Disabling Local Files from showing up in search results when deleting local-files.bnk does not work

[Anjadekar]

Plan: Premium

Country: India

Device:MacBook Pro (Retina, 15-inch, Mid 2015)

Operating System: macOS High Sierra (10.13.6)

My Question or Issue

I have recently noticed that local files from my Mac show up in search results despite the Show Local Files option being deselected in Settings. There are many posts that refer to similar issues and all of them recommend deleting the local-files.bnk file (found in /Users/MacUsername/Library/Application Support/Spotify/Users/SpotifyUsername-user/local-files.bnk).

I tried doing so and even did a clean install of Spotify (deleting all support and preference files) but to no avail. Music from my local files keeps showing up in my search results even after a fresh install. Any ideas on how I can stop this from happening?

[Anjadekar · Accepted solution]

I found the solution to my own question but am posting it here in case it is of help to others. So, apparently, having the Show Local Files option disabled by itself in Settings does not ensure that the files are not being scanned by Spotify. It only prevents a dedicated Local Files section from showing up in the UI.

In order to disable Spotify from scanning these files in the first place, you must first enable Show Local Files in Settings. You will now see a list of sources (iTunes, Downloads, My Music etc), some or all of which will be enabled. Disable each one of these sources (see screenshot). Once this is done, restart Spotify. Now you should see 0 files show up in the Local Files section in the lefthand pane. Once you have so confirmed that Spotify no longer has access to your Local Files you can go ahead and deselect the Show Local Files toggle. Your local files will no longer show up in searches 😎

I’m not sure why this is so unintuitive. I would have assumed that turning the Show Local Files toggle alone would suffice but alas. Enjoy your music!

[ParentalControl]

Yeah I noticed this was happening because Windows 10 Controlled Folder Protection was blocking this app every time spotify would boot up it would attempt to touch my music folders! I was why is spotify trying to touch my music files! So keep in mind a feature turned on by default like this could be viewed as Ransomware by your computer. I don't like that it does this very of my privacy intrusive. How can you trust a app when it does weird questionable things like this?

Been a issue since Windows Store version 1.1.32 to 1.1.34 so far.

Btw the desktop app has been very buggy since beginning of May. May want to move on and start using ios app or web player so that it does not touch your PC's files too much.