Now Available, the New Sonos App

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Sonos version 8.0 is introducing a brand new controller for iOS and Android. The new Sonos app makes it even easier to navigate, access, and control your music throughout your home. This new app comes side by side with voice control through Alexa devices, more about that here.



Check out our blog for the Remastered Sonos App. Full details on the new apps can be found here on their respective product guide pages. Let’s take a look at the new app:







Introducing Navigation with Tabs:



The Sonos app now has five tabs visible at the bottom when not in the full playing screen. The tabs are My Sonos, Browse, Rooms, Search, and More. See here:







Now your most used options are available with just one click, and Now Playing is always just one tap away.



My Sonos

We’ve consolidated all your personally curated Sonos Playlists, music service playlists, and Sonos Favorites into one, easy to use page on the Sonos app. You can edit fields to move around the order, or delete them entirely. You can now have up to 40 favorites total, up from 32.



Browse

Browsing your music is even easier as it no longer hides your other options. You can browse and move to different rooms all while keeping your place in the browsing menu. There’s also a dock on the bottom of the app that gives you easy access to the navigation tabs. You can swipe it up to reveal it at any time, then back down. We’ve separated browsing your music and the menu for Settings, so it’s even easier to find what you’re looking for.



Rooms

The menu starts highlighted on the active room, featured right on the app so that it’s even easier to see what’s playing in each room. There’s now an icon on that screen to show you where the music is coming from too. That includes if it was started by Alexa. The active room has a Group button to have it add others to the party.



Search

It hasn’t changed, just moved to an easy to find spot.



More...

All the settings and options are in here. You can add services, make alarms, get some help, and access all your settings. We think this will make it a lot easier to find what you’re looking for. And speaking of settings…





Explicit Language Filtering



Within Settings > Parental Controls, you can set a system-wide setting to filter songs with explicit content. Right now, this is working for Apple Music, and we’re hoping to add it for more services soon. Once the setting is on, Apple Music songs with the explicit tag will no longer play on your system.



Long Press to Group



Making it even easier to play music. With 8.0, you can press and hold the Play/Pause button (or mute on older players) to have your player join the most recently active player as a group. First, you have to start playing music on a player, (it can be from an alarm or any other source), and then just hold the button for a few seconds on another player. That second player will join the first one’s group and start playing the same music in sync.



There's another function of the long press, and that's being able to move recently stopped music to another room. First, stop playing music in any of your rooms. Then, press and hold the play/pause on another player for a few seconds. (Make sure that you don't start playing music anywhere else.) The queue or source will move to the unit you held the button for and start playing. The players won't group together and any existing queue will get whiped out in place of the new one.



iOS 11 and Android O Support



Lastly, version 8.0 has support for the latest operating systems from Android and iOS. This includes iOS 11 support for Trueplay on Sonos. Trueplay isn’t available on Android at this time.
Explicit filter is a nice bonus feature to the voice control update. Excited to try this out tonight when I get home.
Explicit filter is a nice bonus feature to the voice control update. Excited to try this out tonight when I get home.





Yes, if this could be applied to Spotify too it would be fantastic.
Explicit filter is a nice bonus feature to the voice control update. Excited to try this out tonight when I get home.


Yes, if this could be applied to Spotify too it would be fantastic.



Assuming it works well with Apple Music, you can expect it to spread to other services in time. No specifics to share today on when and who next.
Well done on the new app. Really like it. Still can't use it without my reading glasses, but that's ok! Looking good, boys!
App seems an improvement on the last, but will burn my eyes out when listening in the dark / subdued light. Please can we have a dark mode back?
Am I missing something - there does not seem to be any way to re-order items on the My Sonos Tab (ie change the order that the playlist appear)? I can see that they can be edited, but there is only delete, no re-order that I can see?
I agree with page3. I had just sent a email to support about going back to the older app because this one is so bright. Its blinding in the dark. My phone turns down the brightness after a second or two but its still not something you want to look at in the dark. Need a darker background interface.
Am I missing something - there does not seem to be any way to re-order items on the My Sonos Tab (ie change the order that the playlist appear)? I can see that they can be edited, but there is only delete, no re-order that I can see?


The fields can be re-ordered, movings above or below playlists, for example, but within the fields, they are alphabetical. I'll pass along the suggestion for you.
App seems an improvement on the last, but will burn my eyes out when listening in the dark / subdued light. Please can we have a dark mode back?


We hear you, a night mode is a good idea for the future, no specifics on if or when, but I'll make sure to pass your interest on to the team to add to the list of people interested. This is just the start of the new app, we're hoping to add even more to it over time.
What is the limitation behind such a low number of favorites? I have thousands of albums, so being able to pull out, say, 100, would be a huge improvement in my browsing ability when I want to put something I love on but don't know what specifically to search for.






Yes, if this could be applied to Spotify too it would be fantastic.



I don't think Spotify offers this identification on their end, and it would seem that's going to prevent the functionality.





What is the limitation behind such a low number of favorites? I have thousands of albums, so being able to pull out, say, 100, would be a huge improvement in my browsing ability when I want to put something I love on but don't know what specifically to search for.


But you've got EIGHT more now. 🆒





Kidding of course, it's a good question.
What is the limitation behind such a low number of favorites? I have thousands of albums, so being able to pull out, say, 100, would be a huge improvement in my browsing ability when I want to put something I love on but don't know what specifically to search for.


There is a really long thread here where this conversation was hashed out a lot, so feel free to take a look. In the end, eventually, a number had to be picked. It's a short list. It was 32, we just upped it to 40. Each favorite takes up valuable space in the memory of your Sonos players, which is extremely limited on some of our oldest players.
Why are the icons in ‘my sonos’ so big on the iPad. Surely you should make use of the bigger screen and give us more quick links without having to scroll through all the time.
In the end, eventually, a number had to be picked. It's a short list. It was 32, we just upped it to 40. Each favorite takes up valuable space in the memory of your Sonos players, which is extremely limited on some of our oldest players.





Thanks for the response. My issue would go away if you could view playlists by albums to browse, as I listen to the vast majority of my music by album and scrolling through songs on a playlist is not easy (not to mention you can't just play one album out of a playlist. At this point I'm reduced to using the composer tag to sort out my most-listened-to albums so that I can filter away the noise.





It's a minor quibble for a great player, and the app looks great so far. It's just the only thing I miss about iTunes when I go to play music.
When will the MacOS app get some love? It is straight from the nineties and is completely off brand. How hard can it be? 😠
The 'My Sonos' section is confusing, I have 3 sections





Sonos Playlists - Where my normal sonos saved playlists are


Stations - These are my favourites, why isn't this just called 'Favourites'?


Playlists - This was a sonos playlist that I had as a favourite, I've deleted this as a favourite now because it looked stupid.





Is this a bug? Surely Stations should be called Favourites and Playlists should be all playlists from all music services, rather than duplicating data from the 'Stations' list
The 'My Sonos' section is confusing, I have 3 sections


You can favorite songs, stations, Sonos playlists, and music service playlists. "My Sonos" on the whole is your "Favorites" now, it's just now able to be organized a bit more. I'll pass on your feedback to the team though.
Am I missing something - there does not seem to be any way to re-order items on the My Sonos Tab (ie change the order that the playlist appear)? I can see that they can be edited, but there is only delete, no re-order that I can see?





I’d like this feature added too please, I just tried to rearrange my favourites with the new iOS app update and the only way right now is to manually delete the stations and re-add them in my preferred order. Kinda cumbersome 😞
The 'My Sonos' section is confusing, I have 3 sections


You can favorite songs, stations, Sonos playlists, and music service playlists. "My Sonos" on the whole is your "Favorites" now, it's just now able to be organized a bit more. I'll pass on your feedback to the team though.






Got it thanks, a lot to understand at once today!
Horrible New layout (on IPad)





Why am I forced to se playlists, which I rarely uses, and only 4 radio stations (and have to scroll to see 4 more)





It seems like a ridiculous use of space to show so few information on the screen, or is it because the app is optimised for a phone.





I would like to be able to see all my Radio stations on the main screen
Horrible on an iPad, better on smaller devices. I like the new concept, but all I see are huge favourites icons on my iPad. Four huge icons, to be exact. The rest are offscreen somewhere. The ability to adjust icon sizes In iOS would be a welcome improvement.
Thanks for the feedback on app sizes, we'll pass it along for you. This is just a first step, there will be more to come as we continue to develop the Sonos app.
On Android tablet the Music Library missing now from the browse tab. the My Sonos tab only shows Sonos Playlists, nothing else. PC version of app works fine. Phone version of app works fine.
App seems an improvement on the last, but will burn my eyes out when listening in the dark / subdued light. Please can we have a dark mode back?





It would be cool if you could set dark mode during certain hours (evenings) to not blind the user.
Just upgraded my Sonos app on Android to 8.0. It asks me to set up a Sonos account, but I already have one. There seems to be no way to sign in if you have an existing account. What now?