How do you delete songs in iOS 6 (finger swipe not working)

Given workarounds are appreciated, but let's be honest, I have a hard time seeing them as workarounds at all. Anything that requires "turning off the actual service" in order to circumvent a lack of functionality is ridiculous and has its share of undesirable implications (i.e., the deletion and repopulation of the Match database, which takes times, uses data and has a serious performance impact).

This problem has one very simple solution: just leave it the way it was before, it was perfect! And that's why this is so hard to understand - they didn't solve any problem with this change, they actually introduced one that didn't exist. Go figure...

Has Apple even acknowledged this mistake yet? The only comment I've heard regarding ios6 has been about the maps app. This is a tremendous problem for me, and totally defeats the conveniences of cloud based storage. One of the reasons most of my electronics are Apple is because my Apple products play nice with each other. I would like to hear a commitment soon from Apple that this will be resolved in the next update.

Apple will never acknowledge anything - we simply hope they will revert to the old way in some future iOS update.

The issue is starting to get some media attention though (TUAW, Macworld, ...), so that gives me some hope it will happen. I also mentioned it to Jim Dalrymple (from The Loop) through Twitter and he agrees that it doesn't make any sense and he also preferred the way it used to work. He's a very influent voice, so I hope he posts something about it too.

Interestingly I don't even use itunes match and I cannot swipe-delete anymore either since bumping up to iOS6.

This is just unbelievable! I cannot believe that Apple can roll out such a bad service. First Maps, then this. Also the Podcast App is pretty crappy. I think I start loosing my faith in Apple as a company that does things that 'just work'. I thought they can do without Steve, but apparently they cannot.

So when I discovered that I could not use 'the old way' to manage the storage on my phone, i.e. deleting songs and albums to make up room and then download others by tapping the cloud icon, I deleted all music (using Settings > Usage) and turned off iTunes Match. Now the odd thing is that it still shows me all my albums that are stored on iTunes Match in the Music App. How can this be? When I connected it to my Mac, iTunes also showed that there were still a couple of GB occupied by Audio.

We were used to such a high standard, and now this!

Sounds like you have iTunes Match enabled. If you go to Settings -> Music -> iTunes Match and turn it off, you should be able to delete the songs that were downloaded to your library by swiping to expose the delete button. I'm running IOS 6 on an iPhone 5 and it worked for me.

@ siv

Two points:

1. In my particular case, when I turn iTunes Match OFF, suddenly all albums APPEAR in my Music App, in contrast to when I have iTunes Match ON and 'Show All Music' OFF, then I only see downloaded music (as it is supposed to). But WHY ON EARTH do I see all albums when iTunes Match is OFF?

2. I don't see any logic in me having to turn iTunes Match OFF in order to be able to delete songs. That is just a total stupidity! I liked the way it worked in iOS 5 much better and it made so much more sense..

Glad I found this thread as it explains why my battery was drained Friday night and why I used a huge chunk of data allowance. iTunes Match is now switched off and will remain so

Nice.. Switched Match off on iPad and its removed everything most of which was downloaded before even using Match

I maybe have found a solution to this issue: when your music is synced and you have nôway to remove it from your iOS device just try to do it from iTunes on your computer. I explain:

In iTunes, with your iOS device visible in it, drill down to Music (below your iPad/iPod/iPhone) so you will be able to see your iOS available music.

Then, try to delete one song from it and see what happens.

Doesn't work for me. All songs are grey.

But it looks interesting. Seems as if many songs aren't even downloaded. Crappy programming?

I've noticed it depends on wether you chose to manually manage your songs or not.

On my iPhone 4 I can do it but not for my 4S.

On the 4 I chose Manual syncing before using iTunes Match as it was set to Automatic on the 4S.

PS : I also saw the weird behavior on the track list too

@MFreud

@theJose

It's strange isn't it? I, like thejose , this works much better for me. It means I can control whats on my iphone/ipad much better than on IOS5.

I actually gave up on IOS5 ITM because you couldn't tell what was on your device without scrolling through everything. Now we can delete all the songs we've streamed by toggling ITM on/off.

It seems there are some pretty polarised views on this....

wondermac wrote:

@ siv

Two points:

1. In my particular case, when I turn iTunes Match OFF, suddenly all albums APPEAR in my Music App, in contrast to when I have iTunes Match ON and 'Show All Music' OFF, then I only see downloaded music (as it is supposed to). But WHY ON EARTH do I see all albums when iTunes Match is OFF?

2. I don't see any logic in me having to turn iTunes Match OFF in order to be able to delete songs. That is just a total stupidity! I liked the way it worked in iOS 5 much better and it made so much more sense..

Hi.

1.When you turn iTunes Match OFF.. the music appearing is the music on your device. (i.e downloaded to it, from direct sync or from ITM downloads). If you turn ITM 'ON' then your ITM icloud content should appear, as well as the music on your device, i.e it should list everything.

2. Turning ITM off, will not delete the music you have 'downloaded', like before in IOS5, it will only delete the music you 'streamed'....The ability to delete individual songs has gone, this is not popular but I think its because it makes managing the music on your device easier?

Cheers

Easy to fix. Go into settings, turn iTunes Match off. You'll keep all your playlists and the music on your phone, but that will re-enable the ability to swipe and delete. Unnecessary change, but fixable.