Help syncing a local file to iOS

[jkavana]

I have been trying to figure this out for weeks and finally decided I needed to come here.

I am on premium and there are tracks in my local iTunes that I want to be able to listen to offline on my iPhone. Attached are screenshots... I have a song in a playlist on my Mac's Spotify, the playlist is marked "available offline". The exact same playlist shows up on my phone and that it is also available offline but the song will not play (error message saying I need to sync the song).

What am I doing wrong? Any help is much appreciated. I have tried multiple songs too, this is just an example.

Thanks!

[Flixx · Accepted solution]

Hi there and welcome to the Spotify Community.

Syncing a local file to an iOS device is not as easy as it seems like. I had troubles doing this too.

My solution was: keep Spotify open at your computer and keep Spotify open on your iPhone at the same WiFi network. It will automatically start syncing.

Please note: do not lock your iPhone, as it will stop syncing.

If you have any questions, feel free to ask.

[matiewz1]

Hi guys,

I did what you Felix described but it still doesn't sync! Any idea where it comes from please? 

Matt

[prairiegal]

This does not help. On the desktop the playlist is just listed as "pending" forever, even if the iphone is connected unlocked to the desktop for hours.  The songs are never downloaded.

[jkavana]

Felix that did work for my phone, that's great.

At work I have to use spotify web player because the app is blocked.. I don't see an option to make that same playlist offline so I can listen here as well... does anyone have a solution to that?

[sfag01]

happening to me too.

i had offline local songs synced from my pc that somehow became unsynced.

Now they will not sync at all.,

It seems to be all local songs,

I am on the same network, tried logging out and in again, and remove and re-adding the device thru manage devices - still no luck. anyone any ideas?

[Flixx]

The only idea I have at this moment is that the "available offline" option is untoggled on your phone or computer. Have you recently moved your music files?

[prairiegal]

The "available offline" toggle is set to "on" on both the device playlist and on the desktop, and I have not moved the files.  That's why it's so puzzling.  

Based on the number of complaints of similar problems everywhere on the web I am now assuming the problem is Spotify, not me.  Which is a big problem for me as a Premium member.

I switched from Premium Rdio to Premium Spotify specifically for this feature.  It'll be a pain in the *cough* to switch back.

[MattSuda]

@prairiegal 

Are you trying to use the "Devices" tab in the sidebar of the desktop app to sync your local files? You mentioned that it stays "pending" so that's why I think you are using the devices tab.

Don't use that. It's a very old and outdated part of the desktop app that will likely be removed with the new desktop version coming in early 2015.

Instead do this:  (make sure your phone and computer are on the same WiFi network)

1: Go into the desktop app

2: Make a playlist and title it "Local Files"

3: In the left sidebar under "Your Music" click on "Local Files"

4: CTR + A (Windows) or COMMAND + A (Mac) to select all of them and then right click and select "add to" and add them to the "Local FIles" playlist you created

5: Open the "Local Files" playlist you created on your phone and find the "Available Offline" toggle at the top of the playlist and switch it to on

Then every time you add a local file, make sure it's also inside of this playlist.

Hopefully this helps. This is what I have done to make sure my local files get downloaded to my phone properly.

Note: There is a current bug that causes any local files with (parenthesis, commas, dashes, etc.) to be unsynced randomly, usually after an update comes out for the iOS app. The developers are currently investigating this bug. 

[MattSuda]

@sfag01 

There is a current bug that causes any local files with (parenthesis, commas, dashes, etc.) to be unsynced randomly, usually after an update comes out for the iOS app. The developers are currently investigating this bug. 

It is likely that when you updated to one of the recent Spotify updates to the iOS app, the local files became unsycned due to this bug.

Hopefully it will be fixed soon.

[prairiegal]

THAT TOTALLY EXPLAINS IT - as I review the problem files, they all have parentheses or similar in the names!  Thank you for this.  I will also stand by for some type of fix - but in the meantime perhaps I can change the names on some of the local files to get my favourites to sync.

[prairiegal]

I have been using the sidebar thing.  I will look at your suggestion. However I don't want to create a playlist called "local files" and sync it -- the local files I want to sync are scattered through a variety of playlists, most of them created in iTunes and then synced with Spotify.

In some of the playlists most of the files have synced and there are only a dozen or so that are missing, and some half or all are missing.

There are 10 or so affected playlists, so it would be an onerous job to identify each of the songs on each of the playlists that haven't synced and move them into another playlist to sync with Spotify. 

I especially do not care to do this work if the root problem is that all these songs have a character in them that are preventing Spotify from syncing them.  In that case it sounds like I would end up doing all that work for nothing!

[MattSuda]

@prairiegal 

As long as they are in a playlist, they should sync. It doesn't matter what plalist. They don't all have to be in the same playlist. 

I just mention this because in the past some people have had trouble getting local files to sync. This was because they didn't have the local files in a playlist. There is a built in playlist in the mobile app at the top called "Local Files" so they expected checking the "local files" playlist in the "devices" tab would work. However there have been problems with this method becasuse that desktop feature hasn't been updated in a while. So the best method is to have local files in a different playlist. The built in "local files" playlist is just a way to show you all the local files you have.

It's probably the current bug that is causing your local files to not sync right now.

[jrosseau]

I tried your suggestion above.  Unfortunately it did not work.  I also checked to ensure my files didn't have any punctuation, etc. as you suggested there were problems there.  Any other pointers.  Very frustrating not to be able to have all of your music in one place.

Thanks much!

[tobver]

i've been having this same problem for quite some time and never found a solution.

on top of what has been said to this point, I realised that the songs I'm not able to sync to my iPhone are marked grey (on both the playlist on the Phone and the playlist on the computer. on the computer just the performer's name is grey, while on the phone the song title is marked grey.)

Nevertheless I'm able to play the song on my computer, but it always tells my to sync to play it on my phone.

(current situation: playlist is marked offline on computer and phone, phone and computer are in the same wireless-network. there are no punctuations whatsoever in these songs.)

[jrosseau]

I have the exact same thing going on, the song will play on my computer, but not on my phone.  I am going to give this two more weeks and then migrate off of spotify - - what is the point if I can't play all of my music in one place.