Lost entire library after reselecting folder - help!

[tallnutt]

Hi,

 

I had a problem with some files beginning with '.' "dot" which were accidentally copied from a mac. They showed up as duplicate songs in my library. I deleted them (form a file manager) then rescanned my library - but they would not go away from my track lists. So I went to settings > library > music folders to check that I only had my android music folder selected.. I reselected the music folder but now I have lost all my library! I have tried to reselect the folder and rescan but nothing. The folders selection windows says to 'enable' but there is no enable button visible, so perhaps this is the problem??

 

Thanks,

 

T.

[andrewilley]

Exactly how it needs to work is rather dependent on your Android version, which you don't mention, but I'll assume you're probably on 11 or 12.

The music folder selection process is in two stages. First you need to grant the necessary Android Permission for Poweramp to be allowed to access the storage area at all. Then once PA has been granted access to the storage, you can tick one or more specific folders using the Music Folders drill-down list, which tells PA is should scan those locations to look for music. 

This is what you should see in PA Settings => Library => Music Folders:

In the above example, I have two storage areas listed - the main internal device memory (which is not enabled as I don't use it for music) and my named SD Card, which is fully enabled. If I drilled down into AndreSDcard you would see one folder within it is ticked, which is where I keep my music. You can't tell at the top level though, as the tickbox is only filled if you have selected the whole of that storage, which is actually not a good idea as newer versions of Android do not support that broad a level of root access (I set mine up for the SD Card's root level ages ago, but wouldn't do it that way now).

To re-enable my internal storage as well, I would tap on the 'Enable' button on the second line and then use the resulting Android file selector to navigate to a folder that I want to use, and tap 'Use This Folder'. Again, ideally don't select root level, chose to grant access to just the folder(s) that are needed. That folder will then be shown as available for ticking, or I could drill down to select only certain subfolders:

The 'X' button revokes all access permissions for that location, so tapping on it would mean you'd need to Enable permission again. No need to do that if you just want to temporarily deselect a folder though (maybe to force an empty new Library), just untick the required folder, rescan, and then re-tick the folder again.

[ @maxmp any thoughts on providing a 'partially selected' indication for those upper level / root folder tickboxes, so users can see when 0ponly some subfolder within it has been selected? ]

Andre

[andrewilley]

Oh, and those files beginning with dot should not be scanned into apps at all, as far as I knew they are meant to be system files that are ignored, but I did some tests and found PA does try to read them if they also have music extenders. There could also be associated _MACOSX folders, which you also need to delete as they just provide Apple-system metadata. Generally these are not copied to Windows/Android systems unless you do something like unpack a ZIP file containing them.

Andre