Apple’s new streaming music service has been polarizing, to say the least. I’ve seen plenty of anecdotal evidence in my Twitter timeline suggesting that many love it, hate it, and everything in-between. I plan to stick with the service until the end of the three-month trial — I want to give it plenty of opportunities to make a believer out of me. I don’t currently expect to become a paying customer, but time will tell if my mind is changed.
There is a portion of iOS users who have already made up there mind, though. And for those who want the service out of their life for good, there is a way to remove any signs of Apple Music and Connect from iOS’s Music app.
Hiding the Apple Music Service
If your interested in removing the Apple Music service from the Music app, the process is quite simple and only takes a couple of steps.
- Open the Settings app and navigate to Music — about half-way down.
- Switch off the Show Apple Music setting.
This will allow you to use the Music app without experiencing the clutter of a service you might not be interested in using or paying for. You’ll have the My Music tab moved to the left, alongside Playlists, Radio, and Connect. You can use all of the features located in those tabs without having to worry about losing functionality after the three-month trial is over.
Hiding Connect
The process for removing Connect from the Music app is a little less intuitive. The option is actually hidden under Restrictions — the settings panel that’s most often associated with the configuring of parental controls.
- Open the Settings app and navigate to General, Restrictions.
- If you’ve already enabled Restrictions you’ll be asked to input your Restrictions passcode. If not, you’ll be asked to create one after tapping Enable Restrictions.
- Scroll down to the second block of options where Apple Music Connect is located and switch it off.
Now when you launch the Music app, the Connect tab will be replaced with a Playlists tab — something that many iOS users would find much more useful than Connect.
If you choose to remove both Connect and the Apple Music service, you’ll likely find the Music app to feel a bit anemic — only having three tabs along the bottom, My Music, Playlists, and Radio. But I’m holding out hope that Apple will add some optional tabs with the release of iOS 9. A much larger portion of iOS users will be using the app sans-streaming service at that point, since all of the early adopters’ free trial periods will have lapsed.
