If you won’t be connected to WiFi during your flight but still want to listen to your music on Apple Music, here’s how to turn on offline mode in Apple Music.
Apple Music has been around for almost two months, and those who sign up on the first day are still enjoying their free trial, as Apple is very generously offering a three-month trial of its new music service for those who want it. Try before you pay monthly.
If you don’t know what Apple Music is, it’s Apple’s new music streaming service that allows users to listen to any available song on demand, as well as access hand-picked playlists and curated radio stations like Beats 1. It features interviews with popular artists as well as real DJs playing hand-picked music.
Apple Music was released in June with the iOS 8.4 update, making it the company’s first major music-related move since 2001 with the launch of the iPod and the launch of the iTunes Store in 2003. Apple now aims to compete with other music streaming giants, such as Spotify, Pandora, Rdio, Tidal and more.
Apple Music is integrated into the iOS Music app and mainly replaces the old Music app interface; this means that both the user’s locally stored music library and Apple Music exist in the same environment.
However, for Apple Music songs, users must be online to be able to listen to any song on demand, unless there is a specific song saved for offline listening. Here’s how to turn on offline mode on Apple Music so you can listen to streaming songs without an internet connection.
Offline Mode on Apple Music
First off, before you get started, Apple Music technically doesn’t have an official offline mode, instead you just have to select the specific songs you want to make available for offline listening. That said, let’s get started with some music without WiFi or LTE.
The first thing you will want to do is open the Apple Music app and select the section or section at the bottom (it doesn’t matter).
Find any song or album you want to save for offline listening and then tap the three-dot menu button next to that song or album.
A drop-down menu will appear with several options to choose from. Tap on it. If you selected a single song, that song will be available offline, and if you selected an entire album, all the songs in that album will be saved for offline listening.
The song or album will now appear in the section and download in the background, so you can listen to it anytime with or without an internet connection.
Note that making songs available for offline listening will take up storage space on your iPhone, so the more songs you download, the more storage they all take up. So, if you want to keep a song in your library but no longer want to make it available for offline listening, go to My Music and tap the three dots on the right. A menu will open giving you several options. From here, select .
This will delete the local download of the song but still keep it in your library. However, you will need to be connected to the internet to listen to the song or album next time.
Unfortunately, as with Spotify, there’s no real offline mode where you can flip a switch and your songs will be saved for offline listening, but at least Apple Music has an option to download music and Apple may improve the feature over time.
