If you constantly stream songs on your iPhone, you might be shocked to open your iPhone Storage settings and discover that the Apple Music app is consuming 10GB or more of your precious storage space. This happens even if you have never actively clicked the “Download” button on a single song or playlist.
To prevent songs from buffering while you drive through areas with poor cellular reception, Apple Music silently downloads and caches almost every song you listen to in the background. Over months of listening, this invisible cache swells to massive proportions.
Frustratingly, Apple refuses to include a simple “Clear Cache” button inside the Apple Music settings. Instead, you must use one of the two official workarounds below to force iOS to dump this hidden temporary data and reclaim your storage space.
Method 1: Force Apple Music to Optimise Storage
The easiest way to clear the cache is to use Apple’s built-in “Optimise Storage” feature. This feature was designed to automatically delete old songs when your iPhone runs out of space, but you can manually trigger it to clear the cache immediately.
- Open the Settings app on your iPhone.
- Scroll down and tap on Music.
- Scroll down to the “Downloads” section and tap on Optimise Storage.
- Toggle the Optimise Storage switch to the On position (it will turn green).
- You will see a section labelled “Minimum Storage”. This dictates how much music Apple is allowed to keep on your device. To clear as much cache as possible, select None (or the lowest available gigabyte option depending on your iOS version).
By setting the minimum storage to None, you are telling your iPhone that it is no longer allowed to hoard cached music files. Your iPhone will begin silently deleting the hidden cache in the background over the next few hours.
Method 2: The “Offload App” Trick
If the Optimise Storage trick did not free up enough space, the absolute most effective way to clear the Apple Music cache is to temporarily “Offload” the app.
Offloading an app deletes the core application software and all its temporary cache files, but completely preserves your personal data (including your Apple Music library, your custom playlists, and your listening history).
- Open the Settings app on your iPhone.
- Tap on General.
- Tap on iPhone Storage. (Wait a few moments for the list of apps to fully populate).
- Scroll down and tap on Music.
- Tap the blue Offload App button.
- A warning prompt will appear. Tap Offload App again to confirm.
The Apple Music app icon will remain on your iPhone’s home screen, but it will now have a small cloud icon next to its name. To reinstall the app and restore your library minus the bloated cache, simply tap the Apple Music icon on your home screen. iOS will re-download a fresh, clean version of the app from the App Store in a matter of seconds.
