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I’ve recently transffered my music to a 1 TB external SSD.

I’m using a Mac Studio (Ventura 13.2.1). The Music app on the Mac is setup to use the external drive as its library. All works OK on the Mac.

If I add the Library to my Sonos (I add in as an External Drive and point it to the Music folder) it initailly recognises the folder and says it is starting to Index. Nothing happens. Normally I would see the ...Indexing next to the ‘Music Library’ on the Music Sources list, but nothing is there. If I run the ‘Update Music Library Now’, the Indexing can appear for a second or two and then disappears (or most of the time it just freezes the Sonos app and I have to Force Quit).

Using Finder I can see that Sonos has a ‘Custom’ Sharing Privilege permission on the drive (generated when I first setup the Library in Sonos). It appears to have rights to access the folder, but the Library Indexing always fails.

Any advice would be welcome.

Nevermind… I found that SonosLibraryServer was turned off under Full Disc Access under the Security settings… it now appears to be Indexing...I thought this should have been turned on during the setup as I had to enter my admin password and it flashed up messages about adjusting security settings.. it seems to have missed this one..

Update… the Indexing did work, but it did not bring in any playlists. I also added the Mac Studio drive Music folder to Sonos (no music in it, but the ‘Music Library’ file is located in this folder. This seemed to get the playlists in.

However, I can only update the library in Sonos by using the Android app. If I try and use the Sonos Desktop app to update the library it just freezes the desktop app and I have to Force Quit.

Something is definetly not working right with the whole of this system.

Unfortunately, I don’t use an external drive, I use an NAS instead. Ventura is working without issue in that use case, but it’s definitely not the same. I’d be awfully tempted, in your case, to delete the Mac app completely, then reboot the machine. After that, I’d download a new copy from Sonos’ website, and install, choosing the ‘join an existing system’ when prompted. Once that’s done, try another library update.

The really weird thing here is that all the controller should be doing is telling the software that runs on the speaker to do an operation. However, it does need to access data on your computer (the SSD) in order to complete that operation. If there’s some potential lag involved (and it’s hard to think of why that would be) it could fault out, but if it runs fine from the Android OS, it’s certainly unexplained.

I’d also be very tempted to try it, have it fail, and then submit a system diagnostic within 10 minutes, and call Sonos Support to discuss it.

There may be information included in the diagnostic that will help Sonos pinpoint the issue and help you find a solution.

When you speak directly to the phone folks, they have tools at their disposal that will allow them to give you advice specific to your Sonos system and network.

I’ve done a couple of uninstalls-reboots-reinstall-library resets…

It is now more stable and the mac app no longer freezes. I still require the Mac Music directory AND the Extermal Music SSD adding to the Music Library settings for it all to work OK.

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