Sonos App controls no longer appear on your lock screen

Thanks for the feedback everyone, I'll get it to the team. You may have heard this already, but iOS does not natively provide a way to control devices on your home network from the lock screen in iOS, the controls are only available for audio being played on the device itself. Because of this, the Sonos implementation of lock screen controls was built in a way that's no longer viable and with the launch of AirPlay 2 on Sonos.

@Ryan S - Respectfully, this completely misses the point of the frustration expressed here. What I believe we're saying is AirPlay is NOT a primary use case for us (and likely a silent majority of Sonos customers). You've decided to favor AirPlay support over usability and critical functionality. I would bet the customer surveys to gauge desire for adding AirPlay support didn't ask if adding it would come at this price.

We all purchased Sonos for it's native multi-room, multi-provider capabilities which are far superior to AirPlay (see my prior post for my perspective on this).

If you cannot provide an option for us to disable it (which I bet the dev team can), it would be better for you remove AirPlay entirely until you can work this out with Apple.

You can’t turn airplay off on an iPhone/iPad. You have to unplug any airplay enabled devices. how do I unplug my iPad?

I've just disconnected my Play1 and put it in a cupboard. Using old bluetooth and harddock speakers until I find something better. Maybe Sonos will wake up and do a software update. My Sonos 3 will be going the same way, but more difficult to disconnect.

I live by my iPhone as I live on three floors so it is the only "controller" that is sensible to use.

If the integrity of the software Sonos provided was as good as the physical hardware then it would be great!

I've just disconnected my Play1 and put it in a cupboard. Using old bluetooth and harddock speakers until I find something better. Maybe Sonos will wake up and do a software update. My Sonos 3 will be going the same way, but more difficult to disconnect.

I live by my iPhone as I live on three floors so it is the only "controller" that is sensible to use.

If the integrity of the software Sonos provided was as good as the physical hardware then it would be great!
Yes, it's entirely and wholly Sonos fault. Has nothing to do with the iOS side of things. Blimey, blaming Apple is like committing sacrilege.

Because of this, the Sonos implementation of lock screen controls was built in a way that's no longer viable and with the launch of AirPlay 2 on Sonos.

And rather than delay the launch of AirPlay 2 to develop a new implementation, or allow users to opt-out of the AirPlay 2 launch, Sonos killed a feature we actually want for one we don't.

Presumably Sonos is working on fixing their implementation of the lock screen controls, or disabling AirPlay2 in favor of maintaining lock screen controls - is there an ETA for when we can get this capability back?

You may have heard this already, but iOS does not natively provide a way to control devices on your home network from the lock screen in iOS, the controls are only available for audio being played on the device itself. Because of this, the Sonos implementation of lock screen controls was built in a way that's no longer viable and with the launch of AirPlay 2 on Sonos.

Well, how do Spotify do it? Using Spotify connect, Spotify plays through Sonos Speakers. And you get the lockscreen controls after the Sonos 9.0 upgrade and with airplay 2 devices, like apple TV gen 4, running. Spotify is NOT playing on the device itself. You can remove spotify from memory, take the iPod to another location, even destroy it if you want, and Spotify continues playing through the Sonos Speakers. So your statement "the controls are only available for audio being played on the device itself" is incorrect. If we can have the lockscreen control when using Spotify connect with airplay enabled devices on the network, then why we have it when using the Sonos app? Perhaps the Sonos developers should ask Spotify how they do it.

I just logged into both of my Apple TVs, disabled Airplay, disabled playback controls and lock screen controls, reset my iPhone Controller, and the opened the app and the controls are back. All good but a bit of a faff.

This is an insane feature to remove. Sonos now not practical to use at all.

Ryan,
I can’t turn off AirPlay on my Pioneer Elite receiver even though I never us AirPlay and would like to. But, can’t Sonos give us the ability to turn off AirPlay?? I don’t use AirPlay and it seems Sonos has committed my 13 zones of Sonos to AirPlay. Only one of of my Sonos devices even supports AirPlay so I can’t even use the workaround to just use the Apple Music app and then use AirPlay to send to zones. Then I guess I can get lock screen controls. But you need to enable AirPlay for all Sonos devices or at least give us the ability to turn AirPlay OFF.
Dave

Thanks for the feedback everyone, I'll get it to the team. You may have heard this already, but iOS does not natively provide a way to control devices on your home network from the lock screen in iOS, the controls are only available for audio being played on the device itself. Because of this, the Sonos implementation of lock screen controls was built in a way that's no longer viable and with the launch of AirPlay 2 on Sonos.

You can bring back the lock screen on Sonos by turning off AirPlay on any devices in your home that aren't Sonos devices, which does work for many households. But if AirPlay is used in your home, this might not be an option.

With version 8 everything was working normally even with airplay2 and airplay devices in the network.

So how about an option switch, to change the behavior to airplay 1 like it was in version 8 for all users with older devices and no need of airplay2.

I can't downgrade to Sonos 8 otherwise I would do that myself.

We don't want a solution which means we have to start turning things on and off to do this or that. Sonos is meant to be a consumer device, not something techos have to fiddle with to get it to work. What we need is a proper solution which does not require users having to fiddle around. As noted previously Spotify has a solution: if you use Sonos Connect from the Spotify app you get the lock screen control even though Spotify is not playing audio on the device itself. So it is clearly possible possible. Sonos should therefore do what Spotify does.