Deleting Songs From Itunes

[Laila Berri]

iTuneshas deleted my imported music library several times over the past few years. I use iTunes and an iPhone (currently iPhone 13 but the phone model is not related to the problem). iTunes kept the library with over 1,000 hours of music and dozens of play lists working just fine for many years (going back to iPod days). Starting about 2 or 3 years ago, iTunes on random days/months deletes the entire imported music libary and all the play lists reverting only to a handful of songs purchased through iTunes. I start iTunes one day and everything is just gone.

But other than that, iTunes does not randomly delete songs. If songs become unplayable in your iTunes Library (as opposed to disappearing from your library), they will have an exclamation mark placed next to the title to indicate that iTunes can no longer find the file for that song. This is usually because the file or the path to the file, has been renamed, moved or deleted - but not by iTunes. If this is what has happened, we can offer tips to find them again. Turingftext2 has a tip on it (if I can find it), or I can offer assistance.

Just to add to the fiend's post above what you describe sounds like the issue I address in the link he posted. My first thought would be that you have some anti-virus software that disrupts iTunes when it is updating the library. Look for hidden .tmp files in the iTunes folder.

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If your iTunes library is getting a bit out of control, you can clean things up by deleting music you no longer listen to. When you remove songs from your iTunes library, they'll be removed from any devices they're synced to next time you sync. When you delete songs directly on your iOS device, they are completely removed. Songs that you've purchased may be hidden when you delete them, and can be unhidden with iTunes.

I have been auditing my iTunes library on my iMac. As I go through each artist, I delete the duplicate songs and also old songs from another era that I no longer want. I am almost half-way through my library of 10,600 songs, and I have deleted almost 2,000 songs. Today I noticed, under "recently added", that the songs are returning to my library! Why? What I do, is right-click the song, click "remove from Library", which brings another pop-up with "Keep File" or "Move to Trash". So I move to trash and then I go and empty my trash folder.

What a huge waste of so many hours! How do I permanently delete the song from my library, never to return? I realize if I purchased it through the iTunes store that it will sit in my account under "purchased" - but how do I get the songs to NOT repopulate my library.....especially all the duplicates. The "find duplicates" mode is useless for a number of reasons that I won't get into. Can someone help?

I am running out of space on my Macbook (OS 10.4.11). It is mainly because most of my memory is being taken up by my iTunes library (I have over 24,000 songs) They are already on my iPod, so I would like to delete most of the songs from my computer (have them backed up on an external drive also). But I don't want to lose them on my ipod. What do I need to do to be able to delete certain songs from my computer but keep them on my ipod.

So stupid. I have a "voice memo" that i created and it now automatically plays in iTunes... I don't want to delete the voice memo, but I don't want it to play in iTunes. I have to choose between it permanently being on my computer or deleting it in it's entirety? Could there not just be an option to "delete from iTunes only"??? Why MUST the two be linked?

Great! Thanks for the suggestions. I think I am going to try #2 since I would like to keep a couple 100 songs on the computer just for when I do want to play something. I just bought a Toshiba 320 GB external hard drive. Before I give it a try, one more question - does doing this mean I will lose all my playlists on my ipod?

So I found this article ( -your-itunes-library-to -a-new-hard-drive/) and have tried to follow it to transfer the songs over, including consolidating the files, etc. but nothing seems to work. I would appreciate any help someone could give me.

If you're new to iPhone, or have never needed to delete music from your iPhone before, it may not be immediately apparent how to delete songs or albums from your device. Do not fear, though! In this article, we'll guide you through 4 easy ways in which you can remove music from your iPhone.

Before deleting music from your device, or syncing your iTunes library with your iPhone, we highly recommend backing the device up using iTunes or a third-party software. You can create a backup of your iPhone by connecting it to iTunes > click your device icon > click Back up Now.

Unfortunately, the iPhone currently provides no way to find which of your tracks are duplicated, so the use of a computer is necessary. We will firstly remove any duplicate songs from iTunes (or Apple Music), then sync your cleaned library with your iPhone, ensuring that your iPhone's library is the same as your iTunes library.

If you have a little extra time and patience to find and remove your iPhone duplicates, you can use iTunes' inbuilt functionality. iTunes does a great job of listing the duplicate music in your library, however, it does not provide any help in deciding which files to remove, which Tune Sweeper can intuitively and automatically do.

Hello, by default, iTunes will warn you when you try to delete a song from the library and you need to confirm the action. However, I accidentally checked the box "do not warn me again". iTunes does not warn me anymore when deleting a song. How can i restore this option? Thanks all.

On iPhone 12, IOS 14.6, got Apple Music subscription last month and since then have not been able to remove songs from my playlists without deleting them from my library and having to re-add and re-download them. There is no option I can find to simply remove from the playlist.

Such a garbage problem. Have no idea how to get these songs back now or which ones I even deleted. Do these people even use their own app? Seriously, things like "play last" instead of an add to queue, now this crap? What a joke, I might just to switch back to spotify at this point

Thank you for posting in Apple Support Communities. From our understanding, when you attempt to remove a song from a specific playlist it remove the song from your library completely, is that correct? How are you deleting it? Are you selecting the 3 dots at the top right, selecting "Edit" and then selecting the minus sign next to the song instead of selecting the song and selecting "Delete From Library"?

To re-download them, I had to search for the songs individually in the ITunes Store app on my phone. Once they showed up in search , I clicked the little price and authorized payment. Then I got a "you already bought this, click here to download again" message and downloaded from there!

I have the same understanding. Apple removed functionality on mobile to remove specific songs from playlists without removing them from the library. This was previously possible mobile. Now it's not and what looks like the same feature achieves what it is I'm trying to avoid: remove song from library.

She was do frustrated she showed me on my phone. One of my playlist had the same song seven times. Deleted one instance of the seven in play list, all seven instances disappeared as well as from my library.

Hi -- I have my iTunes library stored on two macs, an iPhone and an iPad. I also have an Apple Music subscription. I want to delete the physical files in iTunes on my MacBook to free up space. How do I do this but still remain able to play the songs on the MacBook from iTunes when connected to wifi via iCloud? There is a lot of confusion around deleting the songs from the iTunes library. Thanks...

Select tracks you want to remove, right-click, click Remove download. The physical file is removed freeing up space but the cloud link remains in the library so you can stream the track later, it is not removed from your iCloud Music Library. You are advised to keep physical copies of your media on at least one computer and a backup in case you ever remove anything in error. There is no undo button.

Every time I sync my phone to my laptop, it deletes songs from the playlists in iTunes. I do not have Apple Match or Music and I always sync via cable, never wireless. I have an iPhone 5 and the most recent version of iTunes. My MacBook is running 10.11.5 El Capitan.

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