deleting downloaded local files

[ssofranko]

(premium, Android 11)
I'm creating playlists made entirely of local files downloaded from my Google Drive.  After I create my playlists with this content, can I delete the files without deleting the content in my playlists?  My local files library is huge and redundant!

[Kiril]

Hey @ssofranko,

Thanks for your post and welcome to the Community!

We understand you need more info on how the Local files feature works. Well, the files actually need to be present on your device in order for Spotify to be able to play them, as that's precisely what makes them 'local' 😉 It's not like you're transferring them from your local folder to the app and that's done. It's more like the app scans your folders and just caches the needed data, so it can list your files. You can then organize and play them from inside the app, but it will still need to look up and find where the actual music content is stored.

Long story short, deleting the locally stored files, after you have synced them with the app, will no longer be playable and most probably the app will throw an alert at you. If interested, you can also take a look on how the Local files feature works for the different operating systems here.

That being said, if the music from your personal files is already available in the Spotify catalog, then of course, you can delete the actual files and just rely on our content.

Hope you find this useful. Keep us posted if you have any questions.

[ssofranko]

Thanks for your response.  I don't want to delete the files entirely from my phone. I just want it so that when I download new files, I find them in a a folder with just those files, not hundreds of previously downloaded files which have already been assigned to playlists.  It would be nice to be able to create folders within the local files portion of my library, or have some way to manage my local files, rather than having one giant local files library.  Or, I wish that when I assigned files to playlists, they moved from the local files library to a separate playlist library, or something like that. 

[martinweiss]

Hi, not really about this topic but I couldn’t make a new topic and this one was the closest to my issue. I have about 30 local songs across two playlists and all but 5 have been removed. All songs are still on my hard drive but have been removed from the local files section within the Spotify desktop app. Is Spotify going through MY music and looking for copyrighted music and removing music from MY local files? I would really appreciate an explanation. Thanks. 

[MafeG]

Hi folks,

Thank you for your replies. 

@ssofranko At the moment, that's precisely how the Local Files folder works. Since we understand this may not be ideal for you, we recommend searching in our Ideas board to check if someone else has already suggested the implementation of sub folders inside the Local Files list you can add your vote. If there aren't any ideas about it, you can add your own so others can then vote for it or add to the conversation to show their support. You can find the steps to submit a new idea in this article.

@martinweiss There may be several reasons why the Local Files were removed from the app. In this case, we suggest you try moving the audio files to a different folder on your hard drive, then make the Spotify app scan it again. 

Let us know how this goes!

[onesavage]

How do you remove an unplayable song from the "local files" folder in "your library" within spotify? Pretty incredible how hard it is to get a straight answer to this very simple question... incredibly frustrating that is.

[Vasil]

Hey @onesavage,

We'd like to recommend checking this thread and the solution, suggested by @Jeremy!
Let us know if the issue persists afterwards 🙂
Thanks!