Delete Songs Directly on iPhone, iPad, or iPod touch

You can now delete songs directly from the Music app on your iPad, iPhone, or iPod touch. The music removal action is achieved directly on the iOS device without having to re-sync to iTunes, allowing you to rapidly clear out music or songs you don’t want stored on the device.

How to Delete a Song with a Swipe in iOS Music App

Using the song removal trick is very easy and intuitive, working the same on all iOS devices including the iPhone and iPad:

1. Launch the Music app and access the music library as usual
2. Tap through to any song, album, or the general music library list
3. Slide sideways with a swipe gesture on the track / song name to bring up a red “Delete” button
4. Tap the delete button to remove the song, repeat as necessary with additional music if desired to trash more songs

To delete another song or a ton of music, just repeat the process.

The swipe gestures makes it very fast and you can quickly clear out an entire album this way or a collection of music you no longer want on the iOS device. That’s really all there is to it, a surprisingly easy tip that is yet another nice addition to the iOS platform that lets you manage data on an iOS device without having to connect it to a computer or deal with iTunes if you don’t want to.

This in-app track specific removal feature was introduced to iOS in the 5th major release and has since been improved with each additional major iOS release, functioning the same but looking slightly different from say version 6 to iOS 9 and beyond. All in all it’s a huge improvement to what existed before, and prior to the release of iOS 5, songs had to be deleted through iTunes on the device itself, and then resynced, all while connecting the iPhone, iPod, or iPad to a computer. So a big thank you Apple for simplifying the post-PC process!

Oh, and if you’re thinking about clearing your device of all songs, albums, artists, and every other piece of local music, you can delete all music from iOS with this trick too.

Thanks for sending in the tip idea Loic! On a quick side note, this can be a really great way to clear up some capacity on an iPhone if you’re running low on storage for taking photos, so just trash a couple of songs and keep shooting pictures if need be, you can always get the deleted songs back onto the device later by re-syncing or re-downloading from iTunes.