Sonos One Alexa skills: What works, what doesn’t

  • 28 October 2017
  • 30 replies
  • 5341 views

Working
Box of Cats
Bird Song
Most skills that don’t open a continuous audio stream

Not Working
Radio Paradise - commands working, including setting stream quality to FLAC, but won’t play anything (yes, I know it works via TuneIn, but stream quality is unknown and can’t be selected via voice control. FLAC works on Echo, but not Dot)

Simple Radio - won’t play anything

Seems like Sonos One is unable to open a stream that’s not on TuneIn, Amazon Music, or any of the other built-in services. Hope that changes soon...

Please list skills that you believe really ought to be working on One, but aren’t.

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30 replies

Thanks for this summary!
I have had the same frustrating experience. One expects the Sonos One to be like an Echo just with better looks and sound but this is not the case at all. As amazed I was at Alexa when I first tried it on the Echo, as frustrated I am now with this half measure integration. I feel put back in time when every car manufacturer was praising their voice control but none actually worked. Alexa on Sonos One is in BETA mode!
On a positive note: Philips Hue works...
Daily Dose doesnt work :(( my favorite skill
Twitch app doesn't work (consistent with your apps that open a persistent stream don't work)

Honestly, It is my opinion that the Sonos One is not a good addition to my Alexa ecosystem. I mean, if I didn't have echo devices it would be ok I guess. But it just sucks trying to figure out what limited set of capabilities work with the One. Yes, it sounds better than an echo. but it is also not as capable as an echo.
The Sonos One is a really great speaker but to say that this has Alexa built in is false advertising in my opinion. Particularly the following bullet point:

>>> Play songs, check news and traffic, manage smart devices and enjoy all those other helpful Amazon Alexa skills using a single Sonos speaker.

Enjoy ALL those other helpful Amazon Alexa skills?? I would say basic voice commands work but beyond that it is extremely hit or miss. Hopefully Google assistant will be better but I kind of doubt it.
Userlevel 7
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Hi

Amazon have two types of device Alexa (Echo range) and Alexa Enabled (Sonos One), these two device types have different functionality that are within the exclusive control of Amazon.
Userlevel 7
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I haven't had any issue with any 3rd party skills not working - there are just a few Echo built in skills that Amazon restricts to just their Echo range (as UKMedia mentions).
I haven't had any issue with any 3rd party skills not working - there are just a few Echo built in skills that Amazon restricts to just their Echo range (as UKMedia mentions).

The Radio Paradise skill works for you?
Userlevel 7
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Never tried
Find my phone by lifebot doesnt work - cant verify number
Userlevel 7
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Probabaly good idea to list all these for Sonos so they can prioritize whatever amazon hasn’t opened up to them.
Yea the Alexa functionality in the Sonos One is really terrible. I feel taken advantage of, it shouldn’t be advertised if it’s not working. What nonsense.
Yea the Alexa functionality in the Sonos One is really terrible. I feel taken advantage of, it shouldn’t be advertised if it’s not working. What nonsense.

It’s actually quite amazing, but some skills, which start a continuous stream, aren’t working. Sonos has said they’re working on this. The Sonos skill is still beta, so it’s to be expected that not everything works just yet.
Userlevel 7
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I was just telling my wife this morning how much I like the Sonos One. She agreed.
Spent a lot of time messaging back and forth with a Sonos rep before purchasing my Sonos One, almost all of the functions (Skills) I “confirmed” with him I would be able to access are not working ☹
Yea, I don’t know what people are talking about here. The Alexa functionality with the Sonos One is objectively aweful, I can’t believe they let a product hit the market like this.
Doesn't work:

Voice-controlled Sleep timer
Voice-controlled multi-room play, for the most part
Userlevel 1
I am very disappointed by the lack of Alexa functionality as well.:@

I was wondering how to pair a Sonos One with an Echo Dot, until the update is ready. I suspect it will result in a royal confusion between the apps/skills/etc, but it's still better than having a beta product.

Any idea?
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I want to replace an Echo Dot with a Sonos One (with plans for more) but I use the Drop In feature almost daily to communicate with other members of my household, and that feature is not available on Sonos One. Any idea when or if this feature will be made available? Until then, I just have a Sonos One acting as a Play:1 next to my Echo Dot.
I don’t think Amazon is allowing drop in for 3rd party Alexa devices...
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Personally I don’t think this will change for a long time - as mentioned above, there are two classes of Alexa devices - true echoes and ‘Alexa enabled’ and even Amazon has devices in each class. In some respects, it protects their hardware sales, but in other respects there may be valid technical and not just marketing reasons for the split. For an idea of the range of features and devices in these classes, see this amazon link. https://www.amazon.com/gp/help/customer/display.html?nodeId=202013680
I've noticed that after a clean boot, Alexa will play a radio station "Alexa, play Jump 106.9 on TuneIn". However, if you interact with Alexa in another way (asking the time, weather, etc), and then try to play music again as mentioned before, it reports that it's playing music, but no audio is routed to the Sonos One.
Thousands upon thousands of podcasts via the Stitcher skill appear to not work, most likely due to Sonos not having implemented the AudioPlayer API. Sonos, it’s been almost six months since your Alexa integration, yet this fundamentally important piece of the integration still isn’t working. Aren’t you just a little embarrassed by this?

I have high hopes that this will be implemented in the upcoming “early April” release, but won’t hold my breath. This is beyond ridiculous at this point.
Same deal with the AnyPod skill. Huge amount of content that can’t be played via Alexa on Sonos. More content all the time that Sonos’ lack of a very basic Alexa functionality prevents playing.
My Pod skill allows you to create playlists from many URLs, including Google Drive. Uploaded a bunch of mp3s to my Google Drive, turned on sharing, grabbed the link, and set up in the My Pod UI. Works great on my Echo devices, but, of course, "I'm having trouble accessing that skill" on Sonos One. Sigh. This is getting old, Sonos! So much innovation around this basic Alexa API, which Sonos should have implemented on Oct. 4th...

https://www.mypodapp.com
For those posting that this is an Amazon restriction: wrong. All the skills I’ve listed work fine on the Roav Viva in my car. This is purely a Sonos issue. They’re being very, very slow about enabling the AudioPlayer interface that these skills require.