I am growing very concerned that when the capability to add and edit a local music library is reimplemented sometime in July, that I will be forced to accept a new method of sharing that involves security vulnerabilities and with little to no transparency. I want to a) know what the plan is for this in the mobile app/how it’s intended to work, b) why are there no release notes for 16.2 desktop app updates which had extensive changes to the music library sharing
OS X and iOS user - I bought into SONOS because of its app’s ability to index my local music library from the Mac’s Music folder with ease, including the Music app’s playlists. No NAS, or SMB protocols involved.
When the new mobile app launched with the entire music library capability missing, I was somewhat consoled by the fact that I could still manage this with the desktop app. And I ignored its prompts to update it.
Despite that, there were changes made to the desktop app anyway which broke the ability to add/update from my local music folder. Music library was deleted, then error 913 in trying to add it back. My desktop app is now 16.2 but I cannot find the release notes posted for it.
The only way to workaround that is to enable file sharing settings and readd the music folder as if it were on a NAS, but it’s not a perfect solution. In trying to figure out why i) the original method of pointing the app to my music folder didn’t work, and ii) why the NAS workaround didn’t include my Music app’s playlists anymore - I did some digging.
When trying to re-add my local music folder using the original method, I can see that SONOS is added to the music folder’s permissions at first, then removed before the process fails with 913 error.
When using the NAS workaround method, which requires file sharing via SMB to be enabled as well as the sharing with a Windows computer setting to be enabled - the latter of which comes with a warning that this stores the user’s password in a less secure place.
I also tried to share my iTunes folder in a similar way in an attempt to have SONOS read the associated XML file and restore my missing playlists. I could get the permissions right, but whenever I would Update Music Library, this would remove the SONOS permission for that folder.
Without the necessary transparency from SONOS, I got concerned about what the desktop app was doing behind the scenes. I went digging into computer’s privacy settings and found SONOS in several spots with access that I wasn’t aware of. So I ended up removing the whole thing from my computer.
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I had figured this might all be put right with the upcoming uodates planned for the mobile app, but now I am not so sure about how SONOS intends to accomplish this.
Is SONOS going to essentially turn my computer into a NAS device with the mobile app acting as the interface? I don’t want that or the security vulnerabilities that would come with that if it’s not done properly and with transparency. Or if not, how does SONOS intend for this to work?
Also, how is the web app and its information about my music library secure?
I really don’t want to wait for several more weeks just to find out that I will be forced, perhaps unwittingly, to give SONOS unprecedented new access to my system to accomplish music library indexing.
