My Local Files default playlist seems to be completely broken.

[rosgood2360]

The Local Files default playlist seems to be completely broken for me on my iPhone 6s.

When I first used the Local Files playlist a few years ago to sync some local files I had on my desktop to my phone, the effort was minimal and the sync was flawless. But something clearly went wrong some where between then and now. Sometime 6-8 weeks ago I began to notice that whenever Spotify would shuffle onto one of my synced local files on my phone, the playlist would simply skip entirely over the song and start playing the next song on the shuffle queue. When I went into the local files folder on my phone and attempt to play a song, Spotify would rapidly flash through the list of songs and not play any of the songs at all. Mind you, the names of the synced local file songs weren't greyed out, they were regularly highlighted like any other song on the list. I think it's also worth mentioning that the same files worked fine on my desktop, too.

I thought that I could fix the issue by attempting the start over from scratch: I deleted all the files in the mobile local files folder, sifted through the now greyed-out songs in my main playlist, and re-added the songs in the default local files folder on my desktop. Ultimately, this backfired completely because now nothing shows up in the local files folder at all on mobile. 

I've tried a variety of different solution to attempt to fix this:

1. Completely empty the local files folder on my desktop and re-added the songs.

2. Changed the local file directory to point to a completely different folder with the same songs in it on my desktop.

3. Uninstalled and reinstall Spotify on my phone a few different times.

4. Assured that my virus protections firewall or Windows firewall was not blocking Spotify access

5. Assured that my phone and desktop are connected to the same wifi.

6. Assured both the desktop and the mobile apps are "Available Offline".

7. Assured the songs weren't the problem by adding completely new local files.

Frustratingly, I can for example, make a new custom playlist on my desktop Spotify and transfer the local files content into the new playlist. On my phone, this results in a playlist full of greyed-out songs and switching "Available Offline" on entails a "Waiting on download." message to pop up and subsequently never go away, as it seems to be perpetually stuck. 

So the TL:DR of this is:

The local files folder on my phone can't seem to find any songs I put into the local files folder on my desktop. Attempting to work around this by adding the local files to a new custom playlist results in greyed-out songs and a perpetual "Waiting to download" message.

Thank you for taking the time to read this.

[rosgood2360]

shameless bump. See if I can get any new eyes on this

[rosgood2360 · Accepted solution]

After a long line of emails with the spotify technical support, a solution was created for this problem!

It's actually quite simple really, just go into your router settings and forward a UDP port to 57621. Then go about with the normal syncing process and this should work. Of course, every situation is different, but this one worked for me!