topic Re: Spotify 'Local Files' Songs Not Syncing Seamlessly Between PC and Phone in Android

[SOLVED] Spotify 'Local Files' Songs Not Syncing Seamlessly Between PC and Phone

Thijsieee99 — Sat, 24 May 2025 18:16:31 GMT

Looks like I found a fix! For some reason, you have to download the playlist in which the song you are trying to listen to...... That fixes it all. Awesome!

Plan

Premium

Devices

Phone 1: Nothing Phone (2a)

Phone 2: Samsung Galaxy S10e

Laptop: Lenovo Thinkpad P1 Gen 3

Operating System

Phone 1: Android 15

Phone 2: Android 12
Laptop: Windows 11 Home

My Question or Issue

I have a few songs that are made available by the artists as free downloads (and are not on Spotify), which I have downloaded (all as MP3 files) and stored on my laptop. I play these on my Spotify desktop app using the 'Local Files' feature, which works perfectly fine. Now, because I also want to be able to listen to these songs on my phone, I’ve made a copy of these files (they are identical) to my phone’s storage so I can play them on the Spotify mobile app too. However, most of the songs (around 90%) aren't recognized correctly across both devices. With 10% of the songs, I can start playback on my laptop, switch to my phone ('phone 1'), and the song continues playing seamlessly. The other 90% of the songs don't behave this way: when I switch devices mid-playback, Spotify simply stops playing, acting like the file is missing on my phone (where it's grayed out). It's always the same songs which are grayed out; this doesn't change over time or when I try copying and deleting the files more times. To be perfectly clear: I can go to 'Local Files' on my phone and listen to all songs there. But then the same happens when I switch to my laptop: it stops playback in the case of 90% of the songs because the songs aren't recognized.

I also tried with a different phone ('phone 2'), and it has the same issue with roughly 90% of the songs. Surprisingly enough, however, it is not the exact same set of songs that aren't working! Some songs do work on phone 1, but not on phone 2, and vice versa. Some work on both, but most work on neither.

What might be causing Spotify to, in some cases, not recognize the same local file across devices for seamless playback? Any other insight into how Spotify deals with 'Local Files' and to make them consistently recognizable on multiple devices would be very helpful. Do let me know if additional information is needed. Thank you!

Some additional information which might be helpful:

On phone, the songs are in the folder 'Internal Storage/Music for Spotfy' and on laptop they are in 'Music/Music for Spotify'
The songs on phone are a direct copy of those on laptop.
I tried clearing cache on the Spotify app on phone, but this didn't help.
I transferred the files from laptop to phone using a USB cable.

Re: Spotify 'Local Files' Songs Not Syncing Seamlessly Between PC and Phone

Thijsieee99 — Sat, 24 May 2025 18:15:42 GMT

Looks like I found a fix! For some reason, you have to download the playlist in which the song you are trying to listen to...... That fixes it all. Awesome!

Spotify Deletes Local Files On Android

searcher8 — Fri, 27 Mar 2026 19:28:01 GMT

I have been dealing with a recurring issue involving how the mobile version of Spotify interacts with local files. Specifically, I've noticed that a lot of the time, a number of custom local files and songs that I have added to my playlists on Spotify keep getting deleted from both my playlists and the Local Files section in the Spotify app.

The interesting thing is that despite hiding the files from the user, Spotify clearly still recognizes and remembers the files regardless. If I manually go into my phone's list of files, track down one of the songs in question, select "Open With" and then choose "Spotify" as the program I'm manually opening the audio file with, then Spotify will not only add the song back to Local Files, it will also proceed to put the song back inside all the playlists that I had previously it saved to. The problem is, re-adding the songs via this method requires me to do it for each and every single song individually, one at a time, which is both a massive pain, and furthermore, doesn't even work in the long term, since I'll inevitably find that Spotify has once again deleted the files within a day or two, forcing me to restart the whole process with every single song.

Another interesting thing to note is that this only appears to be a problem with the mobile version of Spotify. I also use the program on my desktop, and despite having the exact same files synced up on both my phone and my desktop, I do not have this problem with the desktop version of Spotify. There, even when the files are being deleted from the mobile version, they will remain on the desktop in all the same playlists as before. To the point where there have been times where I will play one of the custom files through Spotify on my desktop, and then also start Spotify on my phone, and the phone will tell me that it is playing audio through my desktop, as well as the exact name of the local file that is playing, and yet, when I try to switch to playing audio through the phone, despite the fact that the file is present in both devices, Spotify will give me an error saying "Content Not Available" again, unless I go and manually go into my phone's list of files and force Spotify to open the file that way.

I even went and manually made sure that in my phone, all of the song files in question were manually added to the Spotify>Synced Files folder in my phone, and the problem still persists with no change in behavior. Another interesting bit about this is that it only appears to be an issue for local files I've added within the last year or so. There are a number of other local files I added from before that point, that still remain usable on Spotify without any issues. It's only the comparatively more recent local files that Spotify keeps trying to delete.

If it's relevant, this is the Android version of Spotify, and I have a premium account.

Re: Spotify 'Local Files' Songs Not Syncing Seamlessly Between PC and Phone

searcher8 — Sat, 28 Mar 2026 07:55:47 GMT

>Looks like I found a fix! For some reason, you have to download the playlist in which the song you are trying to listen to...... That fixes it all. Awesome!

I tried this on my end, but it doesn't work for me. I undownloaded and redownloaded the playlists, and then after shutting down spotify on my phone and starting it up again, I find that Spotify has deleted the songs again.

Re: Spotify 'Local Files' Songs Not Syncing Seamlessly Between PC and Phone

MihailY — Sat, 28 Mar 2026 11:07:41 GMT

Hey @searcher8,

Thanks for your reply.

We suspect that the issue stems from the fact that the files are present on both your desktop and phone, so to test this out, can you move the local files on your desktop to a different folder, so they don't appear in the Local Files playlist and see if that changes anything?

Another thing you can check is your phone's battery-/memory-optimization services - make sure that Spotify is set as an exception there.

Let us know how it goes.

Re: Spotify 'Local Files' Songs Not Syncing Seamlessly Between PC and Phone

searcher8 — Sun, 29 Mar 2026 09:14:42 GMT

To be clear, the problem I was having is that the files are disappearing only on the phone version of the app. Things are working exactly as I want on the desktop side of things. It is exclusively the phone side of things where the issue occurs.

That said, I did as you asked, and there was no change in behavior. I picked one of the files that is on both devices and took the version of it that's on the desktop and moved it to a different folder in a separate drive. This resulted in the desktop version of the app showing that the file was no longer in Local Files, and when I went to one of the other playlists that the file was in, it technically listed the song as still being there, but the title was greyed out, and trying to play it resulted in a "This Content Is Not Available" error, which I assume is the expected/intended behavior here.

However when I then went to my phone's files and manually opened the same song through Spotify via the same method I mentioned in my previous post, nothing changed. The song temporarily showed up in my phone's version of Local Files, and all relevant playlists, but the moment I closed Spotify on my phone and started it back up again, the song had once again vanished from both.

I also went into my phone's settings for Spotify and changed it's battery usage settings from Optimized to Unrestricted, as well deactivating the "Pause App Activity If Unused" setting just to be safe, but once again, if I try manually playing the song through Spotify, and then close the app on my phone, the song vanishes once again.

Re: Spotify 'Local Files' Songs Not Syncing Seamlessly Between PC and Phone

Joan — Sun, 29 Mar 2026 10:36:03 GMT

Hi @searcher8,

Thanks for the reply.

This could be a case, similar to what @MihailY said, of Spotify trying to access different versions of the songs. The behaviour you described of the song appearing greyed out is to be expected when it's no longer available. However, despite it being the same files, the mobile and desktop app function separately when it comes to local tracks. So if you've added a specific local file to a playlist via desktop, then the version of the file on desktop is the one seen there. If you then try to play that song from the mobile app (without Connect from desktop), it won't work, even if the same file is available, because Spotify is trying to find the desktop instance of the song. Something like this might be causing conflict between the two apps and provoking this behaviour.

Could you try performing a clean reinstall on mobile, reindex your local files there, then try adding those files to playlists from your phone and see if those instances work properly. For testing purposes, you can try duplicating a playlist, one with local files from desktop and one from mobile and see how they behave.

Let us know how it goes.

Re: [SOLVED] Spotify 'Local Files' Songs Not Syncing Seamlessly Between PC and Phone

searcher8 — Sun, 29 Mar 2026 11:55:11 GMT

I uninstalled Spotify from my phone, and then reinstalled it, and not only do I still continue to have the same problems I detailed before, it also completely purged all of the local files that were previously working from it as well, to the point where Spotify now seems to think that I don't have any local files whatsoever and doesn't let me access the Local Files playlist unless I specifically go into my phone's files manually and open them with Spotify. And now if I close Spotify for any reason, it completely hides the Local Files playlist from me when I start the app again, presumably because Spotify thinks that the Local Files playlist is now empty.

Re: [SOLVED] Spotify 'Local Files' Songs Not Syncing Seamlessly Between PC and Phone

Vasil — Sun, 29 Mar 2026 15:13:40 GMT

Hey @searcher8,

Thanks for letting us know about this! Sorry to see things have not improved after the clean reinstall.

So that we can dig further into this, could you let us know what your specific device is, alongside its OS version? We'd also like to know if you're using an SD card and if your local files are located on it or on the internal device storage. If it's the former, see if copying them to a different device location would make a difference.

Tip: It's good practice to see if the names of the folders where the local files are positioned contain any special characters. I've had this happen to me with a different platform, so I will not personally ever rule it out as an option.

Keep us updated! We'll be on the lookout 🙂

Re: Spotify 'Local Files' Songs Not Syncing Seamlessly Between PC and Phone

nayabuna — Tue, 05 May 2026 14:09:52 GMT

For some reason, my playlist won't fully download. It would stop at some point and indicates that it has fully downloaded the playlist, even though it didn't. I tried removing it and redownloading it, same situation. It won't download all of the songs on that playlist.