Filed under: iPhone, iPhone 101
iPhone 101: Quickly delete videos
Even an 8GB iPhone will run out of storage space quickly once a few space-hogging videos are uploaded. The good news is that, unlike audio, videos can be deleted without connecting to a computer.There are two ways to accomplish this. First, navigate to the video list on the iPhone's iPod software. Drag your finger across a video's title from left to right and the red "Delete" button will appear, as if you were removing email messages. Tap it, and your video will be deleted.
The second method happens after watching a movie. Once it's done, you'll be presented with a dialog box asking if you want to remove the video to save space. Touch "Yes."
No need to carry "Saw II" around after you've watched it, right?
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Reader Comments (Page 1 of 1)
Chris Harrison said 7:23AM on 11-08-2007
This works for the iPod touch as well!
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Josh said 8:02AM on 11-08-2007
I find this feature rather stupid because after you delete a video, the next time you sync, iTunes puts it back on. What's the point?
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Steve said 8:07AM on 11-08-2007
Actually, the second method was wisely fixed in the update!
It proved extremely annoying when showing clients the numerous animations and commercials in my video portfolio, only to be presented with the constant "do you want to keep this movie?" barrage after every viewing. I couldn't believe Apple didn't have an option to toggle this off.
So, no need to carry bloated movies around, however, MUCH need to save ones important work.
Touch "NO"
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MfS said 8:20AM on 11-08-2007
Wish there was an easy way to get an already-watched video back on the iPhone.
I have my videos in iTunes set to "sync all unwatched," which is great...I do NOT delete them using the method above...but then next time I sync, that video I've already watched is REMOVED, and the only way to get it back on the iPhone is to reset the play count, which is a hassle. Dragging an already watched video to a playlist that syncs to the iPhone doesn't work either. Tried that. No dice.
I don't want to change my sync settings to "Sync All" just to get already-watched videos back on the iPhone...if I did that, then I'd run out of room from syncing TV show episodes I've already watched.
Anyone know of a way to fix this kind of thing?
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Zach Everson said 8:37AM on 11-08-2007
But it's not like you can add material to the iPhone without hooking it up to a computer (other than buying material from the iTunes store). So what's the point of deleting a video?
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Alex said 9:20AM on 11-08-2007
"No need to carry round..."
Because as we all know, data's heavy...
Seriously, you can't really create content (except for downloading music), so why is this even a feature?
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Mitch said 9:30AM on 11-08-2007
Add me to the list of people who don't think there is any point to this.
Besides snapping photos, there really isn't any way to add a significant amount of data until the next sync.
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nntpgrip said 9:34AM on 11-08-2007
@Zach - Thats the first thing I thought. As long as you're syncing, you can be taking stuff off as you're putting stuff in. You ain't gonna max out while buying stuff off of Wifi store.
The only real reason for this would be if you had some porn on there, and you were about to hand your phone/touch to a woman or child to play around with.(you know, to save on the hotel spectravision charges when out of town, and sheer novelty, the odd public restroom)
Until we get password-protected hidden folders for video, its good apple put that there.
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kakapo said 9:41AM on 11-08-2007
@Mfs
What you can do is click the box next to the movie you want to upload again in your movie folder summary in iPhone Sync. Or go into Movies in iTunes and highlight the movie and right click it and tell iTunes to "make new" again. I don't think that will effect your play count. BUT it will make the movie available. Easy way? It is all in your perspective.
Hope that helps.
Cheers.
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Gene Cowan said 11:00AM on 11-08-2007
The 1.1.1 update not only removed the automatic "Do you want to delete?" prompt, but it introduced what I think is a bug:
Before the update, when I watched a video and deleted it, it marked the video as watched in iTunes at the next sync. Now, if I delete a video before syncing the phone, it doesn't remember and mark it as watched so iTunes will re-load the same video onto my iPhone again.
The original behavior was much better and, well, just worked. The new way is confusing and annoying and requires me to manually mark things in iTunes rather than let it automagically load up the iPhone with stuff.
This is far more irritating that I would have expected now that I've lived with it for months.
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Gene Cowan said 11:03AM on 11-08-2007
There *is* a reason to delete videos when you're finished. If you completely fill up your iPhone with videos it will slow down performance. After freeing up the memory by deleting videos you've watched, it speeds up again. Remember, there's no hard disk in the iPhone, just memory.
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MacBookOwner said 12:28PM on 11-08-2007
"There *is* a reason to delete videos when you're finished."
No one is debating that there is no reason.
The question is, how important is it to delete videos on the go? I'm never more than 10 hours away from docking my iPhone anyways. Besides, as soon as I dock the first thing the iPhone does is start to resynch my videos, and if I have deleted them on the go, it RELOADS them.
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itchytooth said 2:37PM on 11-08-2007
I wish that Apple would give me a reason to delete videos on the go - by making audio and video podcasts available wirelessly in the mobile iTunes store.
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John C said 2:46PM on 11-08-2007
This is a great feature, and it looks snazzy when the delete icon comes up I don't like having to sync just to delete files that I'm done with (ie, taking a movie to a friend's house to watch via Video-Out).
Is this possible with synced photos as well? It bothers me that one can delete photos that are taken with the iPhone camera, but the delete icon is absent for photos in other folders.
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steve said 5:06PM on 11-08-2007
Gene Cowan you are mistaken. There is no Hard Disk Drive but there is a Solid State Drive. Either way it makes little difference. There is also a seprate 512MB RAM for system memory that is not used for storage. Performance is not slowed down by content in the iPhone.
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Daniel said 3:14AM on 11-09-2007
I always forget to remove videos when I'm syncing, so this is great way for me to delete videos straight after I've viewed them, especially given my experience with the erratic way videos are kept or removed after being watched or half-watched.
'New' is so much more ambiguous than 'unplayed'. And I don't understand how a Podcast can be both/either... :(
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random said 11:40AM on 11-09-2007
i stumbled on this one while browsing the anime series on my touch, has proved to very useful to me. But its great that it gets a mention on here as well now ;)
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Scott said 3:29PM on 11-12-2007
I think this feature is pretty useful for me. I don't use syncing; I manually manage all of my stuff because there are usually only about 20 songs I listen to at a time, and the videos have on it are either YouTube videos, or a TV show episode or movie I haven't watched yet. I can delete a TV show or movie now without my computer after I have watched it. This is good news for me, considering that I have a jailbroken iPod and am always installing new applications.
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