Hi there. First time poster here, so be gentle with me. Figured I would start here before I go down the Sonos rabbit hole.
I’ve been using Plex with my Sonos for over two years now, and it has worked flawlessly. Never had any trouble with anything…until yesterday, when the connection between the two services just stopped working completely for no apparent reason. In the Sonos app, I now see the dreaded “Unable to Browse Music” message when attempting to access anything on my Plex server. All other Sonos services are working fine. I see that there are other threads on here about this topic, but none of them seem to be recent, nor do they have any relevant advice that I could see.
Plex itself seems to be working fine. I can do everything normally using the Plex app, or Plexamp.
Some info about my setup:
PMS version 1.20.1.3252 is running locally on a QNAP NAS
Sonos app is S2 version 12.0.5
Sonos devices and PMS/NAS are all on the same local network with static IP addresses
Verified that Remote Access is enabled and working on my Plex server
I do have port 32400 open on my router and it is forwarding correctly to the NAS where the PMS is running
What I have done so far:
Rebooted my internet router
Rebooted the NAS, which restarted PMS
Removed, re-added, and re-authorized the Plex music service in the Sonos app
Nothing has worked. I still cannot access anything in my PMS from Sonos, and I am completely out of ideas as to what could be wrong at this point. Absolutely nothing has changed on my end in the last 24 hours.
One thing I did just note - and this may or may not have anything to do with it - I noticed in Plex that when I click on the Cast icon from within the browser, one of the options on that dropdown says “Sonos - Link your Sonos account…” I am almost positive that I have done this previously, as I recall being able to see my different Sonos speakers as an option to play music on if I wanted (though I never used it this way). When I clicked on the link to “Link my Sonos Account” I am taken to https://sonos.plex.tv/link?X-Plex-Token=[my_long_token] but immediately greeted with an “Internal Server Error” message in my browser.
I would have included screen shots but it appears I cannot upload images here?
Anyway, any help is appreciated. I am tearing my hair out with this, as it makes no sense to me.
Small update here. I contacted Sonos support. They had me remove/re-add the Plex service again, and submit diagnostics to them, which they said didn’t show anything out of the ordinary (no errors or anything). They had me try and browse to https://app.plex.tv multiple times to see if I could get there in a browser and log in, and I could every single time.
Hi ! I have the same issue. I have updated my Plex server to the 1.20.1.3252 version, and since that, Sonos can’t see Plex : “No Plex Media Server available. Please make sure your Plex Media Server is accessible” …
The Sonos app works fine for everything else.
And Plex is available from my iPhone in 4G when I want to hear music … but not in WiFi at home.
Remote control is available, but each time I try to connect with the Sonos app, the remote control turns to “unavailable” by itself … I don’t understand !
Someone can help me ? Please …
Hi, I think I have the same or similar problem although I do sometimes seem to have some success in removing the Plex service from Sonos and re-attaching/ re-authorizing it. The issue is very strange in as much as sometimes, the service disappears from My Favourites showing ‘Unable to Browse’ or ‘This connection is no longer available’ and sometimes, when it is playing and then stops , I get a ‘No selections made’ message.
I did read somewhere that there may be a connection with playing in ‘shuffle’ mode. Not sure whether there is anything in this but I am monitoring to see whether there is any correlation.
The whole thing is pretty poor and is exacerbated by both Sonos and Plex having inpenetrable and frustrating support offerings.
If you have a large library there is a known issue where shuffling will fail due to trying to page in such a large amount of data in the time Sonos allows.
I have tried to remove and re-attach the Plex service, with authorization, but it’s not working… I don’t know where’s the problem.
I have deleted my Plex pass and I use the Sonos browser for now … but it’s not as nice as Plex browser …
I’m also having this problem today. Working one minute, then suddenly stops working, rinse and repeat. I’m not doing any configuration changes on my end while this is going on, and my internet connection is fine, Plex is remotely accessible.
And status.plex.tv shows “all systems operational”.
I’m guessing there are issues with Sonos / Plex functionality today?
Running Sonos with Plex for best part of a year. No issues. Works a charm. Today i have had to re-authorise my plex account with Sonos for best part of 15 times now. Skips tracks, go back and Sonos tells me it can’t play. Try again it works.
Times like this, i wish the Sonos Speakers on my network, could talk directly to the Plex server on my network without bouncing round the internet and using external systems.
It’s been a shame for years that Plex has been working very badly with Sonos. We always wait for it to work locally instead of tapping on the external access to come back locally, really incomprehensible as a mode of operation. A simple bluetooth speaker makes 100x better!
Nothing yesterday all of a sudden. After that, one problem after another. It just doesn’t work, starts playing, freezes, starts playing again. Doesn’t work from the Sonos app or the Plex app. It’s a mess and it has been for months like this. Fix it for crying out loud. I want my music to play on my best speakers. There’s yet no good alternative, but when there’s one, I’ll be leaving Plex immediately if you don’t fix it and let it work locally without cloud and authentication needed…
Same issue here since yesterday. My server, running on a Synology NAS, was actually a few versions behind when the errors started to occur, upgrading to the latest version hasn’t helped (I’m now running 1.20.4.3517).
Remote access is still listed as open, port 32400 is forwarded on the router with up-to-date firmware (Fritz!Box 7581) and the server is also available via app.plex.tv. Router firmware is up-to-date. The whole setup worked flawlessly before, barring the occasional outage at Plex.
The Recently Added and Played lists of the server are populated in the Sonos app and I can browse quite a few albums, but at some point Sonos errors to “Unable to browse music”. Adding music to the queue is virtually impossible because the app loses connection to the server constantly.
I’m relatively new to Plex, and am having the same issues. A few more data points:
Extreme lag (maybe 10 seconds?) before playing a song.
Most of the time a song will play for about 10 seconds, then pause for a few seconds, then continue playing normally.
I’m using Plexamp to control Sonos, and it doesn’t continue to the next song in a playlist once a song has finished playing. It just plays one song, then stops. If I click on another song in the playlist it plays that song, then stops. Radio doesn’t work, as the forward/back buttons don’t do anything.
Browsing Plex from the Sonos app itself works sporadically, and at one point was asking me to reauthorize repeatedly. When playing an album from the Sonos app, usually a song will play, then it will attempt to play the next few songs but error out, and then successfully play a song a few slots down in the playlist.
My Sonos system works fine when connecting to other services, and Plexamp works fine when playing locally. This seems to specifically be a problem between Plex and Sonos.
My uninformed guess is that Plex isn’t responding to Sonos before a Sonos-specified timeout. I’m happy to provide exact information about my Plex, Sonos, and network setup if needed.
I have experienced lots of the same issues as written above, long loadtimes, sudden dropout, days of not working and then just suddenly alive next day with no changes made.
I usually play the same playlist every day in my store, but yesterday i felt like adding some new music to the mix (went from 200 songs to 1000 in the list) and now it’s ultra slow in the web-app, and won’t work at all in sonos, just times out and gives some bs error that it lost connection to plex or something like it.
Do you guys know if there’s a superficial limit to how many items there can be in a playlist? Wanted to ask before i start pruning the list just to check if it would start working again.
Seems like issue was resolved within a day or two. I’m all fine again now. Think I updated PMS since experiencing the issue but suspect I was working again before I updated.
I think I’ve found a resolution. I’ve been running using the Plex relay because I’m hesitant to open up my server to the outside world. Once I poked a hole in my firewall and allowed access, things started working OK (I did remove and re-add Plex in Sonos, just to make sure). I decided to see what would happen if I kept the port forwarding rule enabled in my router but blocked incoming connections (so hairpin NAT still works but the outside world still can’t see Plex). This seems to work, but I’m not sure why things worked previously without needing this configuration.
Even though I seem to have got this working for now, it would be really nice if Plex could implement STUN/TURN/ICE to remove the need to open ports. I understand the Plex people are hard at work building cool stuff, so please interpret this as a request and not really a complaint. Thanks!
