It’s 2014 and People Still Don’t Know How to Delete the Music on Their iPhones/iPads

If you’re a power user, you may find it surprising that a lot of people still don’t know how to delete their iPhone’s/iPad’s music library in this day and age. But the reality is that Apple is making it really hard on everyone.

I'm not making it up, look: “How do I delete music from the iPad?” and “On Ios 7 how do you delete songs directly on the iPhone?”

After years of fiddling with Apple products, I consider myself somewhat well-versed in all things iOS and OS X.

But if you ask me today to give you a straight answer on “how do I delete my iPhone music?” I’m pretty sure I’ll begin by taking a deep breath, followed by “it depends.”

You see, there are various circumstances as to how your music can end up on your iPhone/iPod/iPad, and then there are various methods for deleting that music. You know, depending on how it got in there in the first place.

If you’re here for a guide to delete your music library, you’re out of luck. The list of possible scenarios is just too long, but I’ll consider making a tutorial in the near future.

One thing I can tell you on the spot is this: if you absolutely must get rid of some of your music (on an up-to-date iOS 7 device) simply go into your Music app and swipe left on each song to bring out the Delete button. Yes, you can actually do that, but your thumb will probably fall off after the 50th song.

If you have too many songs, try this: go into your Settings, turn ON “show all music,” allow all iTunes Match songs to download (tap the cloud icon in front of each song that has one), go back to Settings and turn OFF “show all music,” then proceed to manually delete the songs.

It might work, or it might not. Don’t come back whining if your iDevice opens up a portal to another planet in a distant galaxy. As I said, this is not an official tutorial.

Apple has been selling iOS boom boxes for over a decade now and people still can’t find an easy solution to just erase the content. If a nuclear sub can have a big fat button for history-altering decisions, why can’t the iPhone have a simple delete-all button?

Sometimes I think they just want us to just buy a regular MP3 player instead.

This is a Personal Thoughts piece reflecting the author’s personal opinion on matters relating to Apple and / or the products associated with the Apple brand. This article should not be taken as the official stance of Softpedia on Apple-related matters.