Sonos App controls no longer appear on your lock screen

This update makes for an absolutely ridiculous way of forcing new third party functionality at the cost of what might be one of the best and most useful Sonos features.

Lockscreen controls are a must and moreover, useful for every user. This is lost to make way for an Apple specific function, which a lot of users don’t have any need for and above all is only available for users running the most current Sonos hardware. More ironically even, it is lost for the likes of AirPlay, a streaming technique which flaws actually brought a whole lot of customers to Sonos in the first place.

The official Sonos “fix” to switch AirPlay completely off in order to regain the lockscreen controls functionality is plainly absurd. It not only kills the very intent of the update, but even aggravates loss of overall functionality in the quite likely case you have an AppleTV running for video.

Properly fix this ASAP Sonos
The very least that could be done is creating a switch in the Sonos app to toggle AirPlay functionality and thereby giving users at least a choice of switching between lockscreen controls and AirPlay functionality!

Thanks for sharing your feedback everyone, I'll make sure to pass it along to the right teams.

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. 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, we made the decision to remove the functionality in households that use AirPlay.

I know that you'd love to see this brought back, and if turning off AirPlay on the non-Sonos devices in your home isn't an option, I understand that it's frustrating to lose the feature. I'll make sure to share what you're saying with the team.

Please remember to stay friendly with each other.

My Sonos Play:1 was updated to 9.0 today, which as far as I can tell brought me no new benefits ... However I can no longer control my Play:1 without first unlocking my iPhone (or other iOS) device which is immensely frustrating. Why roll this software to a device that does not support AirPlay2?

I have an Apple TV which uses AirPlay so I have no desire to disable AirPlay, but I do want to restore the full functionality of using my Sonos prior to upgrading to 9.0

Sonos have managed to reduce the functionality and usability of the product, effectively changing how it works and providing no improvement. It’s extremely frustrating and disappointing

I'd extremely keen to know how I restore this functionality? How do I formally complain to Sonos?

So mad right now!

The easy fix to all this is allow users to disable AirPlay support on the Sonos platform. It baffles me they released this without including this option. It was enabled with software, it can be disabled with software.

Most of us likely bought Sonos for it's native multi-room audio capabilities. AirPlay has it's uses, but is significantly inferior to the native Sonos solution as it requires your device to be constantly connected and sending audio. Sonos is both the sender and player. It doesn't drain my iPhone battery. It just works beautifully.

In addition, their solution of disabling Airplay isn't viable for anyone who has a Yamaha receiver (maybe other brands too), because Yamaha provides no way to disable AirPlay. You have to unplug it from your network, or segment it off on a separate VLAN that blocks AirPlay.

They succeeded in releasing something that made my experience with their product worse, and the only way to fix it is to make my experience with products they have nothing to do with worse. I think the only way to formally complain is submit a support request, which I did yesterday.

For the most part, Sonos has been good at not doing things that harm the user experience via updates and mostly add features that enrich it. While then Airplay is nice for those that want it, removing the lock screen controls is truly a “head scratcher”. I can’t imagine any QA users would say “yes - make that change”. Please fix.

Very unhappy 😞

I was beaten up over my opinion of this when it leaked that this would be an issue.
Now, everyone is up in arms and Sonos basically says “it’s unfortunate” but insinuates “screw all of you.”
Jolly good!

Like many of you in this thread, I'm also quite dismayed to have lost the lock screen controls, hard volume controls functionality, AND, especially, the ability to control the music via my Apple Watch with the new Sonos update and the addition of the AirPlay 2 functionality. Can anyone at SONOS speak to whether these features might come back in the future, as it appears that MANY loyal SONOS users have been negatively affected by these changes in the updated app.

I, for one, would gladly revert back to the previous SONOS app build if I could, especially considering that I do not own any AirPlay 2 capable SONOS devices nor, due to the investment already, do I plan to purchase any to replace my current SONOS speakers.

ANY feedback from a SONOS REPRESENTATIVE would be greatly appreciated.

If this is a ploy to pull an “Apple” on us to make us upgrade to AirPlay2 then I won’t play ball. Maybe it’s time switch products after all.

I reset the sonos app and the lock screen controls returned, but then I lose them again if I use Apple Music or Podcasts app. Is there anyway to turn off Airplay so I don't have this issue? I have the Sonos One speaker.