Don't kill your cellular data plan; download your most-streamed songs and playlists.
If you're not going to be connected to the internet, or if you're worried about your cellular data, you can choose to download songs, albums, and even entire playlists to your iPhone or iPad for offline listening.
Why download music instead of streaming it?
Streaming is awesome: You can listen to anything you want—Beats 1 included—at any time, and it doesn't take up valuable space on your device. But it comes at a cellular cost, especially if you have a smaller data plan. And even if you have a massive cellular plan, there are places where streaming music just doesn't make sense: airplanes, for instance, or camping trips.
Lucky for you, if you have an Apple Music subscription and iCloud Music Library enabled, you have the option to download any song, album, or playlist from its catalog for offline listening; if you use iTunes Match, you can download anything from your Mac's library on your iPhone or iPad.
How to add a song or album to your local library for offline listening
- Launch the Music app from your Home screen.
- Go to the song or album you want to download.
- Tap the More button (looks like •••) to the right of the music.
- Tap on Make Available Offline.

The song(s) should immediately begin downloading to your device; you can see their progress by tapping the download bar at the top of the screen.
How to add a playlist to your local library for offline listening
- Launch the Music app on your iPhone or iPad.
- Go to the playlist you want to download.
- Tap the More button (looks like •••) to the right of the music.
- Tap on Make Available Offline

- The playlist and its included songs should immediately begin downloading to your device; you can see their progress by tapping the download bar at the top of the screen. After the playlist is finished downloading, you'll find it in your local playlists.
How to view songs you've saved locally to your iPhone or iPad
- Launch the Music app from your Home screen.
- Tap on the My Music tab.
- Select the view type dropdown (by default, it reads "Albums") from the middle of the screen.
- Switch Show Music Available Offline to on at the bottom of the pop-up.

To reverse this, tap the dropdown again and turn the Show Music Available Offline switch off.
If you've downloaded entire albums or playlists, you'll also be able to tell if they're locally stored even without enabling the "Show Music Available Offline" switch: Just view the album or playlist; if it's been saved offline, you'll see a tiny grey iPhone icon in the upper right corner.
How to remove songs from your iPhone or iPad
- Make sure the Show Music Available Offline switch (found within the view type dropdown in My Music) is enabled.
- Change the view type dropdown to whatever you're looking to delete—albums, genres, songs, etc.

- Tap the More button (looks like •••)
- Tap Remove Downloads.
What about the Mac?
If you have a laptop that lives alongside your desktop, you may want to tell what it is you've downloaded locally or not. Here's how to go about that.
- Open iTunes
- Go to the My Music tab.
- Click on the view type dropdown in the upper right corner of the screen.

- Select the Show Columns dropdown.
- Click on the iCloud Download option.

A cloud icon should appear next to your other song sort types; next to each song, you'll either see no icon (which means the song is locally stored); a cloud icon with a downward arrow for songs stored in iCloud Music Library; or a cloud icon with a line through it (for PDFs and other iCloud-ineligible tracks).
Rock on
There you have it—offline listening, at your fingertips. If you're running into problems or can't quite make this work, feel free to shout in the comments and we'll try and get things rolling.
Reader comments
How to view, download, and delete music for offline use
This is really not working well for me. I click "make available offline" to a big playlist (500+ songs) and get lucky if more than 20 or 30 actually end up on my phone.
Do you have any ideas on how to make things load more reliably? I killed my battery yesterday trying to download all of my music to my phone...
I've had the same issue. And it made my phone HOT. That this is unreliable makes Apple Music basically non-functional as far as I'm concerned.
Sent from the iMore App
I also have this problem and I only have relatively small play lists. Maybe 80% of any given playlist will be available off line.
I have also noticed that if I add a new track to an "available off line" playlist it doesn't automatically download either.
Sent from the iMore App
Having the same issue, this is really annoying. And when I add a new song to the play list it does not download it. Google music does all of this and does it well. After the three months are up if this is not sorted out I am sticking with G music.
I also have this problem and I only have relatively small play lists. Maybe 80% of any given playlist will be available off line.
I have also noticed that if I add a new track to an "available off line" playlist it doesn't automatically download either.
Sent from the iMore App
I have the same problem and I only have relatively small play lists. Maybe 80% of any given playlist will be available off line.
I have also noticed that if you add a track to an offline playlist it doesn't automatically download. Bit disappointed with this aspect of Apple Music so far.
Sent from the iMore App
You forgot to mention the most important point: It is not enough to activate Apple Music, you have to activate iCloud Music Library as well to use "Make available offline"! And there is no rational for this strange restriction.
Offline availability doesn't mean that I bought the song. Son when the trial is over, do those songs disappear?
Sent from the iMore App
Exactly what I want to know! Don't want half my library disappearing
Sent from the iMore App
These songs will no longer be playable. As soon as you go online it will check if you still have a valid subscription. If you stay offline "forever" the song will be no longer playable after a certain time (probably a month like in Spotify).
I am not too sure about it as one of the apple reps told me that downloaded music for offline listening will remain available even after ending subscription. This music is DRM and linked to apple ID. As long as this is played on a device logged in with apple ID, it should play. Another rep told me that it wont be available post ending subscription. I dont know how a downloaded music file wont play on itunes logged in with ID.
I think you can simulate this by logging out of your Apple ID account--when I log out, I see only the songs that I own/are actually on my phone or computer--anything with a "kind" that is "Apple Music AAC Audio File" has disappeared. Then I log back in, and it takes a few minutes but all of those songs return--both those that I made available offline and those that I added to "My Music" but didn't download.
Apple Music seems to work OK, but I recommend not messing around with it unless you make a backup of what you own first--on a separate computer or external drive.
Here is one other thing I found: if you add Apple Music songs to "My Music", initially they show up as "AAC Audio File", which makes it look like you actually own the song--but, when you download the song, it becomes an "Apple Music AAC Audio File" So I don't think one can go by file type alone--unless you have everything you retreived from Apple Music downloaded on to your computer. Not sure how to tell these apart on the iPhone yet; however.
The moment the trail period is over, the songs will no longer be available. They will be greyed out.
Ren -- Thanks so much for the instructions re: downloading a Beats 1 playlist for offline listening.
Is there a way (that I have not been able to find) to have only COMPLETE ALBUMS be displayed? This is the way all of the other music apps I have used including Beats worked. When I tell Apple Music to display Albums, it shows the album cover even if I have only one song from the album on my playlist. This is not what I want! I want to see the Full albums I have added to My Music.
In the beats app, there was a way to set the app into offline mode, and thus listen to the music you'd downloaded onto your phone, and not use your data to stream. But the phone itself was still connected.
I haven't found a similar way to do this in the apple music app. The only thing I've been able to do is go into airplane mode and then listen to the music I've made available offline. I'm hoping there's a better way to go "offline" within the app itself, so I can still get calls / texts etc. while I'm listening to my music in offline mode. I also don't want to have to continuously log in and out of my account. A simple button to go "offline" would be great - does anyone know if this is possible?
I have paid the $25 annually for the Apple Music Match and uploaded thousands of MP3 files from my personal library. Unfortunately my external hard drive which stored all of the original files has died.
How can I re-download ALL of the MP3s that I had originally uploaded so that I can maintain a proper backup? Moreover I need to do this on my PC rather than my iPad so that I can backup the data.
Please advise...thanks!
How do we sort for just music that has not been downloaded yet? I always want all music downloaded locally so I don't have to stream it. But there doesn't seem to be an easy way to identify which tracks have not been made available offline, like in a smart playlist. You have to look at each track and see if the device symbol is in the corner of the line.
I have noticed that after I download music (that is to make it available offline) it will stay on my phone, but after downloading more music and/or after a certain period of time, the older stuff will suddenly not become available offline? It's like I have a limit to the amount of songs I can download/make available offline.
Obviously it's designed for streaming, but as I'm on the move a lot I wanted to make the majority of my songs available offline, so I did kill my data. Has anyone else noticed this sort of problem?
Yah yesterday I was out of wifi range and I could not access the songs that I didn't not get via Apple Music and it said that I had no songs I could listen to offline. Also there is no button to just ask for everything to be offline, you have to select each artist individually which is so time consuming and then after a certain period of time the downloading stopped and I had to reselect them again and I don't if that will work as I am doing it now. Also have you found that the Apple music changes your album covers to the wrong ones even though I spent hours a few months ago finding each and every cover to make it perfect. Lastly, today I realised that the song "Rather Be" was changed to a remixed version and so now it sounds odd. I am so frustrated with Apple Music at the moment! Also I had to delete most of my photos because it said there wasn't enough storage space but it hasn't realised that I deleted them yet. Sorry for the rant in responding to your problem that I am equally frustrated about. Hopefully all this confusion is fixed in the next update.
I'm facing a similar issue and very frustrated. Most of the songs no longer have the option to make it offline. I can only add them. And most of the songs I made offline earlier are also no longer available offline either.
I think the only time I enjoyed without interruption was during the free trial period which was why I thought it was awesome. What an IRONY!!!
I would have bought more songs on iTunes with the money I have paid for the subscription. Such a disappointment! (@.@)
In order to enable you to download songs from your Apple Music to your iPod, as previously mentioned you have to enable iCloud library. But I still want to manage what songs I add form iTunes manually.
As soon as you enable iCloud library, the manage songs option disappears from the summary when I connect my iPod to my laptop and iTunes.
Is there a way to do both?
Several people have mentioned that they want a way to download all albums/songs in their My Music library without having to remember to select the download link for each album after adding it to My Music. I solved this problem by clicking the Download link for the "Recently Added" playlist on my iPhone. This is a standard playlist added by Apple. This seems to work. Now every time I add an album to My Music, it gets downloaded automatically to my phone without me having to do anything.
Even after downloading songs for offline listening, I sometimes get a message that the song cannot be played and that I must turn off iCloud. What is going on?!?
Just bought an iPhone 6sPlus with 64gig just so I could place all my pics and music offline.
I click the "..." and there is not option for "Make Available Offline"???
Tap the cloud icon with the down arrow, just like in iTunes, to download the song/album/playlist. They removed the "make available offline" wording, and you will know if such is downloaded indicated by the iDevice icon with a check mark in the middle.
Tap the cloud icon with the down arrow, just like in iTunes, to download the song/album/playlist. They removed the "make available offline" wording, and you will know if such is downloaded indicated by the iDevice icon with a check mark in the middle.