If you’re like most people, you probably have a ton of music stored on your iPhone. But with the new iOS 11 update, that music can start taking up space quickly. Here’s how to optimize your iPhone’s music storage to automatically free up space:
- Open the Settings app on your iPhone and scroll down to Music.
- Under “Music Library,” tap on “Manage Music.”
- On the next screen, you will see a list of all of your songs and albums. Tap on an album or song to see more details about it, including how much space it is taking up on your device (in megabytes). If you want to delete an album or song from your library, just tap on it and then select “Delete from Library” from the menu that appears.
- If you want to keep an album or song but want it to take up less space on your device, you can choose to “Optimize for Storage Space” when you first add it to your library. This will try to compress the audio file so that it takes up less space on your device (in megabytes). However, if you later decide that you no longer want the album or song compressed, just go back into Music Library and select “Optimize for Quality” instead. This will uncompress the audio file so that it takes up more space but will play back faster overall. ..
Despite the increasing storage size of each generation of iPhones and other iOS devices, it’s really easy to stuff them full. If your storage management problem is a result of too much music, there’s a new feature introduced in iOS 10 that makes it easy to optimize your storage and free up space.
How Music Storage Optimization Works
RELATED: What is Apple Music and How Does It Work?
Introduced in the spring of 2015, Apple Music—Apple’s answer to Spotify and other music streaming services—makes it pretty easy to find new artists and download music to your iOS device. Between Apple Music and regular MP3s, it’s easier than ever to fill your phone up.
Historically, Apple had a behind the scenes solution to this problem: if your iPhone was approaching its maximum storage capacity, then iOS would just quietly delete songs it thought you didn’t want anymore (as long as there was a copy of those songs in your iCloud music library). Unfortunately, there was no user control over the setup, and people often found iOS had deleted music they wanted to keep.
In iOS 10, you get a little more control. First, this feature is now off by default, so you have to seek it out and flip it on. Then, you simply tell the app how much space to allocate for music (say, 4GB) and when you reach a point where your iPhone storage is running low, Music will check your music storage and par it back to that level. If, for example, you have 8GB of music at the time the low storage warning is triggered, it will automatically delete some of it. The algorithm is smarter, too, leaving your most frequently played tracks and newly downloaded tracks intact while parring back old or seldom-played content to make room.
That’s the main difference: it’ll only delete stuff if your phone’s storage is full—not if you pass your music allocation. So if you set your music allocation to 4GB, but have 8GB of music and nothing else on your 16GB iPhone, Apple won’t delete any music—it’ll only par it back to 4GB if the rest of your phone’s storage gets filled up. And, this only applies to music that is also available via your iCloud library or via the Apple Music service. iOS will never automatically par back music you’ve manually loaded onto your iPhone from iTunes.
Enabling Music Storage Optimization
If optimization sounds like a feature you’d benefit from, it’s dead simple to turn it on. Simply grab your iPhone or other iOS device, and open up the “Settings” app. Within the Settings app, look for the “Music” entry.
In the top half o the Music settings, confirm that “iCloud Music Library” is toggled on. Without this setting turned on, the music optimization menu is inaccessible—remember the optimization features only work on Apple Music downloads and music in your iCloud library, not the material you’ve manually synced from iTunes.
Scroll down to the bottom where you’ll find the “Optimize Storage” option. Click on it.
Toggle “Optimize Storage” on. Beneath it you can then select the level of minimum storage you want preserved for your music. If you select “None” then iOS will delete as much music as it needs in order to free up space. Barring that extreme of a selection, you can opt for 4, 8, 16, or 32 GB of storage.
Remember this amount is the volume of storage that iOS will par back to only if your phone’s storage is full. You’re always free to add as much music as you want, as long as your phone isn’t nearing the end of its storage.
That’s all there is to it! Toggle the setting on, make our adjustments, and never worry about overfilling your iPhone with music again.
