Local Files do not work in any capacity whatsoever

[saucyg]

Plan

Premium

Country

United Kingdom / England

Device

iPhone XR

Operating System

iOS 15.3.1

My Question or Issue

Local Files recently got updated to have support for files on "this device" which I was happy about as I could never get local file sync to work. Come to find out that even though I have music files locally in the "On My iPhone" section of the files app that they still won't show up in Spotify. The "Local Files" section in my library has 0 songs in it, and tells me to add songs to my device that are already there.

I have tried syncing via WiFi, a cable, adding songs to playlists on Desktop (they show up in my phone library but are greyed out) and now actual local files and nothing has ever worked. I just want to listen to my Frank Ocean man please

[Jeremy]

Hi @saucyg,

Thank you for reaching out to the Community. We're sorry to hear that you can't enjoy your local files as you should be able to. Let's take a closer look into this.

To start with, can you confirm that you followed the steps in this article correctly? 

Note: local files can be turned on/off in the Settings menu.
 

If that doesn't do the trick - can you try the following:

• Add some songs from our catalog to the playlist as well as the local file/s and make sure they have ‘Show unavailable songs in playlists’ turned on in Settings
• Play some music on the device that has the local files to see if it shows via Connect on the other device
• Make sure the router supports the Bonjour protocol. If the router is made after 2005, it will likely have this protocol. The best way to handle this is to check the router make/model and Google it

Let us know how it goes.

Take care!

[saucyg]

Hi Jeremy, 

to clarify, the toggle in settings on the iOS app was very recently changed on my phone from a network "sync local files" toggle to saying "songs stored on this device". I have both a local copy of the songs I want to play on Spotify on my phone as well as on my PC, and there is a playlist with the songs, created on PC, that appears on my phone but all of the songs are greyed out. The "Local Files" area on my phone is not populated with anything however. I can confirm that both my PC and my phone appear on the connect tab and my router does support Bonjour.

I have followed the steps on the support page many times to no avail thus far.

I will try adding some Spotify songs to the playlist to see if that causes a sync to happen. 

Thanks for your help

[Dian · Accepted solution]

Hey @saucyg,

you're absolutely right - we've recently introduced some changes to how local files are handled. If you're already seeing the new experience, some of the steps are a bit different.

For example, instead of using a regular files manager (like the Files app) you actually need to use one of the music library managing apps for iOS, like iTunes for Windows or Finder for Mac, to get your files stored locally and discoverable via Spotify on your iPhone.

Check this FAQ for more detailed step-by-step instructions. Keep us posted if it worked out using this new method.

[saucyg]

@Dian YOU SEXY BEAST MUCH OBLIGED x x x x 

[Dian]

Happy to help 💚 Enjoy your files and who knows, one day we might have them in our catalog too!

Cheers!