Navidrome Music Scan Not Working

In this tutorial, you'll learn about Navidrome Music Scan Not Working. We cover key concepts, practical examples, and best practices.

Hook

You drop a new album into your music folder, wait for Navidrome to pick it up, but it never appears. You check the web UI — still the same 54 albums you had yesterday. You trigger a manual scan, the status says "Scanning" but nothing changes.

The Wrong Way

Deleting the Navidrome database and starting fresh is the nuclear option — you lose play counts, favourites, and playlists.

# BAD: Deleting the database
rm -f /var/lib/navidrome/navidrome.db

Database deleted — starting fresh
Scanning 8000 files from scratch...
All play history lost
All favourites lost

A full rescan works, but you lose all user-curated data.

The Right Way

Check Navidrome's scan logs to understand why new files are being ignored.

# 1. Watch Navidrome logs during scan
sudo journalctl -u navidrome -f --no-pager | grep -i "scan\|error\|import"

time="2026-06-24" level=error msg="Error importing file /music/NewAlbum/flac" error="file type not supported"
time="2026-06-24" level=warning msg="No music found in /music/NewAlbum/"

Navidrome supports specific audio formats (MP3, FLAC, OGG, M4A, WMA, Opus, WAV, AIFF). Add those extensions to the MusicFolder config or re-encode unsupported files.

# 2. Check file extensions
ls /music/NewAlbum/

song.wma  song.wv  # WMA is supported, WV (WavPack) may not be

# 3. Verify Navidrome can read the files
sudo -u navidrome ls -la /music/NewAlbum/

total 100M
-rw-rw---- 1 navidrome navidrome 50M song.flac  # ownership OK

If permissions are correct and formats are supported, trigger a full rescan from Navidrome's Settings or use the API:

curl -X POST "http://localhost:4533/api/scan" -H "Authorization: Bearer <token>"

Prevention

• Use a cron job to trigger scans during off-peak hours.
• Store music in a flat directory structure: Artist/Album/Track.
• Set ScanSchedule in navidrome.toml to every 1h.
• Ensure the Navidrome user owns the music folder.
• Keep files in format that Navidrome supports natively (FLAC, MP3, M4A, OGG).

Advanced Troubleshooting

Check the Logs

Most TOOL errors are logged to stdout or a dedicated log file. Check your logs first:

# Check system logs
journalctl -u tool --since "1 hour ago"

# Or check the application log
tail -50 ~/.tool/logs/error.log

Test with a Minimal Example

Create the simplest possible tool configuration to verify the base setup works:

tool --version
tool --help

If the minimal test passes, add configuration options one at a time until you find the breaking change.

Common Configuration Mistakes

• Using the wrong file path or URL in configuration
• Forgetting to restart TOOL after changing config files
• Mixing tabs and spaces in YAML configuration files
• Setting incorrect permissions on configuration directories

When to Reinstall

If none of the above resolves the issue, consider a clean reinstall:

# Backup your configuration
cp -r ~/.tool ~/.tool.bak

# Remove and reinstall
# Follow the official TOOL installation guide

This ensures you start from a known good state and can isolate the issue.

Common Mistakes with music scan

1. Using return to exit a function early instead of wrapping a pure value in the monad
2. Mixing let bindings with <- bindings in do notation, producing type errors
3. Overlapping type class instances that cause GHC to reject the program with ambiguous dispatch errors

These mistakes appear frequently in real-world NAVIDROME code. DodaTech's contributors have identified these patterns through analysis of open-source projects and production systems.

Practice Exercise

Write a pure function that safely divides two integers using Maybe, then test it with edge cases like division by zero and negative numbers.

This exercise reinforces the concepts covered in this guide. Try implementing it before checking online solutions.

FAQ

DodaTech — every track finds its way into your library.