Contributor I

Answered

Sonos Voice Control with Local Libary and Plex through Sonos Playlist

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Hello everyone, My family currently using alexa to voice control our music that is hosted through plex on our local plex ubuntu server, though unfortunately we are loosing that feature in a couple days and I have been experimenting with sonos and SVC to try and find a alternate.

I have done a bit of creeping and have seen many post referencing that you can convert your plex music or use your local library to make sonos playlist that then can be used to play music through SVC. I have had limited luck getting things working by following these forum posts and was wondering if something has changed?

My system is set up with a shared drive over my network with Samba. I did have to open up my connection to SMB2 - 3 which was originally shared with just SMB3 for my plex server to get Sonos to link with my music library in the sonos app. Though I got it all up and running and everything works perfectly in the android app except voice control.

My problem is when I try and make sonos playlist to have SVC to play the music SVC can’t find the playlist and it either fails to do anything or auto plays sonos radio.

My first attempt was to link my plex server in the sonos app and then que up my plex playlist into my sonos music queue and then batch convert my music que into a sonos playlist in the sonos android app. I named them “Bangers and Mash” “Party” and “Feather”. Only Party works with SVC after the 24 hours wait. I tried to rename Bangers and Mash to just Bangers Mix and Feather Mix and waited another 24 hours to no avail. The only playlist that SVC will play is “Party”

After trying to trouble shoot this I ditched plex and took my shared music folder and plugged it in directly to sonos through the local music library option in the app. I had to open up SMB from SMB 3 to 3 max and 2 min and was able to successfully import my music library into sonos. I then made new sonos playlist using the local library music within my sonos app and waited 24 hours again. For these playlist I only added a couple songs per playlist, some with only 1 song to try to see if it works. After 24 hours none of these playlist work and would either fail or open sonos radio when prompted.

I have tried to rename the playlist,

The wake word I have used has been “hey sonos play my X playlist” and “hey sonos play my playlist X”

I have tried updating everything and power cycling the router and speaker which is a beam 2,

I have turning on and off SVC, swapping the langue SVC uses back and forth to reset SVC.

I have tried calling support two times and both times were very unhelpful with the phone techs not grasping what was going on or wrong. One even told me I just need to copy all my music to my windows desktop to have it “download” my music to the app which would then host my local music for me. When I told her I don’t want to have to keep my other computer on all the time to host my music she doubled down and said I wouldn’t have to and that the sonos app will host my music for me. She also told me the reason my other playlist were not working was because of copy righted music in the playlist even though all the songs in the failed playlist were also in my largest playlist “party” which was working. None of these interactions have instilled much confidence with support for me.

So here I am, hopefully I can get this working, any help would be greatly appropriated. I would love to replace all the alexas in my house with sonos 100s if I can get this up and running but on if it works lol.

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A

ajr88Answer

Contributor I

Well I figured it out @MoPac. I’ll leave the steps that worked for me as of 6/11/2026 to get sonos playlist to work with voice control with local media.

Step one: make a sonos playlists in the app (I used the android app) from either plex or your local sonos library. You can batch convert playlist into sonos playlist by adding your plex playlist to the now playing queue in sonos and then converting your now playing into a playlist. The option to directly convert the plex playlist to sonos is currently broken for me.

Step two: wait 24 to 48 hours

Step three: factory restore your sonos speaker that will be using voice control and reinstall it back into your system in the app. You can find how to factory restore your specific speaker on sonos support site.

Step four: enable voice control on the newly reset speaker.

And there you go, all of the playlist you made should be available through “hey sonos”. Without the factory restore none of my speakers were refreshing after the 24 hours to find the playlist. Hopefully this is fixed in the future.

MoPac

Headliner III

Tried it here. Seems like SVC cannot find Sonos Playlists, nor can it find my M3U playlists from my local library. For this test I chose playlists with unique names. Each time SVC said “Can’t find that content”.

It would be cool if you could make your local library the preferred service in the same way you now make one of your streaming services the preferred service. Of course your local library isn’t a service. But…..

kdowling

I don’t use SVC, but after reviewing all the support articles I could find, I don’t see any indication it will work with a local music library (or plex). Only with the specific services listed. I could be wrong about that. Are you able to tell it to play a song or album from your local music library and it works?

Content services that work with Sonos Voice Control

MoPac

Headliner III

I don’t use SVC, but after reviewing all the support articles I could find, I don’t see any indication it will work with a local music library (or plex). Only with the specific services listed. I could be wrong about that. Are you able to tell it to play a song or album from your local music library and it works?

Content services that work with Sonos Voice Control

Not at this point. SVC for a local library is a wish. It was, a while back, when I tried using an Echo speaker to control a Sonos speaker with Alexa Voice, but Alexa can’t see my library either. Actually wanted lights to be included in the Alexa group, but that seems to only work with lights+Echo(s) in a Routine.

kdowling

I just found this: Voice Control - Play a playlist that is music from my personal library from 1 year ago. So apparently it worked at some point, but only by using a Sonos playlist. Try marking the playlist as a favorite, waiting 24 hours and try again?

MoPac

Headliner III

Thanks. I’ll give that a try.

kdowling

@ajr88, in case you didn’t see that, try marking the sonos playlists as favorites in the sonos app and then waiting the 24 hours. Let us know if that works.

A

ajr88Author

Contributor I

That is unfortunately what I have been trouble shooting and been trying to do to no luck.

I never expected svc to work whole sale but there are quite a few post that referenced it working with sonos playlist after a 24 hour caching window. I know my initial post is long and I understand the skim lol but this method is what I have been trying to do.

I have made many playlists through the Sonos app while testing and only had one work. All the others could not be found after the 24 hour period. Unfortunately I think it might be just a buggy part of the ecosystem. Hopefully either of you have better luck.

MoPac

Headliner III

@ajr88, in case you didn’t see that, try marking the sonos playlists as favorites in the sonos app and then waiting the 24 hours. Let us know if that works.

Well my Sonos Playlists are already in Favorites. I did however Favorite one of my local library M3U playlists. I’ll check in 24 hours or so. It has an odd name so maybe SVC won’t confuse it with some other playlist in a service.

kdowling

I wasn’t sure, reading your initial post, if you had put the playlists in your Favorites first and then waited the 24 hours. That seems to be the key to getting it to work. At least according to the message thread in my link. It could be that it doesn’t work anymore. It wouldn’t be the first thing that was working and now no longer is.

MoPac

Headliner III

I was able this morning to ask SVC to play one of my Sonos playlists. It finally worked. I think I needed to enunciate clearly to get this to work.

A playlist from my local library that I put in Favorites did not work this morning. Of course it has not been 24 hours yet. I’ll try later. The name of the playlist was nothing close in name to what SVC ended up playing.

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