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Scanning Music Library content. Android/PC.

  • November 17, 2025
  • 6 replies
  • 34 views
M

Is there a quicker way for the app (android or PC) to speedy up the scanning of a music library on a NAS on my home network, or are there any plans for Sonos to change the way to access this content?

I have a reasonably large music collection (nearly 60,000 tracks over 4,000+ folders), if I push new audio up to the NAS, I need the app to rescan the content before I can play it.  About 20 minutes each time (if I’m lucky).  Isn’t is about time this element of the app is rewritten so it works more like a File Explorer/My Files type of program?  You just upload, drill down to the content and it’s visible instantly?  (And yes, I do know you can set the Music Library to update overnight.)

It’s 2025.  It’s bonkers having to do this nonsense.

6 replies

Belly M
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  • Belly M
  • November 17, 2025

This a community forum and as such Sonos do read and sometimes make comment along along the lines of great idea I will pass it along,

 

I will be honest, that’s a good time for the number of tracks you have and pretty much at the limit of what Sonos supports.


In the past the trick to speed up indexing was the make sure the controller was connected to a Sonos device that was Ethernet wired, however that was years ago so probably no longer applies.

 

Airgetlam
controlav
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  • controlav
  • Lead Maestro
  • November 17, 2025

Every time someone tries to mess with the ancient file indexing code, something breaks, so I seriously doubt there’s any enthusiasm for changing it in this way. As you are at the limit of the size of the collection, switch to Plex, or upload everything to iBroadcast.com.

Author of the leading independent Sonos apps for Android, MacOS, iOS, Windows and Xbox.
Stanley_4
  • Stanley_4
  • Lead Maestro
  • November 17, 2025

I believe Sonos did some tweaks a good while back to move the indexing process to a more capable device if it was started on a lesser one.

I speeded up my indexing (maybe, hard to tell) by going to a faster NAS connection and NAS as well as putting the music on an SSD.

M
  • MassiveRugSale
  • Author
  • Contributor I
  • November 17, 2025

Every time someone tries to mess with the ancient file indexing code, something breaks, so I seriously doubt there’s any enthusiasm for changing it in this way. As you are at the limit of the size of the collection, switch to Plex, or upload everything to iBroadcast.com.

 

...I use Plex for a film library, but wasn’t aware that it would integrate with the Sonos app, or have I got it wrong?

Back to the original issue, I’d ripped some audio off a Blu-Ray disc and had three different stereo versions of the same album (original 1985 version, a 2025 remix and a 2025 instrumental version); I’d broken the tracks up into a FLAC files and put them on my NAS, but for some reason the instrumental version of just wouldn’t play, despite the formatting and process on all three being identical.  They played fine on a PC, but Sonos didn’t want to know (they were all within Sonos parameters (16-bit/44.1).

It just got a tad laborious; push up, scan, fail, delete, re-encode, push up, scan, fail (and repeat).  It’s the first time I’ve ever experienced this amount of fail with the method I use, but it took hours to resolve, with the Sonos scan being the longest (and most painful!).

Stanley_4
  • Stanley_4
  • Lead Maestro
  • November 17, 2025

When seeing issues with stuff I'm adding I remove my full library and work with a much smaller test selection. Once good I put the full version back, add the new stuff and let it index.

Belly M
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  • Belly M
  • November 17, 2025

When seeing issues with stuff I'm adding I remove my full library and work with a much smaller test selection. Once good I put the full version back, add the new stuff and let it index.


SNAP

 

Pull main library and only only work on the single album that’s causing me issues.

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