Local file provider behaviour in v2.7.9 | Music Assistant | Page 1

slender stirrup Mar 4, 2026, 7:55 AM

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Hi, I'm trying to understand the local file provider behaviour in v2.7.9 and want to make sure I have it right before raising a bug.

My path is set to /media with the structure: Artist1/Album1 and Artist1/Album2.

My understanding is that ticking only "Sync Library Albums" should make Album1 and Album2 visible in the Albums tab. However, I'm finding that nothing appears in the Albums tab at all unless I also tick "Import tracks/files into the Music Assistant library" — at which point everything appears in both the Albums and Artists sections.

faint gate Mar 4, 2026, 8:05 AM

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yeah, that is actually correct. We should make those checkboxes dependent on the tracks on filesystem provider

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albums are part of the tracks so without no tracks importing, nothing imports

slender stirrup Mar 4, 2026, 8:57 AM

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@faint gate Thanks for clearing this up for me 🙂 one other thing and this is just going to be maybe my OCD.. lol I have also made a Folder with all my playlist in the with the _Playlist so it not seachable.. I setup a new Local provider for playlist, I tick just the import playlist ( m3u files ). when I go back into this provider the import for Artist and Albums is ticked, I then see all the singal tracks / arists. making it a little messy for me.. again I might have this wrong and just getting a little OCD 😉

formal yoke Apr 3, 2026, 2:34 AM

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Good catch, @slender stirrup PR: https://github.com/music-assistant/server/pull/3550

GitHub

Fix filesystem provider sync config checkboxes not being respected ...

I saw Dawsnet in the discord mention these as issues, and @marcelveldt pointed me in the right direction.
The sync config checkboxes (e.g. "Import tracks/files into the Music
Assistant lib...

formal yoke Apr 3, 2026, 8:01 PM

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@faint gate re: your last comment, I've been going back and forth, specifically over the case where someone had sync checked for a provider and then unchecks it.

My working assumption is that we should clean up the db, removing everything that had previously been synced from the given folder. But if we return early then we wouldn't run _process_deletions so we'd just leave the db in the state it was up until the user unchecks the box (removing stuff from the folder isn't reflected in the db, adding stuff to the folder isn't added, and only one of those is even plausibly what a user would expect).

Unless there's some sort of one-time cleanup process to run as soon as they uncheck and save, and then we could return early on the normal / scheduled sync job? Or I'm thinking about this wrong / not seeing the big picture, which is also very plausible...

faint gate Apr 3, 2026, 8:18 PM

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hmmm, yeah now I get your point

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I was more thinking that its rather inefficient to run the sync to then process false on each file but its also rather unusual that someone wants to add a filesystem provider to then not sync it...

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If you uncheck it, we are not going to "desync" existing entries

formal yoke Apr 3, 2026, 8:20 PM

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Yeah. Just trying not to leave any foot-guns around...

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If you uncheck it, we are not going to "desync" existing entries
Is that a statement of intent? As in, "we should not delete existing entries if someone unchecks the sync box"?

faint gate Apr 3, 2026, 9:38 PM

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Yeah I dont think we should unsync existing items if you uncheck it.
I think it should only determine if you want items to be synced

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Otherwise you get into this whole rabbit hole

formal yoke Apr 3, 2026, 10:13 PM

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And if they want to clean up existing entries, delete the provider and re-add w/out the sync box checked?

#Local file provider behaviour in v2.7.9