Part 1 - Set up the share (System Settings/Preferences)
Open System Settings (in earlier MacOS it’s called System Preferences).
Click on the apple in top left of your screen to find that option.
Choose General
Select **Sharing**.
Enable **File Sharing**
Click the "i" symbol
Click the "+" symbol.
Add a shared folder by choosing the folder where your music is stored and selecting Open
The name of the folder here will be the ShareName that you’ll use in Part 3.
Under ‘users’, confirm that the list includes an ‘everyone’ option, and that you set ‘everyone’ to *Read Only* at a minimum (or “Read & Write”)
Ensure the customer's account is set to **Read & Write**
I’m not 100% sure ‘customer’s account’, but I took it to mean the account I login with on the computer.
Click the Options button
Ensure that both SMB and the customer's account below are checked and choose Done.
Part 2 - Find your computer’s name
At the bottom (or sometimes top in earlier versions of macOS) of the Sharing page, you’ll see Local hostname. Everything before the .local is the hostname. Copy that down - that will be your MacName that you’ll need in Part 3.
Part 3 - Add the share to Sonos
Open the Sonos app on your mac.
Choose Manage > Music Library Settings
Choose the + for your music folders.
Instead of ‘another folder or drive’, choose Networked Device
Type the network path name when prompted, and press Next. The format will be \\MacName\ShareName
Remember the ShareName and MacName you captured earlier? This is where you’ll use them. Make sure the \ are the right ones (not /, but \).
Enter the Mac username and password. The password is the same as when you login opening your laptop.
If you’re not sure about the username, you can find it this way:
Open an app called ‘Terminal’ on your macbook. (Go into Launchpad and type ‘term’ and it’ll show up)
Type whoami and press enter.
The result that shows is your username. (e.g. Perhaps my computer shows my login name as Salami Slices but my username technically is different (salamislices)). Copy and paste that into the username that Sonos is asking for.
If that doesn’t work, someone had mentioned trying the following:
From System Settings, on left side, choose ‘users and groups’
Click on the ‘i’ next to Guest User
Enable “Allow guest users to connect to shared folders” and choose OK.
Now, from Sonos app, when get prompted for username and password, leave them blank and just choose enter.
The idea is it would treat it as a guest and since gave access to guests, will work.
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And boom! This worked. At least I think so.. it’s updating music library, so i’m very optimistic. Annoying we have to do this, but hey.. at least I can listen to my music again. Thank you so very much. Left some love over on YT. Going to re-post on reddit now
I followed the instructions (thank you for making them so easy to follow) it seemed to be working, said I had access to the folder, then gave me the “updating music library…” screen, but it’s been claiming to do this for the last half hour now.
Hi thanks so much for your time in providing this information and making the YouTube version.
iim on mac os Monterey
the only way I could get your method to work was by putting all my music onto the MacBook as opposed to a hard drive, it then worked for me , it’s not ideal as now I’ve hardly any room left on my computer.
as I said when trying to add the the music folder from a hard drive attached to my routers usb it still fails, it was working before these updates came through.
There is a reported bug fix coming mid-June 2024. If you can’t wait until then…
(I did this running Sonoma 14.4.1) And thanks to folks in a separate thread on the details - just tried to put them all in one place.
THANK YOU SO MUCH FOR THIS. Tricking the system into thinking my external hard drive was a NAS drive is genius. It stopped me pulling out the remaining hairs on my head.
UPDATE: While I was able to get it working, I am now missing all my playlists. (Another huge pain point using Sonos with a local iTunes)
I have two old Play 1’s and they must have inbuilt memory as they kept my playlist intact even though I removed Sonos and all its components from the computer.
I have two old Play 1’s and they must have inbuilt memory as they kept my playlist intact even though I removed Sonos and all its components from the computer.
Nope. I also have Play 1’s and they do not store the playlits on the device. Playlists (Im 99% certain) are stored in the “ITunes Music Library.xml” file
Try to add a new playlist and see if it carries over. My guess is it won’t.
Yah! Worked for me, I can use my speakers again. Thanks for sharing :-)
Utterly piss poor that Sonos can’t provide support like this.
Now I’ve just got to get used to the new (totally baffling) UI in the app.
Anyone know a good “Product Owner / Developer Testing for Beginners” book that I could recommend to Sonos?
Great job and thanks for sharing.
The indexing took a while, it wasn’t album by album but nothing for an hour... then the whole thing.
Can hear music in my home now
My files are in a USB stick. This works for me! Indexing took a long time though…. I can see my playlist on mac, But not my iphone App though..
Works like a charm! Guest account is the cure. Make sure the only box checked is the bottom one for guest accounts, only allow them to connect to shared folder, no password or username.
I had the top one checked, still blocked, unchecked it. Bam, it’s adding my library.
Thank you! Salami Slices.
UPDATE: While I was able to get it working, I am now missing all my playlists. (Another huge pain point using Sonos with a local iTunes)
Playlist is listed, I am sure whatever you had picked is lost. Sonos really released a half-baked beta app. I am just happy my music library is now accessible again. It was huge pain using the desktop app and picking the song, then stream it to my speaker linked to my Mac PC. Talk about a huge pain!
10-year Sonos user with many products...this solution worked for me, thank you for sharing. Sonos needs to pay you for doing their job!
UNBELIEVABLE how complicated this was! I NEVER would have tried this on my own. Come on Sonos - you’ve done this before, and done it again. STOP TRYING TO FIX THINGS THAT AREN’T BROKEN!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
UPDATE 2: My music is getting imported but stops after K. I have about 20 artists from K-Z. This is the exact same library I had before. I going thru it now to see if I have any “protected” music from iTunes that’s mucking things up. Who knows. This is beyond frustrating.
If only Sonos would maybe not put out half baked software
Did not work with Catalina OS. Sonos was unable to “login” when mounting the location.
I tried it several times, properly human error involved. Initially the updating was very short, and no music showed up under songs, playlists, etc. When I changed the word “music” to “iTunes”Yahtzee, it worked perfectly.Thank you very much...
Tried every variation of mounting the USB using Network drive and \… Result it the same And yes, the username and password are correct.
Thank you salami slices for the detailed screenshots on adding a shared library to resolve 913.
I am running the latest version of Monterey and my General, etc. is very different than your screenshots. However, I was able to navigate through nit with some trial and error.
It did not like Username and password as you mentioned. So, I added a guest sharing to the file share and it still does not work for me. Not sure what I am doing wrong. I get an error message, access denied even though it is set to Read/Write.
Any ideas on how to resolve?
Thanks in advance.
Thank you salami slices for the detailed screenshots on adding a shared library to resolve 913.
I am running the latest version of Monterey and my General, etc. is very different than your screenshots. However, I was able to navigate through nit with some trial and error.
It did not like Username and password as you mentioned. So, I added a guest sharing to the file share and it still does not work for me. Not sure what I am doing wrong. I get an error message, access denied even though it is set to Read/Write.
Any ideas on how to resolve?
Thanks in advance.
Watch this, it’s step by step.
I watched video again! I apparently had an IDIOT moment. When I did Terminal, I misread the lines and had the wrong username! Such a dufus sometimes!
Someone suggested you work for SONOS- I agree. I have no idea how you figured this out but THANK YOU.
Followed the video exactly…. no joy… won’t login to allow the mount on Catalina.
I replicated my Catalina music folder on another computer with Sonoma. From Catalina SONOS session, was able to mount the Sonoma Music folder and login using the NAS approach in this thread.
Suspect there is something odd with file sharing and logging in on Catalina that SONOS has a fit with. Both were using SMB sharing and read access to everyone.
Kinda messes up my approach of using older Mac’s for media file sharing. This is not a good longterm solution.
Ty sooo much! It is working on my iMac now. Nice to have my own music back and to “unbrick” my Sonos speakers.
The Sonos interface is very slow and clunky, but your solution is brilliant.
Now, if I could get controller working again on iPad…today’s project
Cannot thank you enough for posting this. Itr’s been days of pain for us, trying in vain to get Sonos customer support to help us. They’re just garbage.
Your fix managed to get Sonos to accept my music folder-- though I don’t have playlists, at least not yet. Hoping for the best.
But YOU-- ARE the best!!!!
Thank you!
Just fyi, I tried this twice and successfully added my music folder. That’s the good news.
The bad news: I can search by artist, album, etc-- but playlists are still blank. Painful. Especially since there’s a ton of Christmas music mixed in!! Uggghhh.
