I think I know the answer here, due to lots to trying... but let's say you're playing music on a Sonos in the kitchen, and you are moving to the living room. Can you somehow tell Alexa to play the same stream on the Living Room Sonos, in sync with the kitchen? Basically, just adding the Living Room Sonos speaker to the currently playing Sonos stream? Of course, on the phone, you'd just open the Sonos app and put a check next to the living room speaker, but I'd love to be able to do this via Alexa. Thanks!

Playing to an *additional* Sonos speaker via Alexa

It's easy just to walk into the new room and do a long press on the play/pause button. Saves opening the app. Or your mouth.

Hey John B...

With all my vast and encompassing knowledge of Sonos :8 I didn't know your suggestion was possible. Seriously, all jokes aside...is that an alternative to grouping in the Sonos App and is it permanent or temp? Thanks for the tip!

It was added a couple releases ago. It is an alternative to breaking out the controller if you are near a speaker and just want to group it quickly.

Also, if you want to transfer music from room A to room B without a controller then just stop the music in A by pressing play/pause then long press in B.

None of your controllers will shift room focus though, which is something to watch out for when you return to the app.

Thanks, John B and jgatie! I'll have to pay more attention to the release notes going forward

How does it know which stream to attach? I'd hate to get the 80's radio station my wife listens to in her office. We will often have either two streams (Radio2/4 & 80sCrap), or three/four if the kids are in. How does it know which stream you want - which obviously it can't - but which does it pick? Longest playing, some preference order (stream>local>line-in), nearest ZP (as measured Sonosnet somehow).

Most of the Zoneplayers aren't reachable put the playbar in the playroom, the Play5 and a few Play1s are eminently to hand.

Dave

How does it know which stream to attach? I'd hate to get the 80's radio station my wife listens to in her office. We will often have either two streams (Radio2/4 & 80sCrap), or three/four if the kids are in. How does it know which stream you want - which obviously it can't - but which does it pick? Longest playing, some preference order (stream>local>line-in), nearest ZP (as measured Sonosnet somehow).

Most of the Zoneplayers aren't reachable put the playbar in the playroom, the Play5 and a few Play1s are eminently to hand.

DaveI honestly don't know which it will pick, but that circumstance hardly ever arises for me. Nobody is claiming this is a comprehensive replacement for grouping in the app, just an additional tool that some users will find useful some of the time.

It's easy just to walk into the new room and do a long press on the play/pause button. Saves opening the app. Or your mouth.

that is awesome to know, thanks!

(I'd also love to know how to do this via voice still 🙂 )

On a brief experiment, if there is nothing playing currently it will play the last stream to finish. If two are currently playing it seems to pick the one most recently started. But I don't think that is the point. Use it if and when it is clear what is going to happen. Don't if it isn't. For some users (like me) it's a useful additional feature. Others will find it adds nothing for them.

It's easy just to walk into the new room and do a long press on the play/pause button. Saves opening the app. Or your mouth.

that is awesome to know, thanks!

(I'd also love to know how to do this via voice still 🙂 )Grouping via Alexa is a requested and hoped-for feature. I suspect that at some point you will get your wish!

On a brief experiment, if there is nothing playing currently it will play the last stream to finish. If two are currently playing it seems to pick the one most recently started. But I don't think that is the point. Use it if and when it is clear what is going to happen. Don't if it isn't. For some users (like me) it's a useful additional feature. Others will find it adds nothing for them.

I'm not complaining just asking. And thanks for testing. The release notes, which I haven't read, aren't the same as a manual (which AFAIK there isn't one for every feature). But clearly the programmer would know what logic he coded in, so the exact knowledge is known to someone at least.

Knowing that logic would allow increased use. So if I know it will play most recently started stream I can stop/start my office stream, head downstairs, and start another zone whilst being reasonably confident no-one else will have started a stream in the last 2-minutes. OK sometimes I may hear Pop Party 15 or Radio80s if they have started in the last 2-minutes but 99% of the time DadRadio can play on demand.

Thanks Dave

OK fair enough 🙂 . Based on limited testing I think the rule is:

If no stream is currently playing, it will pick up the last stream to have finished, and not group.

If one stream is playing, the 'long pause' room is grouped to the playing room.

If more than one stream is playing, it will pick the one started most recently, and group to it. A stop/start does seem to reset this as expected.

It seems that the queue is copied from the original room in all cases, replacing any existing queue in the 'long press' room.

If anyone finds differently, please let us know.

Hey, OP here. Just checking back for the first time after I posted -- glad to see such a great response! This is my first post to the Sonos Community, thanks for being so helpful!

In my testing, found out two other things that I thought were interesting:

-- I can start stream on Kitchen, add the Living Room with the long press on Play/Pause, then un-group (and stop the music) in the Kitchen with long Play/Pause press there.

-- This also works in an even better way: If I have a stream playing in the kitchen, and I'm headed to the Living Room, I can stop the music in the Kitchen, then resume it in the Living Room at the same point. I have to admit I'd never used the buttons on the hardware before (since I really only use Alexa and the app to control the music), but this is the way you'd hope the buttons would work! It's great!

Thanks again!

Thanks for posting back - I suppose the thread took a direction you weren't expecting! But grouping by Alexa isn't possible at the moment so this gives another possibility. I didn't realise that a long press would ungroup and stop a speaker that is playing, although as you say it seems logical. Thanks for that info.

Thanks everyone, that was hugely illuminating!

I see that somebody has developed an Alexa grouping skill here:

https://en.community.sonos.com/amazon-alexa-and-sonos-229102/new-skill-enables-managing-groups-of-sonos-speakers-with-alexa-6813067

This is now supported via Alexa Grouping, please see this post for an explanation:

https://en.community.sonos.com/amazon-alexa-and-sonos-229102/an-overview-and-explanation-of-the-new-support-for-alexa-grouping-6817788

Sign up

Login to the community

Scanning file for viruses.

This file cannot be downloaded