Missing Files

Overview

When using Navidrome, you may encounter missing tracks or albums in your library. When moving or renaming files, Navidrome may not be able to match the old versions of your files with the new ones when scanning your library. This can result in “ghost” (grayed out) tracks or albums in your library.

Only admins can see the missing tracks and albums in the library:

Missing files are not removed from the database on new scans to avoid inadvertently losing information like ratings, and play counts and references in playlists.

You can still get the missing tracks information, including path and when it went missing by clicking in the ? icon:

Note that this information is only available for admins.

Common Causes

The main reason this can happen is that the file paths in your music library have changed, and Navidrome was not able to match the new paths with the old ones. This can happen when you move or rename files AND change tags in the same operation.

To learn how Navidrome matches missing files and newly discovered ones, see the documentation on PIDs To avoid getting into this situation, it is recommended to move or rename files first, trigger a quick scan, and then update the tags.

Another common case is when you have a network drive that is not always available, or a removable drive that is not connected:

In these cases, Navidrome will mark the files as missing until the drive is available again.

How to permanently delete Missing Files

If you are sure that the missing files are not coming back, you can permanently delete them from the database. Log in as an admin, click on the Settings meu, and click on the Missing Files option.

You will see a list of all missing files, with path, size and time they went missing. You will see options to export the list to a CSV file, or delete them from the database:

To delete permanently the files from the database, select the ones you want to remove and click on the Remove button.