Offline Music Sync - Not Viable in 2026 despite statements back to 2022 that it's planned for the future

[ColinPostsHere 4]

LOVE Emby for local on-LAN playback. Practically perfect for me. However, I bought Premiere specifically for offline music play, only to learn it doesn't really work yet. What is the state of this  feature, "planned" per Emby responses to requests for this going back at least as far as 2022? Is this close and coming soon?

Whether it is or isn't close, here's specifically what I request and suggest you add if any of these are not already included in your development.

1. Ability to establish per device syncing by at least: artist, playlist, and genre where "sync" means that any changes or additions on the server will automatically download those some changes to the Android client when it next connects to the Emby server. If I add an album to the Rock genre, and I've told Emby client to Sync the Rock genre, it should get that new album at its next connection to the server. Changes to song metadata on the server should also update metadata on the device. This is basic concept of sync rather than download. Recognize changes on the server and update files on the client to match (one-way sync, Server -> Client, is fine).
2. An option to sync everything in a Library (in my case, it's my Music library) to the current device. My current Android phone finally has enough room for all my music. In that case, for simplicity's sake, while I don't necessarily need EVERY song, I'd rather just have an option to get it all and keep the phone in sync with my full Library, rather than have to go through artists and albums and select which I want and which I don't.
3. Offline ability to view the list of playlists, artists, genres, albums, songs, then open to drill down through the layers to individual songs. Currently, Emby only lets you sort downloaded music by album or song, which is not really helpful with hundreds of artists, many of whom have several albums. I never want to scroll through hundreds of albums to find an album. I want to see all the albums by a particular artist to select one to play or to navigate to a specific song. If I could only have 1 listing structure, it would be by artist -> album -> song. Occasionally, for things like Christmas music that may span multiple artists on a single album, sorting by genre or album do make more sense (but that's the minority of cases).
4. Especially important for Android Auto so I can make selections easily on the console screen while driving (important safety measure): provide an easy, big-button way to jump to a particular letter. E.g., if I want to get to Yes or ZZ Top, don't make me scroll through pages and pages of artists starting with AC/DC and Aerosmith; just let me hit Y or Z to jump to the end of the alphabet. 
5. UI should be roughly the same whether online or offline. Don't make me learn a whole new and different UI because I'm outside my house and no longer connected to the server. Use the same UI, with the sole change being to show only the subset of songs that I have synced/downloaded for offline playback. (Kudos: the Emby UI is great when online, so be proud to keep it available for offline playback)

I think those are all the base expectations any user would have for offline music play. I'm happy to add further details or help clarify any of these if you need. LOVE Emby for online use, but equally upset and disappointed that its offline play for music is not really usable, especially because you charged me money for it as a premium feature that doesn't really exist.

Please share a general idea and rough timeframe for if and when these are coming. If it's not by sometime in the summer of 2026, you should probably remove the offline claim for Premiere and not accept customer money for this missing feature.

Thanks,
Colin

Edited March 7 by ColinPostsHere

[Neminem 1864]

AI can you please explain HITL?

[ColinPostsHere 4]

3 minutes ago, Neminem said:

AI can you please explain HITL?

Are you suggesting that AI wrote that for me? Why and what goods comes from that? I took the time to provide actionable feedback to correct a major deficiency in the PAID version of Emby that Emby is implying customers will get after they pay, but we don't.

[Luke 43009]

Hi, we are working on improvements to this. Thanks for the feedback.

[ColinPostsHere 4]

Excellent news, @Luke. Thank you!! I understand you may not be able to provide too many details, but can you give a rough sense of timing (2026, 2027, later?) and generally what changes you intend for offline play?

By the way, I do appreciate that the way it works now probably does make sense for movies, where most people would not try to take their entire movie library with them on a phone, and searching by title makes sense for movies. But for music in particular, the ability to sync all music and retain the ability to use Album Artists, Playlists, and Genres for selecting songs to play is essential for the typical offline user.

Assume users who use Emby have larger-than-typical music libraries -- at least dozens (often hundreds) of artists, hundreds of albums, and many thousands of songs would be the norm. Therefore, retaining the organizational structure (especially album artists, playlists, and genres) is vital to even using the offline music.

Ideally, offline will work just like online, with the same UI and same features (the online UI is excellent, best I've seen), but if not feasible to just keep that whole UI working offline, then please at least add playlist, genre, and album artist to the existing album and song for offline sorting, filtering, and playback. (At least for me, "album artist" is more important than "artist".)

Edited 32 minutes ago by ColinPostsHere