No selections available for playlist on mobile device

@cyndiloo Sorry for the slow reply and welcome to the Sonos Community. I understand the frustrations of trying to self-resolve an issue. Please know that when you are calling in for phone assistance we are seeing higher than normal call volume meaning longer than normal hold times. As long as you are in the phone queue our agents will get to your call to assist you. What you are describing above sounds more like an issue with your phone and how Sonos is able to see it and communicate to it. I was able to see a diagnostic report number history and you had no music library setup to your Sonos system.

Before you try to call in, we will need your network topology with the model names and numbers of the products that are wired or wirelessly connected on your network for any modem, router(s), extenders, access points or switches (managed or unmanaged). After you have gathered this information then please power re-boot off your wifi equipment for 30 seconds with no lights on it, meaning no battery backup, then power it back up. While this equipment is powering back on then power re-boot off your Sonos units for the same time with no lights and plug them back in to power, no button pressing is needed. While we are powering on then re-boot the device(s) running the Sonos app. When reconnected then confirm you can see the music on your Android device, then attempt playback from the music stored on your Android device. You can then follow up here from the testing results along with an updated diagnostic report number.

If I understand your situation correctly, the Music Library and updating it are not relevant. That is nothing to do with playlists created in Samsung Music on your phone.

If you are going to find those playlists anywhere, they will be in On This Mobile Device / Playlists.

If the playlists are visible and playable in Samsung Music they should appear identically in On This Mobile Device. That is how it is on my Samsung phone.

@John B I guess I should have been more clear. I have no issues with playing songs from my android device using a player like Samsung music. However, when I try and access that playlist through the SONOS app by selecting “On this device” everything else shows up (songs, artists, genres, albums) and playlist also appears but when I select it, it says, “no selections are available”

@John G I’m not the only one with this problem and it seems to be recurring. https://en.community.sonos.com/controllers-software-228995/updated-android-to-10-5-now-playlists-on-android-are-empty-6831715?postid=16370965#post16370965  Don’t see how it has to do with my sonos hardware / wifi setup

Seems like a really complicated solution to a software problem. 

Honestly, I’m getting pretty frustrated witht this...seems like the speaker design /quality is fantastic...but with an app so buggy...it’s nothing but frustration...thank god I didn’t buy additional speakers etc as I was going to expand the number of sonos devices in my house. we bought a 5.1 home theatre set-up and I can play music with good enough sound quality on that

So i uninstalled my samsung music app and reinstalled...hoping it would simply keep my playlists….nothing...it lets me create new playlists...then those do appear in the sonos app...but where are my old ones? So mad at SONOS

I can understand your frustration, but the app is not ‘so buggy’.  It does seem to have trouble locating playlists on mobile phones in some cases though.  It may help (but probably not much) if you understood some context.  The app is not a music player, it is a remote control.  Virtually all the software is on the speakers.  Sonos was designed to play music stored on a computer or NAS drive.  Then music streaming came along and Sonos embraced it.  The Sonos app instructs the chosen speaker to get the requested music and play it.  The app doesn’t play the music

Last of all, Sonos made it possible to play music stored on the phone.  This is still possible on Android, no longer on iOS.  The app is still not playing the music, it is instructing the speaker to come and fetch it from the phone.

So to be honest, playing from the device using the app does not sit naturally with the Sonos system architecture, and if someone wants to major on playing music stored on an Android mobile device, I would probably suggest that Sonos is not the best choice.  If only one speaker is involved, then a Bluetooth speaker is the obvious choice.

I don’t recall a time when Sonos has ever made a marketing point of playing music stored on a mobile device.  It does work well in most respects, but playlists seem to be a bit unpredictable.

No comfort to you I am sure, and sorry about that.  But Sonos isn’t designed to play from a device to a single speaker.  There are countless Bluetooth speakers that are. 

Why even provide a feature if said feature doesn't work properly? Not logical at all. My point of frustration is that I used to be able to access playlists from my very old Samsung phone but since I switched to a newer and better phone the Sonos app cannot find the playlist on this device. Sonos products aren't cheap and the quality is great, but the buggy software issues are hurting the brand to the point where I am looking at alternate purchasing solutions like a 2 chanel network amp and some bookshelf speakers. Too bad really

Which specific buggy software issues are you referring to?

To complicate things: there's also a depency on the phone manufacturer to think about: if Samsung or Google move the folder where playlists are stored, Sonos need to know.

Aside from being able to play my device’s local playlist with my old phone but not my new, I have often seen the Sonos app crash and I’d have to restart it. Also, when using the phone as a remote to play songs on my network, it’d say that it can’t find the song but ends up playing it anyway. Those little bugs I can tolerate, it’s the inability to consistently access native playlist from a device that really bothers me.

I don’t agree with the sentiment about different phones causing issue for the app, sounds like a lazy excuse. There are countless apps that work just fine across different manufacturers devices

Sure. But this ‘app’ is running on the speakers, not the phone. So the software needs to know where on each different kind of device it can reach out and grab the data to play. If the phone manufacturer has deviated from where Google has suggested, that makes it more difficult for Sonos. Not impossible, mind you. Just more difficult. How many different manufacturers of Android phones are there? If each one puts the music in a different location than what Google suggests in the Android OS, what does Sonos do?

I am not a programmer by any means but nor should one need in order to use the Sonos products. Perhaps a more robust R&D team will help make Sonos products more intuitive.