Perhaps see if this link helps - the groups you create are shown at the top of the ‘grouping’ page in the App (next to the ‘Everywhere’ group):

https://support.sonos.com/s/article/3391

Make sure these ‘groups’ you’re setting up are in the Sonos software. Sonos can’t ‘see’ groups set up in  Amazon or Google’s software. 

Hi Ken

Thanks Ken but that doesn't answer my question.

Groups should appear in device lists in other apps like spotify. 

If they don't I will have to open the sonos app every time I want to play something on a group. That doesn't seem right. 

Airgetlam

They are set up in the sonos app. Like I said, no problem. 

The problem is that I can't see the groups in spotify etc. 

It’s probably a case that the ‘Connect’ software and/or Sonos API hasn’t caught up with the Sonos grouping features yet - so I guess it needs to go forward as a ‘feature request’- the Staff here usually pick up such suggestions and pass it along to the Dev Team to consider. I’ve not seen that much call for it, but would like to see these things put in place too.

This seems to me an impossible request. I cannot conceive of any way that Sonos could do this, and probably not Spotify either. 

Spotify Connect can detect devices that are Spotify Connect enabled. User defined groups are effectively just shortcut buttons for adding specified speakers to temporary groups in Sonos and don't exist in any form that Spotify can detect.

These groups don't appear in device lists because they aren't devices.

This request makes no sense to me and my money says it will never happen and probably can never happen 

Same problem- frankly for the cost of Sonos and being a well established product they should be able to make the groups you create in the App visible in Spotify or other mainstream apps.  People here seem so defensive of Sonos when there’s a clear lack of function! When you think of how many people are playing Spotify through Sonos it shouldn’t be too much to ask - it’s a bit of API work not rocket science!

Wow, you very obviously have absolutely no idea what you’re talking about. Sonos already offers pairing for speakers in the same room, and Spotify already DOES connect to user-defined groups from other apps (eg. Google Home groups). I use both of these features with no issues, and I connect to them through the “devices” list.

As a developer that works heavily with APIs and device connections, this request makes perfect sense and is absolutely doable. Whether or not they have the bandwidth to add the functionality is another story.

All of that said, I am also facing this issue now and it’s rather frustrating.

@ZeeJay Sorry but it is you.who are clueless on this topic in a Sonos context. A stereo pair isn't a group at all but is treated as a room by Sonos and so of course can be picked up by other apps.

I was talking specifically about named user defined groups and I was completely correct in saying that they are just shortcut button presses. Grouping in Sonos is treated as a flexible, on the fly. temporary arrangement. Not so in Alexa, for example..

Paradoxically. you can set up Alexa groups of Sonos speakers (or more accurately rooms) and use them to group Sonos rooms, to some extent. 

@John B is correct.  Sonos groups are nothing but macros that auto select the rooms on the grouping screen.  For Spotify to recognize a macro the same way it recognizes a stereo paired room would be a magical act indeed. 

I don't know Spotify Connect and Google Home well enough to be sure of this but my guess is that Spotify picks up the current semi permanent grouping arrangement, not an abstractly defined list of rooms, which is all that Sonos user defined groups are. 

I think this goes a long way in explaining why you have brought some preconceptions to this that don't apply to Sonos. 

Let me illustrate how user-defined groups (UDGs) work. To the best of my knowledge (which is admittedly far short of perfect), here is the only application of UDGs in Sonos. Here is part of my system.  ‘Lounge’ is a UDG that I have just created for this illustration.  It is defined as Living Room + Dining Room.   The screenshot timings are out of order because I failed to take a shot I needed.  You can easily illustrate the behaviour for yourselves.

Start with just the Arc selected to play 

Then tap ‘Lounge’

Wow! It has saved me having to tap both Dining Room and Living Room!  I still don’t end up with the system playing on my UDG, because it doesn’t even deselect speakers that are not in the UDG but already selected. (I can deselect it manually.)

That’s it.  If you have a fifteen room Sonos system and often play 10 of them together it’s a useful facility.  But that is all it is - a facility to save button presses when creating temporary groups.  I think there is a sense in which you can say that UDGs don’t really exist.

So, for the avoidance of doubt, I am not saying that every concept of ‘group’ cannot be picked up by any app.  Just that Sonos UDGs are really just button press savers in the Sonos app. 

I could be off on this, but my understand of Google Home is that it is cloud based.  Meaning that when you connect to Google speakers, you are actually connecting through Google’s cloud servers, which maintains the list of devices and groups of devices that Spotify, or whatever service you’re using, can connect to.  So if you opt to connect to a group, the cloud server just translates that to play on the speakers in the group.

Sonos, on the other hand, doesn’t use a cloud server, at least not in this way.  Spotify connects to the specific speakers rather than a cloud server or any sort of central hub.  So, an entity or speaker that you connect to via API that actually is a group of speakers that doesn’t exists, is a different matter.  Where does the group definition reside exactly?  On every speaker in the system, on a central master speaker, only on the speakers that belong to the group?  I don’t know.  

There surely is some way that Sonos can revamp their API (causing 3rd party vendors to do the same) or completely change their control structure to make this feature available.  However, is it worth it?  I would not want them to work on this because it would take time away from other development efforts and it would surely introduce new bugs in the API that don’t exist today. 

This is absolutely infuriating that Sonos would market so heavily that “all products go together to create a perfect system” -- knowing that the majority of the planet uses Spotify, and that there is no way to play a Group from Spotify. 

I recently got a Roam and was happy to add it to my system but it does not pair to anything else, which seems like a borderline scam. It should be noted VERY OBVIOUSLY, “DOES NOT PAIR WITH ANY OTHER SONOS SPEAKERS.” 

It does group though. All speaker do create a perfect system, just not always from third party apps. Have you tried playing Spotify from the Sonos app?

Aswell as ‘grouping’ with any other Sonos ‘room’, as mentioned by @106rallye, a Roam will also happily ‘pair’ with another Sonos Roam, when both are on the same wireless connection.

Wish there was a way for third party apps to "see" these groupings, similar to how Google Home etc do it. Feel like that is the cleanest way to support any number of third party apps. For those apps, it's just a "speaker" and they don't need to know if it is one or a group (this is how Google home works). I personally feel like this is an important item for such a widely used and premium brand that is focused on ease of use for multi rooms systems. Spotify being a very widely used app and me not being able to play music in my entire house using the app (while I could do this with Google Home) seems like a major gap to me personally. 

I have started buying into the Sonos ecosystem, and this is the biggest issue I have faced, which has made me question if I made the right move. 

PS: in all the posts I read about these types of issues, I feel like some reply in an extremely defensive ways. I think we are not hating on anyone here, just asking questions and providing feedback. Let's all have an open mind.

As explained above this would mean a major rework of how Sonos does groups, just to serve people that do not use the Sonos app. I can see why this would be good for those people, but would it be good for Sonos spending developer time on this, while leaving other thing open (65k limit, limited language availability for SVC,  no Google Assistant on newer devices)?

The Spotify App on my iPad can deal with Sonos Groups.

Yep, the Spotify App identifies Sonos ‘Grouped’ rooms and a user can even create groups ‘on the fly’ too from the ellipsis menu options - see attached screenshots.

@106rallye do you think it might be a good long term investment for Sonos to rework this? it is not sustainable for Sonos to integrate third party apps into their app, and it won’t be a good user experience (eg: I don’t like the Spotify integration coz it lack a lot of features). However, as noted by some others, this might be already supported.

@Ken_Griffiths thanks for this pointer! (@buzz too). A few thoughts and follow-ups.

Here is my setup:

1. Living Room: 1xEra300
2. Master Bathroom: 1xMove
3. Living Room TV: Arc, Sub3
4. Future: Master Bedroom (1xEra 300), Kids Rooms (1xEra 100 per room), Living Room (add another Era 300)

I am able to see all the “Rooms” (see items 1, 2, 3 in screenshot 1), but not my “Groups”, which folks seem to indicate are just Sonos app internal macros.

I am also able to tap the “three dots”, and then use “Group Rooms” option, which opens the Sonos app (see second screenshot) where I can group rooms. When I group the rooms here, they will show up in the Sonos app as a new group (screenshot 3 - “Living Room TV + 1”). This seems to indicate that groupings from the Sonos app are showing up in other apps as a “single speaker”. This solves most of the problems. 

However, the issue I am struggling with is the following two use case which are common for me. Most of the time I play music in my entire house (want the group with all speakers), but 1) when my kids are sleeping I don’t want to play in their rooms. 2) sometimes I want to play music in the living room, and my wife wants to play something else in the master bathroom, while my kids are taking a nap in the master bedroom. There are a few other combinations we used to do with our Google Home setup as well, but I hope this gives an idea.

At the moment, if I want to change one of these groupings, I have to follow these steps:

1. Tap on the speaker selection icon on Spotify
2. Tap the three dots
3. Tap the “Group Rooms” option which opens the Sonos app
4. Select the set of speakers I want
5. Press done to get back to Spotify and wait for the new grouping to get updated

This is a lot of extra steps compared to how I used to do this with Google Home groups. What I am curious is, if Spotify understands the grouping done in this manner, is there a reason that these groupings can’t be saved? @106rallye any thoughts on this? ​​​​​​​

You can create and save named groups. These are available in the Spotify App.

@buzz I am not seeing these saved groups in the Spotify app. For example, I have a group called "All", but this is not showing up on the Spotify app. However, I am seeing the manual group that is currently active ("Living Room TV + 1" in Spotify app). 

In the Spotify App go to Current device —> Group Rooms. Here you’ll be taken to your named Groups.