IOS – Manually managing songs and deleting from playlist

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I want to be able to delete songs off my iPhone by swiping in the Music.app. I know having 'Manually Manage songs' lets you delete songs without them returning after you re-sync everything, but I want it to delete songs from the playlist I have.

I have a playlist for the songs on my phone because I don't want to go through thousands of songs every time I reformat the phone. Manually managing songs just removes it from my phone but not from my playlist.

Is there any way around this?

Best Answer

Speaking for iOS 6 (not necessarily older versions):

  1. Open Music.app
  2. Select "Playlists" tab.
  3. Create a new Playlist and put a few songs in there.
  4. Sync your iPhone to to your computer (Wifi or USB)
  5. Make sure iTunes is configured to sync your music and choose "Selected playlists, artists, albums, and genres
  6. My experience was that the playlist I created was automatically selected under "Playlists" in the Music tab of iTunes. If it isn't, select it.
  7. You can now put any song you would like in there and sync.

While it doesn't automatically sync every time a change is made, any time you sync it will reflect changes made on your device. For example, put 10 songs into your new playlist and sync with your iPhone. Then, go into your iPhone and delete a few of those songs out. Sync with iTunes. They shouldn't be in the playlist on iTunes anymore.

I have personally performed the steps to ensure they work. It's not 100% automatic, but with Wifi sync, it is almost that way.

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