Can anyone help with an iPhone glitch before I go completely bonkers

[swee'pea99]

I bought it for the photographic colours, and I've never regretted it, but sometimes I want to do something other than take photos and often as not I find it completely impossible.

I'd like to instal the latest version of ios, but I don't have enough room on my phone. Now unless I'm reading it wrong, this

...is telling me I have 27Gb of music files on the phone.

So I'm thinking why don't I delete a bunch, to make room for the IoS update.

So I google.

Makes sense. That's what I'd expect.

But when I go to try it, when I right-click I don't get a delete option. (Nor can I find one anywhere else) Instead I get:

Which is the bit where I start banging my head on the keyboard.

Why is it offering me the option to 'Add to Device'? Surely this

says I'm looking at the music that is already on the device, doesn't it?

If anyone has any answers/advice/tips I'd appreciate it.

 

[mistyoptic]

You can choose what music is synced with your phone. Perhaps you could change how much of your music is on the phone.

“Sync only selected songs” or something similar. I’m not in front of my pc but I think you have to click on the image of your device on the top menu line to get this option. Then you can choose by artist or genre or whatever. Once you resync, others will disappear from your phone

 

[Wheelspinner]

You don’t say which version you are currently on, but iTunes is quite old and obsolete so that AI response is not helpful.

First up though, are you using the iCloud option for your Music Library, which by default means you only ever stream it rather than rely on a local storage copy? But in any case…

In Music, go to Library then there should be a section called “Downloaded”. This is where it will show only the music actually stored locally on your phone. In this you can then select each Album, Song, Artist etc. then with the ellipsis menu top right you get the “Remove” or delete option.

Have to do it one by one which is a painfully slow process with a lot of content though.

 

[swee'pea99]

In Music, go to Library then there should be a section called “Downloaded”. This is where it will show only the music actually stored locally on your phone.

That's it! Fantastic, many thanks. Thanks also to mistyoptic, but this is definitely my start point.

 

[swee'pea99]

Thanks again. In the event it proved laborious, as you said, and also I couldn't make any sense out of what looked like a massive disparity between the files I could see in Downloaded - which looked like maybe seven or eight Gb all told - and the reported 22.somethingGb that was preventing me doing the update. Fortunately further googling took me to a downloadable app called 3utools, which proved to do everything iTunes made impossible, real easy. Sorting wheat from chaff still looked like taking an age, so I ended up exporting everything, then deleting everything, then installing the update, then transferring music back. Which has worked a treat. Thanks for nothing Apple. Hooray for 3utools!

 

[Wheelspinner]

Hmm, seems odd. The screenshot you have says 5450 songs, which roughly equals 27 Gb of data - a typical MP3 file for a 4-5 minute song is about 5 Mb.

 

[swee'pea99]

Hmm, seems odd. The screenshot you have says 5450 songs, which roughly equals 27 Gb of data - a typical MP3 file for a 4-5 minute song is about 5 Mb.

Decidedly. I wonder where they all were! I couldn't find but a few of them. I went through the list of All Songs approximately counting up the Mb as I went. By the time I'd got to the end of L I was up to about 4Gb. Which was the point where I decided on the nuclear option . Anyway, all's well that ends well - I now have an up-to-date IoS, a a music library well-stocked with goodies, and 20Gb to spare. Hooray!