macOS Unable to Add OneDrive Music Folder to Sonos Library

  • 17 March 2023
  • 9 replies
  • 198 views

I’m using Sonos v. 15.1.1 on macOS Ventura on an M2 Mac Mini. I have a music folder under a OneDrive folder. I’ve given Sonos read/write access to this folder under File Sharing and Sonos is turned on under Accessibility, but when I try to add the folder in the Sonos app, I get an error message that “Sonos was unable to add the music folder. Access to the shared folder “//MY_NAME-Mac-mini/Music” is denied - check the username and/or password” I created a music folder outside of the OneDrive folder and there’s no issue adding that folder, so it must have something to do with OneDrive. Tried uninstalling and reinstalling Sonos too. Appreciate any suggestions!


9 replies

Copy the files locally, rather than on a ‘cloud based’ drive. Sonos has never worked with cloud based options. 

The music files are local. The best I can do for now is use a sync utility to copy the files to a Music folder that is outside of the OneDrive folder. That folder can be added to the Sonos Library.

OneDrive isn’t local, so I’m confused. Are the files on OneDrive?

OneDrive allows you to store files in its “cloud” as well as download those same files to a device which is what I have done with all my files. I can exit completely out of OneDrive and my files are still on my device. I am attempting to point Sonos to a local Music folder that is in my OneDrive folder and that’s when I get the access is denied message. I can copy those very same files to a folder that is outside the OneDrive folder and easily had them to the Sonos Library.

Full disclosure: I’m not a OneDrive user. What is the advantage of storing a local copy of your files inside the OneDrive folder?

Personally, I don’t want my computer to be involved in playing music. I store files on a NAS drive. The computer can crash and burn while the music continues.

Advantages: the music files are backed up to the OneDrive “cloud” and they are accessible from other computers that are syncing to OneDrive.

OneDrive does some chicanery to the desktop OS in order to make it think that Cloud files are ‘local’ files, in the OneDrive folder.

The Sonos system has never been able to parse through that folder process. Any music stored in a OneDrive folder is inaccessible to any Sonos system, whether it is really local, or stored elsewhere. 

 

Ah, one thing to add, which may help in understanding this issue. The Sonos player does not reside on your computer. It resides on the speaker. So the speaker is trying to reach out to get the music data to play. When the Sonos system reaches out to the computer to get the data, it gets blocked by the fact that the folder doesn’t respond as a normal folder would, so it can’t ‘penetrate’ to see if the files are really local, or stored in the cloud, so it fails. This has always been the case. 
 

I’d 100% agree with @buzz that a much better solution is an NAS. 

Not true that “the Sonos system has never been able to parse through that folder process.” I didn’t mention earlier that it actually works on my Intel Mac Mini with Sonos pointing to a OneDrive folder that’s located here: /Users/MY_NAME/Library/Group Containers/UBF8T346G9.OneDriveStandaloneSuite/OneDrive.noindex/OneDrive/Music

It’s on my wife’s new M2 Mac Mini where I can’t get it to work. My workaround is using a sync utility to copy the OneDrive Music folder to /Users/HER_NAME/Music That way we still have the OneDrive “cloud” backup and we also sync to an external drive, so we have a local backup as well.

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