Can not delete playlists

[Lady Grinning Soul]

There are about a half dozen playlists that show up on my mp3 players that I am not able to permanently delete.

After I delete them, from within the player, they reappear. The happens on all players.

I have searched using ES File Manager for m3u and pls files and there are none.

I have cleared caches, cleared data, forced stop, etc etc. Nothing works. These same playlists, for albums that have long since been deleted, keep reappearing.

Where are these coming from? How can I get rid of them.

They show up in Shuttle and in Winamp.

Also, is there a decent Android mp3 and audio player that will not constantly be trying to organize my files, auto-create playlists, fetch artwork, and take up huge amounts of screen space with unwanted artist tiles?

 

[camtah]

I ran into the same issue on my new Note 4. I would delete the files then they kept coming back.

This appears to work for me. In System Setting>Backup and Reset: I unchecked Back up my data...
So far it's worked for me so I can re-sync my playlists off my PC

 

[Lady Grinning Soul]

This is still a problem for me.

Even after unchecking that setting, the playlists return after a short period. The playlists show up in ALL applications that use playlists, so it is not app-specific. It SEEMS to be coming from the Google account, but I can not find out where. When I go to the Google account on my laptop, I can not find any references to this or links to where this info is stored.

The playlists are for songs that are not on the device. And in some cases have never been on the device (and so the playlists were never even created on that device.)

It's very difficult to search for info on this, because the search terms are so common -- playlist, delete, remove, backup, restore, create, recreate, return -- so I keep going around in circles. Lots of info on how to create playlists, but nothing on how to delete them PERMANENTLY.

I'm experiencing this on multiple devices, two phones, and one tablet, all behaving the same way, with Android versions as old as 4.2.1 and as new as new as 5.0.1. Across multiple Google accounts, each with its own set of playlists that get restored to the device shortly after being manually deleted.

Any help on this? Thanks.

 

[Lady Grinning Soul]

I am bumping this. Because it is still happening. There are some playlists that simply refuse to be deleted and stay deleted. The media they point to does not exist. I'm unable to find the lists when I search the file system. I have deleted them many many times over. They show up again every time.

Where are these coming from?

 

[Bosbouer]

I am bumping this. Because it is still happening. There are some playlists that simply refuse to be deleted and stay deleted. The media they point to does not exist. I'm unable to find the lists when I search the file system. I have deleted them many many times over. They show up again every time.

Where are these coming from?

From your google account would be my bet. Make sure you have saved the tracks you want (preferably not on your note) then delete all music files in the google conglomeration (google+ Google play music. Google drive etc) this should be done using a pc and your Gmail account. If you have a Samsung account linked follow the same process.

 

[Lady Grinning Soul]

Thank you. I appreciate the reply.

The thing is, I've never used any of the Google conglomeration services for music in any way, at least not knowingly and intentionally. I've never put either the media or the playlists on Google drive etc. None of it was purchased through the Google store. These files (folders, actually) were simply copied from my PC over USB to the device's Music folder at /storage/emulated/0/Music, and have long since been deleted. It's possible that there were some m3u playlist files inside those folders. But those would have been deleted along with the media and the entire folder, and I am certain that I did not actually MAKE any playlists via any Android app that I might have used. These files/folders are also not in my Verizon cloud account. I have never created an account with Samsung and use none of their account-required services... at least not knowingly and intentionally

It's odd because it's just less than a handful of playlists, always the same, that keep returning, even though other files and folders (possibly including m3u files) have been copied to and deleted from the device countless times.

Is it coming from the play store somehow?

I have 4 Google accounts associated with the device. Can you say where, exactly, in these accounts I might look, using a PC? When I sign into the Play Store, and follow any menu items related to music (including "My Music") I see nothing that actually belongs to me, none of my music, no playlists, nothing I'd expect to see where playlists like this might be stored. What other Google service could it be? I don't use Google Drive, Google Docs, etc. I use Gmail. And it's not coming from there.

Where on the device could they be? I've searched for m3u and pls files and nothing shows up. EDIT: Now that I think of it, these playlists (and the files they reference) were never on this Note 4 to begin with... they were on the device I had before I got the Note 4. Could that be a clue to why they can't be deleted. Like some kind of permission issue, this device doesn't "own" them and so can't delete them.

Somehow these few playlist references refuse to die!

 

[Bosbouer]

Every gmail accout you have added to your device by default sync a wide range of data



In Google drive music are stored
as files


Pretty sure you will find the play lists somewhere in the repositories associated with the 4 accounts.

 

[Bosbouer]

EDIT: Now that I think of it, these playlists (and the files they reference) were never on this Note 4 to begin with... they were on the device I had before I got the Note 4. Could that be a clue to why they can't be deleted. Like some kind of permission issue, this device doesn't "own" them and so can't delete them.

Somehow these few playlist references refuse to die!

Definitely lying a cloud service. My bet is still on Google

 

[Lady Grinning Soul]

Thanks.

I agree it must be coming from a a google server. But I'm unable to find out where.

On my Note 4, I go to Settings There are four accounts. On all 4, it says that Sync is turned off, and when I tap each of those, I can verify that every one of the checkboxes is UNchecked. (I use Cloud Magic to collect my Gmail, but I'm assuming that is not somehow causing non-Gmail Google services to also sync.)

When I sign into each of those accounts on my Windows laptop and go to Google Drive, there are no playlists or any music files of any kind.

When I go to the Play Store (which I've never used for music) there is also nothing that indicates the playlists are there.

Since verifying this (as I've done previously) I have AGAIN deleted the playlists in question. I have also (AGAIN) searched the device using ES File Explorer and Solid Explorer, and the only m3u or pla files that show up (after doing a "deep" search) are the ones that I have created on this device and that I want to be there.

But if the past is any indicator, they will return within a few hours, a day at most.

 

[Lady Grinning Soul]

Sure enough. There they are. The same playlists.

One thing that seems sure to make them show up is if I copy anything new into the Music folder, that causes the player to rescan. When it picks up the new files, it also picks up the zombie playlists. But that is not the only time. Usually they just show up after some period of time, usually not more than a day or two, typically, in just a few hours.

I have multiple players on the device. Not all the players show these zombie playlists (eg Rocket Player does not, but they do show up in the "Music" Player by the same dev.) And they NEVER show up in a search for the playlist files.

I am going to create a new thread out in the more general Android area. I can't believe I am the only one having this problem, and it is unlikely to be limited to the Note 4.

 

[Lady Grinning Soul]

Thanks again all who replied.

I believe I found the problem. The zombie playlists were located in the device's recycle bin, which I don't think I knew existed. I discovered this only indirectly.

I had previously searched for playlists and never found any. But I was not searching in the root. For reasons unrelated to this problem, I replaced newly spam-ridden ES File Explorer for Solid Explorer. Both of them had an option for doing a deeper search. But Solid has an option for searching the root. (Maybe ES did too, but I never found it, but I found Solid's option right away.) As soon as I turned that on, it found the playlists. It showed full paths. I don't know how Android's file system works, but the paths look odd to me, like they recursed onto themselves in some way. So the path for the (apparently) deleted "Playlist.m3u" would be indicated as

/storage/emulated/0/.estongs/recycle/#############/storage/emulated/0Music/Playlist/es_recycle_content

(the dot before estongs is correct)

Once I deleted these from the recycle bin (where they were the only m3u files shown, even though I've created and deleted many others since those were first deleted), they were never seen again.

Is there something odd in that path structure?

In any case these mf's are gone now. Hopefully for good.

 

[Gates Is Antichrist]

I just searched and searched and searched and searched, and searched, without finding "deep search" in both "Solid explorer file manager" and "Solid Explorer Classic." Can you divulge where to find that option that you found right away?

I have %^&*ing zombie .M3U files. I had copied them onto the SD card, either via USB from desktop, or possibly from putting SD card into adapter and using the special slot on my PC (making it "drive F") (I used both methods to load the card. USB kept losing connection; slot method worked reliably.) I only loaded them explicitly to the SD card, never to internal storage.

I deleted the files from the SD with Windows (7) explorer (slot method) but my music player keeps seeing them, even with the SD card out. I used shift-delete key just in case they might land in a recycle bin.

Reboot fruitless. Music player reinstall fruitless. I do have backup & reset set to a gmail account in case that proves to be the culprit. LG G Stylo on Marshmallow.

I was sooooo excited when I found this thread, but am so dejected now.

 

[Lady Grinning Soul]

I no longer have Solid Explorer on my device, so I can't tell you where to find that option. But as I recall, the option to do a deeper search was presented to me after I did a basic search for m3u files. That's when it found the zombie playlists.

See my previous post for a typical path to where the zombie m3u files were found. I still don't know what was going on, but the path has a kind of recursiveness that seems odd to me.

What I can say with certainty is that once I manually removed them from the recycle bin, they never returned.

It's a very frustrating problem. Hope you get it solved.

 

[Gates Is Antichrist]

I did not see
/storage/emulated/0/.estong...
although I did see other obscure looking folder names named
/storage/emulated/0/...
so I don't believe I'm going to get lucky as you did. I gather that Solid Explorer automatically does "deep search" when it finds no matches otherwise when you specify a search (I did it for *.m3u). AAR it turned up nothing. Maybe $%^&ing secretive Google does have it "clouded" as others speculate above.

By the way, after passage of a day, the zombies are still there, in case something just needed time to sync.

As to the confusing folder structure, this could help someone understand "symbolic links" that began on PCs sometime after XP, but I am inexpert with the file structure on Androids so this might not be beneficial for that. https://superuser.com/questions/405...and-c-users-all-users-the-same-do-i-need-both

Maybe this applies to "\music" which I sense means 2 different things, one of which is "symbolic" ("junction points") and one a "real" folder name. (I think you can originally credit Microsoft with Yet Again an idiotic and arcane obfuscation of something that wasn't broken.)

BTW, I have 250 zombie .M3Us (don't ask why I had so many, just to delete them later). I have a real desperation measure until someone reading this thread gives a real solution. You can delete playlists one-by-one with mytechnosound Music Player (start it, upper left triple bar, Playlist, press and hold on a zombie, press delete). That at least deletes it from that player, though I don't know if it's a "real" deletion - because, to restate the whole problem, I can't find the folder or cache or cloud display where the $^%$ers live!

 

[Gates Is Antichrist]

Bump. I need help.

 

[Gates Is Antichrist]

Bump. Help.

 

[MainReactor]

https://forums.androidcentral.com/e...ppsdomain.playlistverwijderaar&token=UwgG2P0b


Lady Grinning Soul:

Check the link above, I'm using Android Marshmallow 6.0.1 on an Alcatel, the thing is that I've been having the same problem and apparently the app above actually works, it deleted all my "stored" playlists. Hope this is useful.

P.s. I personally recommend Stellio Player, I think is a nice alternative plus it doesn't try to organize or create playlists if you don't allow it.

 

[Boundbyonly6]

HERE IS THE FIX: Galaxy S5.....

1: RENAME the empty playlist.
2: ADD ANY SONG to the empty playlist.
3: DELETE PLAYLIST.

I did this exactly 11 hours ago and still no index playlist, log playlist or any of that bull****.

NO MORE EMPTY PLAYLISTS!!!!

 

[Gates Is Antichrist]

That's an awesome gesture and you may save others' lives and time. However my problem is with files that *have* content. I will share some findings though, in the desperate hope that someone can help. There are very real problems due to this bug. This is going to sound rambling but I believe that if there is a workaround to this inept bug that something in the following may give a clue. I'm really sick from this.

It seems that there are two kinds of .M3U files - those that are recognized by Windows and those that are not. If I put my SD card (where these all are) in an adapter on my PC (SD/MMC slot), I can see a dozen .M3U files, and all in folders that I recognize for the SD card. BUT I never see the one thousand other ones, whether by F3 search on F: folder, or from
dir /a /s /p *.m3u
on a DOS prompt on F:. As to the dozen, they are copiable and deletable.

When I (instead) read from the phone with the SD card inside, I can see the thousand, but they show no folder in a F3 search - nothing. I would have thought that they would be in something like
\SD Card\Music\
but SD card (as well as Internal Storage) do not appear to be folders that Window 7 understands. Once I drill in to folders underneath Internal Storage (like Android or Camera), I can select and copy files to a hard drive on the other end of the USB cord.

One possible deduction from this is that there is a nether region on the phone, consisting of 2 containers, Internal Storage and SD Card, but neither are folders in the traditional sense.

In addition to those two folders not being properly processed by Windows, if I try to copy the folders from the phone SD card across the cable to my PC, when it hits one of the M3U files during the copy, BOOM. The whole copy process instantly terminates

Windows did pop up a box when I had the card in an adapter: "Do you want to scan and fix SD/MMC F:?" I agreed to scan and fix, in case this solved something, meanwhile trembling at the possible loss of files. BTW, after the scan, it shows "FAT32" in [my] Computer, which one speculative web forum post felt was significant. (The scan apparently didn't solve anything by the way)

Once again, these 1,000 files are seen by music players, but not Windows.

Someone either with Microsoft or Android development or both should get their thumbs out of their asses and address this. Many people have this issue. Someone is shamefully lame or inept in their inaction. "Error 0x80004002" happens with these files and there is no excuse for the bug to remain unaddressed.