Lost all my playlist

Why on earth did you factory reset everything? The warnings in the support article are clear about the consequences.

There’s a remote chance that you may be able to recover the playlists from one of the mothballed units. Do nothing more until you’ve completely outlined here:

• which units have not been reset
• what version -- S1 or S2 -- your live units are running (the ZP100 can only run S1)

In particular do not add the older, offline units to your system. They too would be wiped.

Hi Ratty,

Thanks a lot for the quick response, much appreciated. I obviously didn’t see any of the warnings or I would have not done it… I saw other instructions and followed them and there was no warning about this.

. All the Sonos ones have been factory reset. I have 4 on the current system

. They are all running on the the latest Sonos SW (S2 v 12.2.2)

. The ones that have never been reset are the ZP100 (2 units). They are in boxes, not connected to the existing system. I stopped using them 6 months ago so I hope I can at least use them to recover my playlists until then. 

Thanks a lot!

This is going to take some care (and there is one step which may not work).

• Power off all the Ones 
• Uninstall the S2 app
• Wire a single ZP100 to the network and power it up (leave the other in its box as a spare)
• Install the S1 app and tell it to connect to an existing system

If the ZP100 wants to update to the latest S1 version that’s okay.

Check if your Sonos playlists are present, and if so:

• Wire a single One to the network as well
• Power it up in factory reset mode
• Try and add it to the S1 system

If that adds and downgrades itself successfully to S1 it should acquire your playlists, in which case:

• Power off and remove the ZP100
• Go through the update-to-S2 procedure on the single One plus the app, as you did some while ago

You may need to go into the S1 system settings to give the app a kick, so as to make it check for an S2 update. 

Once you have both the single One and app back on S2:

• Factory reset the three other Ones and add them to the system

I don’t think the OP will have much problem in establishing the existence of the playlists in the ZP100. It’s the cloning operation into an S2->S1 Sonos One, and then back S1->S2 which needs the care.

Besides, the purpose of keeping the other ZP100 securely in its box was as a ‘just in case’.

Interesting, the official factory reset page does not have nearly enough warnings, and doesn't mention playlist destruction specifically: https://support.sonos.com/s/article/1096?language=en_US

It just says “system data” which is far from obvious.

It wouldn’t much matter what it said if one had the misconception that Sonos Playlists were stored in the cloud.

And clearly a controller can’t put up any warnings because by definition the player is being cut loose.

controlav,

You need to extend your App so that a user is not only able to export their playlists to .xml, but be able to import them too, back to either their S1/S2 system. 

I have to also say however, besides perhaps selling/passing-on an ‘entire’ Sonos system to someone else, I really can’t think of a situation where a need arises to reset all players.

I agree @ratty’s recovery post is indeed ‘awesome’ to help correct the OP’s present situation with their system… there is certainly high hope that all is not lost here.

Even with write access to the relevant player memory re-import of playlists could throw up all kinds of issues, given that music library paths and online accounts could potentially be mismatched. There’s a danger that it could become something of a train wreck.

The former warnings have been toned down, sadly. Previously it said that factory resetting would destroy your system and result in a £10,000 fine or three months in jail.  OK I made that bit up, but it did say that you should not factory reset unless told to by a Sonos employee.  I assume this was dropped so as not to encourage users to call up for help.  (This is being backed up by other measures to discourage the use of Support, for example giving crap advice.)

Funnily enough, if you Google ‘Sonos Factory Reset’ the first link isn’t an official Sonos page but from ‘’Dynamic Media Music’.  The advice here seems to be largely lifted from the previous Sonos guidance, and has more appropriate warnings.