I miss the REAL mute button!

Thank you guys, I'm afraid you overestimate wife's willingness of understanding what breaking groups and combining them again means just to be able to continue listening to the same music in the kitchen.

I still think it'll be more convenient if Sonos can offer to activate (and de-activate) each speaker separately instead of trying to workaround this. My understanding is that this was the case before the Play button behavior changed.

Not really. The mute button used to mute the individual player not start and stop it. It also had the advantage of remembering the previous play level so it would return to that level when unmuted. It also would display as muted on any controller so you could tell the player was muted and not paused. You could also adjust the volume of a group that included the muted player without inadvertently unmuting the player you wanted to stay muted.

It was a nicely thought out feature but unfortunately would not have helped your situation.

Ah, thanks for the info, then my assumption of how it was before has apparently been wrong.

Personally, I'd find it most logical if the first 'Play / Pause' on any speaker in a group would start the stream on that specific speaker. Any further 'Play / Pause' on other speakers would join the stream (or 'unmute' them). Same the other way round, 'Play / Pause' on the last playing speaker in the group would stop the stream. Not sure if I'm missing any edge cases here.

I understand what you are looking for but I'm not sure there is a wide demand for it. For most people when speakers are grouped they want to start or stop the group and when they want individual control they just take the speaker out of the group. People who want one button actions for more complex scenarios usually accomplish it using third party automation products.

Personally I like the way the local start/stop function works and would have been happy with the change if it simply moved the legacy mute functionality over to "volume minus long press". Unfortunately when the change was made the legacy mute features were scrapped and the new mute simply turned the player down without remembering volume state, preserving mute status during group volume changes, or properly displaying muted status on controllers. Sonos never gave any good reason for not moving the legacy mute functionality when they switched it to the minus down button... maybe the guy who wrote that code was no longer with the company or maybe it was just laziness, but it will always be remembered as the first big stumble for Sonos who up to that point had a near spotless record of customer satisfaction. Of course all that looks pretty minor now compared to the current problems associated with the recent changes to the queue but it was the first big letdown from Sonos and the insensitive way it was handled still stings a little.

There is a chance that voice control integration might include some features that will help your situation at some point but for now the only option is to change your habits or employ a third party product that will change player groupings by time of day so you avoid those early morning surprises.