Contributor I

Answered

Sonos Voice Control with Local Libary and Plex through Sonos Playlist

23 replies
348 views

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.

This topic has been closed for further comments. You can use the search bar to find a similar topic, or create a new one by clicking Create Topic at the top of the page.

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.

Show previous replies

A

ajr88Author

Contributor I

For sure, all of the playlist I created in the Sonos app auto added to favorites in the app. I don't think you can make a sonos playlist that isn't auto added to favorites in the android app in the current build I'm using. I only see the ability to toggle favorites for songs, albums and artists, though I might be missing something.

That's great one showed up for you too. Let me know if your other playlist go online for svc too. I only had one of the playlist from my first batch worked for me too and then no others came online regardless of what I tried or how long I waited. Hopefully you have better luck then me lol.

MoPac

Headliner III

I’m guessing my Sonos Playlists may need to be changed to unusual names. If I tell SVC to play Jazz it will probably grab Jazz from my preferred service.

A

ajr88Author

Contributor I

Yep I would try Jazz mix or something, what was the name of your playlist that worked? Surprisingly my only one that worked was the most simple and generic "party".

I'm interested to see if there is some weird limit to one playlist or if you can get more than one working.

A

ajr88AuthorAnswer

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.

jgatie

To anyone reading this thread - Factory resetting a Sonos device is never a good idea unless recommended by Sonos support (and even then, I’d caution it unless your device is frozen in an update) or getting rid of the unit.

A factory reset does nothing beneficial that a reboot will not do, and it wipes out important system and diagnostic data that can help troubleshoot a problem. On top of that, if you follow silly recommendations by the internet “experts” and reset your whole system, all system information is wiped out, including Sonos playlists, service logins, room names, Group presets, etc. All of which are a pain to recreate, for no beneficial results.

To @ajr88, it is highly unlikely that the factory reset is the secret to activating this feature. More than likely a simple reboot (which takes place during the reset) would have accomplished the same thing.

MoPac

Headliner III

Yep I would try Jazz mix or something, what was the name of your playlist that worked? Surprisingly my only one that worked was the most simple and generic "party".

I'm interested to see if there is some weird limit to one playlist or if you can get more than one working.

It is Atmos Classical 7. It’s seven Atmos Orchestral tracks that I consider the best I’ve hear so far. The one from my local library that I made a favorite is Gals. It’s collection of female composer compositions. That name is to generic so if I really wanted SVC to work for local library playlists I would have to change the name of the M3U playlist Gals in my library folder. Not sure I want to go through that process when normally I would listen to that on my other stereo system.

For music during dinner I created a playlist in Spotify called Jazz. The problem with that was when I said Hey Sonos. Play Jazz it would not necessarily play the Spotify Jazz playlist even though Spotify was set as the preferred service. So I renamed the playlist Jazz Richard. That works great.

A

ajr88Author

Contributor I

@jgatie What a weirdly condescending response. At no point did I claim to be an "expert", though throughout the past couple days I have done extensive testing, including resetting the speaker, uninstalling svc and reinstalling it and much more to try and get this up and running for my family. The factory reset was the last resort and only thing to work for me personally. I do hope that they continue to update and fix this bug in the app though at this time this is the only thing that got svc up and running for local Sonos playlist for me.

It also did not wipe my system, account, playlist or login information as you described. You just need to do it to the speaker/s you want to use svc on, so I'm not sure you are thinking of the same process. What I'm talking about is taking a singular bugged speaker out of your system (by holding the Bluetooth or link button when powering it on ) that would control svc and then add it back in to your system through the app. It took maybe 5 minutes and was no where near as catastrophic as you described.

I called support two times through this process and received no help and very outlandish information that just isn't correct. One employee told me to copy my full music library off my server to my personal computer so the app can "download" the songs to the sonos app. When I told her I didn't want to have my second computer hosting a duplicate copy of my local music when I have a server for that she doubled down and insisted the songs "download" (upload) to the app and afterwards I will not have to have my computer on to listen to my local music because Sonos will host my music for me online. One other reason I was giving svc didn't work for all my playlist was because the music I have is copyrighted so it's being blocked. Even though I pointed out the only playlist that worked with svc had all the songs in the failed playlist as well as everything worked as intended when controlled through the app. So I wouldn't have much faith in sonos support after my two support experiences or take much stock in blowing away support file personally.

To anyone looking to get this working, do your own tests, make your own decisions, I'm not an expert or tech support. I'm simply relaying what finally ended up worked for me. Hopefully this will be a moot topic in the future as they continue to fix bugs in the Sonos app.

A

ajr88Author

Contributor I

@MoPac Nice, that sounds pretty awesome, I'll have to search around my local library too and see if they have them as well, sounds cool. Thanks for sharing.

jgatie

No, what you describe is a reset. A reset just isn’t necessary, and although you didn’t wipe out your entire system (because you only reset one component, something I noted in my post), you did wipe out any diagnostic information on that one unit, which could’ve been used by Sonos to fix the problem.

Anyway, I stand by my advice . . . a factory reset isn’t something one should be doing, nor advising. It may have worked for you, but the people who’ve been giving advice around here for decades know that correlation is not causation, and a reboot is all that is necessary for 99.999% of the time a factory reset is found to be a “fix”.

melvimbe

No, what you describe is a reset. A reset just isn’t necessary, and although you didn’t wipe out your entire system (because you only reset one component, something I noted in my post), you did wipe out any diagnostic information on that one unit, which could’ve been used by Sonos to fix the problem.

Anyway, I stand by my advice . . . a factory reset isn’t something one should be doing, nor advising. It may have worked for you, but the people who’ve been giving advice around here for decades know that correlation is not causation, and a reboot is all that is necessary for 99.999% of the time a factory reset is found to be a “fix”.

I would hazard a guess that step 2 and 3 of the process could be replaced with just removing the SVC install from the specific speaker. Something in step 4 seems to be looking at playlists for context of determining how SVC should be setup/optimized. Of course, there should be a way to do this without uninstall and reinstall, so perhaps there is a bug with Sonos or some sort of network configuration that was blocking Sonos from updating after the playlist was created. A diagnostic might have been helpful.

@ajr88 if you’re so inclined, it might be interesting to test that out. Create a dummy playlist and see if it works with SVC on your specific speaker. If it does not, then uninstall SVC, reinstall, and test again. I would consider the test myself, but I’m not inclined...I’m lazy. (I don’t use a local library either)

Danny

Show more replies

Sign up

Login to the community