Remove Rental Movies from an iPad or iPhone

  Matt Cone       May 29, 2012      Tutorials iPad iPhone

If you’ve ever rented an iTunes movie on your iPad, iPhone, or iPod Touch, you know that the movie is automatically removed from your device 24 hours after you started watching it. But did you know that you can manually remove movie rentals after you finish watching them? Doing so allows you to free up disk space on your iPad, iPhone, or iPod Touch and store even more music and movies.

How Renting Movies Works on an iPad or iPhone

After you rent a movie from iTunes, you have 30 days to start watching it, and 24 hours to finish it after you start watching. You can watch the movie as many times as you want within the 24-hour period. Movies rented on an iPad or iPhone can only be watched on that device. You can’t transfer the movie to a computer or another device.

After the rental expires at the end of the 24-hour period, it will automatically be removed from your iPad or iPhone. You can manually remove it from your device before then, however. This tutorial shows you how.

How to Delete Rental Movies from an iPad or iPhone

Deleting rental movies from an iPad or iPhone take only a couple of minutes. Here’s how to do it:

1. From the iPad or iPhone’s home screen, tap Videos to open it.

2. Tap Rentals, as shown below. The movies you have rented that have not yet expired are shown.

   

3. Tap the Edit button in the upper-right corner. The rental movies will now have X buttons, as shown below.

   

4. Tap an X button to remove a rental movie from your iPad or iPhone. A warning appears, as shown below.

   

5. Tap Delete to permanently remove the rental from your iPad or iPhone.

The rental movie will be deleted immediately, and the space it was using will be available for other files - or even another movie rental.