Despite the fact that Apple has increased the capacities of the new iPhone 7 and 7 Plus to 32, 128 and 256GB of storage, there are still many users who have devices with only 16GB and who have to manage the content downloaded on their device very well. . Music is one of the applications that can occupy that precious space the most, but with iOS 10 we have very useful configuration options for to be able to have all our favorite music downloaded and to be able to listen to it offline and at the same time not have to worry about what we download and what not to avoid running out of free space. We explain how to configure everything to our liking.
Automatic optimization
As with Photos or macOS Sierra, Apple allows us to activate the option that the system is the one that manages our storage for us, making it possible to delete the music that we have downloaded but that we do not listen to if necessary. This will only happen if the system runs out of free space, and it is a dynamic process, that is, we activate it and we can not worry because iOS will take care of everything.
Within the menu Settings> Music> Optimize storage we can configure what space we want our Music to occupy at least. Be careful with the detail that we are talking about minimum storage, not maximum. That is, the system guarantees that we will have at least that music always downloaded, and so that we have an idea more or less of how much it is, in addition to the capacity it tells us how many more or less songs can fit in that space. We even have the option of activating the Automatic Downloads option, so that all the music that we add is downloaded, and the system takes care of all the space management.
Delete music manually
If we are more of those who want to do things for ourselves, we also have the option to delete the music manually. For this we can proceed in two different ways: from the Music application itself or from the system settings.
If we open the Music application and access any album or playlist that we have downloaded to the iPhone, we can select which song we want to delete and delete the download. If we have 3D Touch (iPhone 6s onwards) we just have to press hard on that song and choose the option from the menu that appears on the screen. If not, we can always click on the «...» and the same menu will appear.
From the Settings we can also do it, and it is also much faster if what we want is to delete artists or entire albums. We enter the menu Settings> Music> Downloaded music and there we can delete by artists, by albums or individual tracks, depending on how much we delve into the menu. By clicking on the Edit option we can delete the music that we no longer want to have stored on our iPhone.
