What do you mean by internal & external folders? If what you mean by “ external” is a drive attached to your Mac then it should have a drive letter as part of its path. I’m not a Mac guy so maybe I have that wrong.
The folder that contains your playlists should be in the same folder that contains your music. One path statement for both music & playlists.
@AndyJ,
I’m not a MacOS user either, but I don’t see how it’s possible to have the same network path that points to two different locations
? - in Windows you can simply name the share regardless of the actual path such as //MyPC/Music or Music-1, Music-A etc; or whatever name you choose. I also don’t see why you would not simply copy the playlists over to a folder in the current shared library structure? ... (edit: and re-index, as mentioned).
I believe what they are doing is merging two music libraries, ones stored on different devices.
Looking at the Music Library in “Folder View” it does only show the current folder name at each depth, no upstream context.
I don’t have two libraries here to test with so I can’t be much help.
Maybe Sonos could add showing the share name and full directory path in folder view as a feature request?
Just to be clear: External folder is on an External drive, Thunderbolt connected; Internal Folder is on my Mac HD.
Windows doesn’t work the same way as MacOS which is Unix based. In any case the folders have a different full path name, but the issue arises in the way MacOS Shared Files works (or presents the files actually shared.)
In MacOS when I share a folder, it is available in the Shared Files list by name, e.g. “Music.”, and NOT by full path. Therefore if the folder on the external drive is called “Music” and the one on the internal drive is called “Music” then they both appear in the Shared Files list as “Music” but are distinguished (made unique) internally by the physical path to the folder - which I can’t see directly, I have to do something like “Get Info” or “Show in Finder”.
The shared file is accessed in the Sonos App by entering, in my case, \\MacBook-Pro\Music”. Whilst I can share any folder called “Music” and it appears in the shared file list as “Music” I can’t add both to Sonos because they are added BY TYPING in the name \\MacBook-Pro\Music: the app will not know which particular one is referenced - I can’t BROWSE to the share and select it!
I am not merging Music libraries (i.e. the library created by the app Music). I have the library file on my internal drive and it points to the actual physical files which reside on the external drive. This is fairly common as it saves space on the internal drive. Historically, it was common to hold both the library file and the actual music files in the same directory structure; also historically, it was way, way easier for applications like Sonos to access these files but security changes in MacOS over time (I think) has made this a bit more of a rigmarole! Even with the structure I have, I could, historically, add them both to the Sonos app because they were added with a full path.
The library file is just XML and it also contains the Playlists (as XML) - I believe that the Sonos App on Mac parses that library file to discover the playlists and import them. I assume that with changes to the Sonos App and changes to MacOS (mostly the latter I expect) to add the Music library to Sonos it has to be shared and accessed as a network share.
Hopefully this is a little bit clearer. I don’t think I can be the only Mac user who has this type of separation but I think it is complicated in my case because I store the library file in a folder called Music and the physical files in a folder called Music as well!
@AndyJ,
Perhaps see this Sonos Support link:
https://support.sonos.com/en-us/article/itunes-playlists-missing-from-sonos-library-on-usb-drive
Just copy/paste the library.xml file somewhere within your music library folder structure and re-index that usually resolves the issue you’re referring to.
Hopefully this is a little bit clearer. I don’t think I can be the only Mac user who has this type of separation but I think it is complicated in my case because I store the library file in a folder called Music and the physical files in a folder called Music as well.
So change the name of the Music folder.
@AndyJ,
Perhaps see this Sonos Support link:
https://support.sonos.com/en-us/article/itunes-playlists-missing-from-sonos-library-on-usb-drive
Just copy/paste the library.xml file somewhere within your music library folder structure and re-index that usually resolves the issue you’re referring to.
It looks like that’s the only way to do it. It also needs doing every time the Sonos library is updated!
It looks like that’s the only way to do it. It also needs doing every time the Sonos library is updated!
I used to use a PC, with ‘second copy’ 3rd-party software to copy things from the PC to my NAS music library - it does the file/folder updates automatically when changes are made to chosen files/folder(s) on the PC and then I just re-indexed the Sonos Library every now and again. The indexing was scheduled in the previous S2 Sonos App and I think you may still be able to do that with the Sonos Desktop Apps (not sure?).
Tim more recent days, I have chosen to use my own .m3u playlists instead and I export them from a different App and just scan my NAS library manually every now and again and don’t bother with the PC that much now, I just prefer to use a tablet for most tasks.
