In iPhone music song lists, how can I identify they're available offline? What do the icons mean?

[iMore Question]

In iPhone music song lists how can I identify they're available offline. What do the icons mean.

When viewing album, or song lists in an album, how can I easily identify which albums, or songs on an album, will be available offline.

I don't want to have to go into every song's properties to check if it will be available offline. Is there an easy way to identify this from the list itself.

Ideally when looking at a song list, or album list, I would like to be able to easily identify which of those albums, or songs:
A) That I actually own, versus requested as part of Apple music and
B) That will be available offline.

Apple seems to be really poor at this. I have tried working it out by playing music, in flight mode, to see which songs will play offline to associate some indicator to that state. I can't find a consistent pattern.

With Spotify you get a nice bright green icon when the song or album has been downloaded. It appears consistently.

With Apple Music there is a grey triangle in the right hand top corner of a song. It's not displayed on albums. It could mean anything. When offline I have been able to play songs with and without the icon.

It would be nice to know which songs and albums are available before I get on the plane or go for a run. I would prefer to download my music at home when I have huge download limits rather than waste my mobile download limit whilst running or at work. Then only play downloaded music when away from the home wifi.

It's hard to understand how useability has been so badly missed in Apple Music. As a user there are some key useability features that just seem missing or at the least very inconsistent inn their behavior.

 

[linsiris]

Re: In iPhone music song lists how can I identify they're available offline. What do the icons mean.

Hello there, iMore asker

A few things to help out.
1- When you find an album/song/playlist etc you wanna play offline, first you have to download it in order to play them offline (like with spotify). How do you do that? well when you find the album/song/playlist etc hit the three dots --> (...) then --> make available offline option. After that you'll see the songs will begin downloading.

2- When you have done that, make sure you follow these steps --> Add a song to My music / playlist - iPhone, iPad, iPod Forums at iMore.com

3- How do you know what songs are playable offline? without much hassle just look at this:


the little "phone" sign or whatever people choose to call it, indicates that the song is indeed available offline (the equivalent to spotify's green down arrow that indicates when a song is available offline).

Hope that helps, drop a line if it does, or it doesn't.

Enjoy, bye