Music bought on phone creates iTunes "stream" files that I cannot delete.

You could try the following all-purpose steps for dealing with erratic device or sync behaviour. They assume that all of the content you want on the device is in your library ready for restoring. If it isn't see Recover your iTunes library from your iPod or iOS device first. I would also recommend you copy everything out of the camera roll if you haven't already.

1. Backup device to iTunes.
2. Restore as a new device.
3. Restore the backup you made earlier.

Use an encrypted backup (*) if you want to preserve passwords, Wi-Fi settings, web history and health data where appropriate. I also suggest syncing with a selection of playlists (unless you're using iCloud Music Library) rather than manually adding content as, if nothing else, the process above is easier to do if you ever have to go through it again.

(*) The downside with backup encryption is that if you forget the password when you need it again, which could be years later, you may need to invoke a workaround to turn off encryption as shown in Disable iOS backup encryption, which can only help if your device is in a state that can backup to iCloud or is running iOS 11.

tt2

Any solution other than using the phoneview app? It doesn't seem available anymore. I've got 166 songs that are duplicated as the "stream" file and taking up a bunch of space. At first these files were also duplicated in the music app on the phone, but I've at least got that taken care of now, buy going in and deleting them manually and then syncing. However, they still show up in iTunes on my mac as the greyed out Stream and take up extra space on my phone. I've tried everything that everyone else has already mentioned and nothing seems to get rid of these!

If you're seeing this on your Mac, I get this for any purchases where I've altered the tag (e.g. remove "(Deluxe Edition)" from the album name). I think iTunes does this since it sees the altered version as something different from what's in the cloud, so shows a duplicate "stream" copy based on the as-purchased tag values. I have never seen this on my Mac where I have not edited the tag. So perhaps that is your issue?

I do get this problem on my iOS devices when I order from the device, and the only way I've found to remove these is either the phoneview app, or brute-force the issue by changing the device to manual sync, manually delete all music from the device via iTunes, back it up, restore it, install the backup, then switch the device back to auto-sync.

Hi, has anyone found a fix for this? I have the same issue with a tone 'stream' file that has appeared since updating to iTunes 12.7 - see below. It cannot be deleted.

I came here to day with this exact same issue, and your post was the first one on the list. Hopefully someone can help us with removing the "streaming" videos from the list of viseos on the iDevice.

Mine is showing episode 1 of Top Gear "streaming" in TV, and The Incredibles "Streaming" in movies. Those are the only two items I ever bought on the iPad. But the Incredibles was actually the free copy I got for downloading and signing into the disney movie app. I wonder if this issue is related? I don't recall which one I bought first, so I can't blame the Disney app yet.

Yeah, I de-sync'd all movies and TV shows and the grey circled "stream" video still shows up.

However, I'm NOT seeing any movies, TV or Music as a greyed out "stream" UNLESS they were bough on the iPad.

PS: Just noticed the date added for the incredibles is 12/31/69 5:00PM and date modified is 2/26/14 2:29PM - Not sure why the incredibles is dated 1969. iTunes iPad views says the "stream" was added on 3/4/14.

iTunes says Top gear was bought and added on 2/17/14, However, iTunes showing the iPad content says the "stream" was added to my iPad on 2/23/14.

Okay, so that's the folder that get's poulated when I buy music on my Mac and I have the iPad set to download news apps, music and books from the cloud.

Since I've already sync'd a playlist over to the iPad with that music in it, these are duplicates. But, if I hadn't gotten it sync'd over, would there be a way to delete just the "stream" items and leave the automatically downloaded purchased music?

Since all the files are long numbers ending in .m4a or .plist and none are m4v I don't know which single files could be removed to get rid of the "stream" files.

PS: What's in the "downloads" folder then?

That other issue is a consequence of Apple making us collect 1-5 GB of photos in our iMessages and texts without a way to easily delete the ones we don't want. If all photos in iMessage went to the camera roll, and iMessage just linked to the one copy it would save us that trouble.

FYI - phone view > delete purchases folder fixed it for me! but if Apple doesn't have a Proper solution they're just going to discourage people from buying on their iDevice.

Certainly makes me not want to purchase anything on my iPhone. I think in my case I either bought now and chose download later, or I aborted the download so I wouldn't fill up the device.

Just had this problem with iTunes 12.3 on MacBook Air running Yosemite 10.10.5 and iPhone 6 with iOS 9.0.2, using wifi sync. I'd delete the files from my iPhone (in iTunes on the Mac, obviously) then hit sync and the files would come back.

I eventually managed to get rid of them by secondary-clicking and doing "Reset Plays", then sync, then delete, then sync again. So it looks like the play count is what is keeping the Stream files alive. I'm sure I've seen that problem in another context.