With your help, I have been putting my old albums and cassettes into iTunes and then my iPod–with the result that iTunes tells me my iPod is *full *and I can’t transfer anything more into it.
Now, I have plenty of crap on my iPod I never listen to and will happily delete–but how? The iPod help menu is no help, nor are any of the iTunes drop-down menus.
Anyone have any idea? I mean, this can’t be an unusual thing to want to do.
Thanks!
Unless there’s a new version, my understanding is that all list management is done on iTunes via your playlist(s). You can’t delete/remove anything via your iPod. You make the desired modifications in the iTunes playlist and then download that to the iPod, effectively overwriting the old one.
Open ITunes on your computer and find your music library. You should see a list of songs wth a box checked next to each one. Uncheck the songs you want to remove then plug the IPod in and let it sinc.
The uncheck songs will be remove from the pod but remain on the computer. If you want them again recheck the box and sinc again…
I don’t believe I have ever “synced” my iPod. I have always manually managed the music I have loaded on it.
To delete something from my iPod, I click on my iPod in iTunes and it shows me what is currently stored on there. Then I just select and delete what I want to remove. If you want to delete an entire album, click on the first track, hold the shift key, click on the last track, and everything in between should be selected. Then just hit the Delete key to delete.
To add new music to my iPod I just select it the same way in my iTunes Library then drag and drop into the iPod.
Thank you–I will try these tomorrow. Thus far I can access my “library” in iTunes, but have not been able to see a list of what is on my iPod–I obviously am missing some very simple step.
I was posting by phone earlier, now that I have ITunes up on my computer I can offer a better answer.
Leave your IPod disconnected while you open iTunes. At the top of the menu once you get iTunes open you should see Library, and under that Music with a musical note icon. Double click should bring up all the songs, with the little checked boxes. It should work the same way if you have individual play lists set up, just open them and either check or un-check the songs you want.
All of your songs are stored in iTunes on the computer, you don’t need to keep them on the iPod. Each time you open iTunes and then connect your iPod you should see a brief message saying 'Syncing iPod, do not disconnect". You don’t need to do anything, it will sync and update the music files each time it is connected while Itunes is open.
You will figure it out.
:dubious: If you want to listen to them on the iPod, they need to be on the iPod.
If you set it up to manually manage your music, you can just delete it from the iPod tab in iTunes, no need to worry about libraries.
Yes, but Eve said the her iPod was full of songs, some that she didn’t want to hear, and she couldn’t put any more on it.
The best way to clear all this up is to use iTunes rather than sit there and fiddle with the little iPod. If she were to take the time to clear songs directly on the iPod, they would all be reloaded once she plugs the pod back into the computer.
iTunes is where you manage what ends up on the iPod.
A pretty important question is: What kind of iPod is it?
A followup is: If it’s an iPod Touch, is it running iOS 5?
Because if so, you can delete individual songs from the iPod by swiping across them and hitting Delete, just like with emails.
Oh, dear, I’m afraid that didn’t work at all. I went into my iTunes library, unchecked all the songs (a lot of them!) I wanted to unload. Then hooked up my iPod, and it said it was synchronizing.
But all the unchecked, deleted iTunes songs are *still *on my damn iPod.
It’s “8GB,” according to the back, and I’m afraid I have no idea what “iOS 5” means.
There have been, dunno, three suggestions here (uncheck boxes, manually delete, update playlist) and while they’re all technically correct, how you have your iPod setup matters as not every method will work given your sync settings. For example, I could check or uncheck boxes all day long and it wouldn’t make a difference as I have iTunes setup to sync playlists, and to ignore the check boxes.
What would be most helpful here would be that next time you connect your iPod to iTunes, cick on your iPod in the ‘devices’ area of the left hand panel in iTunes. Then, in the center of the iTunes window, you should see info about your iPod. Along the top of that info panel, you should see a variety of tabs…
‘Settings’, ‘Info’, ‘Apps’, ‘Tones’, ‘Music’, ‘Movies’ and so on.
Select ‘Music’, and tell us what it says in the area ‘Sync Music’. That’ll help narrow it down.
When you plug in your iPod, find it in the list of devices on the left and click on it. You will then see the setup screen for the iPod. Down near the bottom is a series of check boxes. One should say something like “don’t sync unchecked tracks.” make sure that this is correctly marked and then click the sync button in the bottom right.
Thanks! I will try this and let you know how it goes. You guys are *so *much more useful and step-by-steppy than the damn manuals or iPod “help sites!”
Perhaps a related question - how would you prefer to have the music loaded on the iPod?
The basic assumption is that all music is acquired on the computer and loaded into iTunes on the computer. (This is the easiest to deal with). Possible options from there:
• When the iPod is plugged in, all new music will go to it by default. If the iPod is ‘full’ of music, you selectively remove music from it that you don’t want on there.
–• Optionally, older music is removed automatically. You never get bothered by warnings.
----• Some older music you manually select is preserved; if full, you need to trim this list.
[ Good if you are more often listening to newly acquired songs. ]
• The iPod contains a set of music that you decide on the computer; when plugged in, it will automatically update to that set.
–• new music is added automatically, but if there is too much in the set, you’ll need to fix it.
–• You decide what new music to add, possibly removing music as needed.
[ Good if you have a lot more music than can fit on the iPod, or a specific set of songs you want to keep.]
• You determine exactly what is on the iPod and when it goes there.
[ Good if you like the feeling of control, or need to use it with different computers/libraries.]
Some of these options can be combined, so if you describe an approach, we can try to help you with it.
OK. I plugged in my iPod and the “automatically sync songs to my iPod” selection is clicked, as it was before. The only other box is for syncing photos.
I go to the pull-down menu and under “file,” “sync iPod” will not light up and cannot be selected.
Under the edit and preferences menu, there is no selection for syncing, oddly enough.
There is no selection anywhere for “don’t sync unchecked tracks.”
There should be four check boxes at the bottom center of your iPod screen. You might have to scroll down to see them.
See here – Syncing Part of Your iTunes Library
By “iPod screen” I mean the screen you get in iTunes when you click on your iPod under “devices” on the left. The choices aren’t under any menu items on the menu bar. They’re there in the center of the screen.
No luck. When I plug my iPod into iTunes, I get a screen that gives me:
And that’s it. No other options. What do I do to just goddam *empty *my stupid iPod, so I can manually click and drag song by song back into it from iTunes?
Are either of those checked?