Local librairies not syncing from desktop app to android

[nicolaswr76]

Hello,

I have a problem syncing a playlist created on my desktop spotify with my phone.

So basically I created a playlist on desktop app using local files. When I go in my android spotify app, I can see the playlist but the song is greyed out and when i click the small icon to download, there is an exclamation mark next to the song. The songs are in a format supported by spotify.

I have tried several fixes but nothing works:

1. clean the phone's cache and all spotify related data
2. full uninstall the app on my phone
3. full uninstall the desktop app (and clean all registries)

I must say it is starting to drive me nuts a bit. 

Any suggestion would be greatly appreciated!

many thanks,

Nicolas

Plan

Premium

Device

Samsung S21 FE

Operating System

Windows 10

[willlyons3]

This feature is very finicky. Mine also rarely works and when it does it only downloads a few of the songs I want.

[nicolaswr76]

oki doki thanks. So i did not learn how to solve it with your answer but I learned a new word!! thanks for "finicky" 🙂

[Kiril]

Hey @nicolaswr76 and @willlyons3,

Thanks for posting in the Community!

Finicky is indeed a fine word here 🙂  There are various third party technologies involved in this feature and so it needs constant attention to maintain the functionality across various platforms. 

Consequently, the way Local files work in Spotify has been changed not long ago, so I wanted to share this also with you. Basically, the synchronization between files from PC and your mobile devices over the network isn't supported at the moment.  Your own audio files, that you want to play within the Spotify app on mobile, need to be physically present on the particular device's storage. So you'd need to copy them to your mobile. Check also that the setting for discovering Local files on that particular device is toggled on in your Spotify app.

Hope this clears things up. If you have any questions or need anything else, the Community is here for you.

[nicolaswr76]

Great, many thanks for this update Kiril, this is very helpful!

Do you know if the sync between desktop and mobile device will be brought back at some point or if this feature is likely to be permanently disabled?

[willlyons3]

I've discovered that the only ones that download to my phone and can be played have adequate property info. The mp3's that have a song length in the properties will download to my phone from my computer, but the ones that only have a title will not.

[nicolaswr76]

interesting! will give a try