Still have more questions about trying to work with iTunes

[DP]

My version is 12.6.0.100. Yesterday I asked for help and today I ask for more. It is too late to put much time in to get this to work but I want to know anyway.

I want to back up the music I loaded on an old iPhone 4 "just in case" on to my old Nano. It took a lot of frustration before I got things to work on the i4, including last night when I deleted some music from the i4 and it somehow also deleted the original from iTunes on my computer! So I had to start over and reconstruct the music-a playlist-from scratch. I was ready to tear out what little hair I have left...

So I plug in the Nano but I don't see any way to delete a few playlists/albums-that I can add back later-to free up enough room to load the new music on the Nano. On the i4 in Music I can delete the album but I see no option on the Nano, other than "Clear" and "Edit". I used Clear but although it reads there are zero songs, the songs still show up when I plug the Nano in to my computer. On my machine in iTunes I see no option anywhere to delete/clear/whatever the album from the Nano. So the simple question-which is turning to be anything but simple-how do I delete music from the Nano?

Once again, a little help? And again, at this point in time I'm just going to have to rely on the i4, but enquiring minds need to know...

[btfc]

You need to enable the "manually manage" option in iTunes:

https://support.apple.com/en-us/HT201593

[DP]

OK, thx for that, b. So I did all that and deleted what I wanted to but the Summary page shows the same free space that it did prior to deleting. I emptied the Trash but still no change. I ejected the Nano, quit iTunes, waited a few, plugged in the Nano, and still Summary shows the same free space-no change...

[Rolando]

How much music do you have to backup?
SD cards are cheap, iTunes Match is $35/year, Google Music will upload for free if I recall...

[DP]

Sorry, Ro, this is a follow up from yesterday:

http://forums.macresource.com/read.php?1,2294594

[Filliam H. Muffman]

This is just one of the reasons that while I have been a Mac user for 30 years, I won't let iTunes control my mobile music or use an iPhone.

There have been several threads about this in the last 6 years but I can't seem to choose the right words to get the Phorum search to find them.

From memory, do a new backup and then restore. Another option was to try to rent a movie that is bigger than the anticipated free space and it will clean unused files.

[WHiiP]

Your music is NOT saved when you perform a backup. Restoring will NOT give you your music back.

[Sarcany]

WHiiP wrote:
Your music is NOT saved when you perform a backup. Restoring will NOT give you your music back.

Yeah. If you have tracks that are only on the iOS device and are not present in iTunes then the only way to get them off is likely to be via 3rd party software.

Some apps that can do this...
https://macroplant.com/iexplorer/tutoria...-ipad-ipod
https://www.fadingred.com/senuti/
https://www.ecamm.com/mac/phoneview/