Everybody has limited storage space. It’s not as if anything is completely unlimited, and even the cloud has a finite number somewhere along the numerical spectrum. Sometimes you just end up with too many songs on Spotify, and it makes sense to dump the ones that you no longer listen to as much.
To undownload your songs on Spotify, go to your Libary tab select the playlist of the songs you’d like to undownload. Click on the downward-facing arrow to “Undownload your songs” from that playlist, then go to Settings, device storage, and select clear cache to delete it from your device’s memory.
To delete all your downloaded songs at once, go to settings, select storage, then select Remove all downloads; you’ll then want to select Clear Cache, located right under Remove all downloads to delete it from your device’s memory.
We’ll walk you through the steps for removing songs from the app and the PC, as well as just removing them from the playlist.
Deleting Spotify Songs on the Mobile App
The Spotify Mobile app is available for both iPhone and Android devices, as well as for desktops. Whichever one that you decide to go with, the app is free, so you don’t have to worry about paying anything upfront, as you can’t download or undownload anything on Spotify without having a subscription.
- Select your Spotify App
- Select the Library tab
- Select the Playlist of the songs you’d like to remove
- Depending on what device you’re using, you’ll either see a green downward-facing arrow or a toggle button.
- Select the green downward arrow on the top of your playlist to undownload your songs, or un-toggle the green toggle button next to “Downloaded” to undownload your songs.
This will undownload your songs, but you’ll still need to clear your cache in the Spotify app in order to delete the saved songs from your device’s storage. To do this:
- Go to Settings in your Spotify app
- Select Storage
- Select Clear Cache
If you’d like to delete all downloaded songs at once:
- Go to Settings in your Spotify app
- Select Storage
- Select Remove all downloads
- Select Clear Cache
This will allow Spotify to completely delete all saved songs stored on your mobile device, thus freeing up space on your device.
Of course, just removing the song from your downloaded songs doesn’t remove it from your playlist. It will remain in your playlist and will play if you just start an automated run through your playlist. However, when it plays, it will stream rather than just play from your downloads.
If you want to remove it from your playlist as well, you will simply have to repeat the entire process that you just went through, only instead of deleting the download; you will have the option of removing it from your playlist instead.
Deleting Spotify Songs from the Desktop App
It’s a little bit different from PC to Mac, depending on both the computer and the OS. For instance, we will cover removing Spotify downloads from Windows PC. However, the process is pretty similar across other operating systems.
- Open the Desktop Spotify App and log in
- Go to your Library
- Navigate to your Playlist
- Select the Green Download Button in the side column
- This will delete all of the downloaded songs in your playlist
As you can see, it’s a pretty simple process and doesn’t take a lot of time. You can also remove the songs from your Playlist if you don’t want them in your playlist stream any longer. To do that, simply select the song that you want to remove and toggle the remove option.
Once it’s out of your playlist, it’s gone for good, unless you want to come back and download it again in the future. You don’t have to download songs to add them to your playlist, so if you would prefer not to have to uninstall songs, simply leave them in the playlist unless there’s a specific reason for downloading them.
It operates the same in the Mac version, with more of an aesthetic difference than anything else. Fortunately, aesthetics is all there is to it as the downloading process, along with adding and removing from playlists, remains the same across both platforms.
Removing Files from the Spotify App
Sometimes, you may want to get rid of specific files within the Spotify desktop app, something you can’t do on the mobile application. It doesn’t remove Spotify from your desktop, only the selected files.
- Open your File Browser
- Select the %appdata%\Spotify\Users\ file
- Find the folder that is labeled username-user
- Locate the file, local files.bank
- Select the file
- Delete it
Anytime that you go into an app’s files, including Spotify, and make changes, you have to relaunch the app, follow the above steps, close the Spotify app and relaunch if you want to proceed and continue to use the app.
Reinstall the App
It may be the case that you have thousands of songs in your library, which is pretty easy to do, especially if you have been using Spotify for years. Things just tend to accumulate like that, and it can make things difficult if you know that music is taking up a substantial amount of storage and you need to clean house.
The best way to do this is to avoid going through Spotify, locating the songs that you have downloaded amongst all of the others that you haven’t but remain in your libraries or playlists and do a clean reinstall.
If you happen to have that many songs, it can take a long time to go through them individually. A lot of boring time, that is, when you probably want to create new playlists and expand your library without all of the clutter.
The best thing about reinstalling the Spotify app is that you don’t lose your playlists or any of the songs in your library. You simply delete your Spotify app, whether that is on an iPhone, Android, PC, or Mac, and reinstall it.
Once the Spotify app is finished reinstalling, log back in with your username/email and password. When you’re back in the app, you’ll immediately notice that all of your songs, playlists, and the whole of your library are still there, just like you left it.
However, everything that you ever downloaded in the Spotify app is now cleared, as well as your history and all of the data that Spotify retained in its cache. It’s now clean as a whistle and ready for you to start over.
All Things Considered
Spotify is a great music app, especially with the newest introduction to hi-res audio for better sound quality and immersion experience. Now that you know how to keep your storage low, you can take advantage of those much larger music files and enjoy your music in hi-res.
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