Alexa can't set volume of Sonos group

Hi @garrettj94 

Welcome to the Sonos Community!

Alexa isn’t really “aware” of Sonos groups to be able to adjust the volume in that way - although it can ask the Sonos system to group some rooms, that’s about it’s limit.

With Sonos groups, you can group any combination of rooms together at any time, and the saved groups function just makes it easier to group the same specific rooms together again, as you did before (when you saved the group).

Alexa groups, on the other hand, need to be pre-defined. So, for example, you could collect all the rooms on the ground floor into a group in the Alexa app and label it “downstairs” (you also need to specify which speakers in that group should play, weirdly). When you say “Alexa, play The Beatles downstairs”, Alexa will ask the Sonos system to create the group for it, consisting of those rooms, then gives an instruction to the room in charge of the group that it should play The Beatles. Alexa doesn’t actually play the music to multiple rooms - Sonos does.

In my testing, Alexa will adjust the volume of any named room or the room you are talking in, but not of the group as a whole.

I recommend you install Sonos Voice Control on the same speaker(s) - it can run on a speaker along with Alexa at the same time, but uses a different trigger word. SVC can be used to create and disband groups just as in the Sonos app (without them needing to be pre-defined, but you can do this too) as well as change the volume separately or all together with the group. You’ll find some example commands on our Control Sonos with Sonos Voice Control help page, and other details here.

Presently, SVC works with Spotify, Amazon Music, Apple Music and Sonos Radio, so you could, for example, say “Hey Sonos, play The Beatles in here and in the Kitchen” and then “Hey Sonos, turn up the volume of the group” if SVC can play your source, or if it is something that Alexa can play but SVC cannot, you can ask Alexa to start playing and then ask SVC to adjust the volume or group/ungroup (or the other way round, if you want to set the volume before playback). Additionally, SVC runs entirely on your Sonos speaker - no voice recording of your command is sent to the cloud, unlike with other Voice Assistant services.

Please note that just yesterday a community member and I identified and reported a slight issue with setting a specific value of volume on all rooms in a group, which would not work entirely correctly specifically when 3 rooms were in a group. A ticket has been created for the issue.

I hope this helps - if you have further questions, please don’t hesitate.