system. At least there's no reason to when it comes to the Music app.

Let's sum it up

Today we learned how to reset music from your computer to iPhone, how to download songs to your device using various services, and how to delete music from iPhone. The following methods were considered:

Recording using iTunes;
Purchase and download through the iTunesStore online store;
Using the AppleMusic streaming service;
Using third-party programs and applications on the device.

Some of them are paid, which is something you should pay attention to. Therefore, everyone can choose the most convenient way to transfer music from computer to iPhone. Dear friends, how do you listen to music on your iPhone?

Deleting downloaded songs

To delete downloaded tracks from your iPhone, open a new playlist in the Music app and tap the small circle icon with three dots. Then click "Delete" -> "Delete Downloads".

If you don't see the Delete option, your iPhone isn't recognizing the tracks as downloaded. In this case, the device may show that the song is loaded at the top of the playlist. In this case, click the three dots icon again and select "Download". The tracks are already downloaded, so no actual downloading will occur.

ON TOPIC: How to watch (open) lyrics from Apple Music on iPhone or iPad.