Sonos App controls no longer appear on your lock screen

Very unhappy customer. I have had this system up and running for a total of one month before you completely ruined the experience by disabling lockscreen control. If you want to force me to go back to using airplay please tell me you have no plans to fix this, and I will return my Sonos Connect a.s.a.p.

I would not have bought my play:1s last year if it didn’t have lock screen controls. Scam. I bought a Sonos one today to help it but sound adjustment is even more convoluted. I’ll be returning my one tomorrow.

Sonos does not care about their customers.

I sent an email to support about this because it is a deal breaker for me. I have four expensive Sonos players on my network, two Play:3s and two Connect Amps. When I bought the first I was concerned that the player lacked a display to show me information about the playing track, which the Squeezebox Radio that it was replacing had had, and even the ancient SliMP3 I used before that did. When I built my own network music player software, I even jury rigged a plasma display to the Linux box I was using to control it. Lacking one seemed a poor and cheap design choice, but trying out the Play:3, I found that I was able to live without it because I could use my lock screen (and even more importantly, my Apple watch, at a quick glance while cooking) to find out information about the track playing if it caught my attention as something I might want to add to my DJ collection.

This is crucial functionality to me. I used to pay my cable company a few dollars extra each month during the nineties, in order to rent a “DMX DJ Remote”, a clunky, heavy remote control with an LCD display that would show me this information about tracks playing on the digital music service I subscribed to.

And now it has gone away, and my expensive investment in Sonos equipment, supposed to be full-featured, is suddenly unusable. I can’t turn off my AirPlay devices, because I use them for streaming video.

I need Sonos to work the way it used to. It doesn’t ever need to interact with AirPlay, I use it for different things. But I need to be able to see what is playing at a glance on my watch, and control it there and on my lock screen.

I also want the lock screen controls back. Let us have a choice to dissble airplay2 functionality. I only have one compatible unit for airplay2, but would rather have lock screen functionality back than airplay2. I have been a happy Sonos-user for 15years, and this choice by Sonos really shocked me. Disable airplay is not an option for me, as I use it for videostreaming to appleTV.

Dear Sonos Team,

This was really disappointing. Removing this function was a move in wrong direction. Hope you are able to get it back as soon as possible.

Currently the only solution is to downgrade to Sonos App 8.6.

Is there an easy way to do this?

Unfortunately not, I was lucky to have an old version (12.5.5 ~ 12.6.3) of iTunes installed on my computer, back when the App Store was still available on the iTunes platform, and you could back up your apps to the computer.

I had 8.6 backed up there. Deleted version 9.0 and dragged and dropped 8.6 while my phone was connected.

I suppose I'll wait here until Sonos fixes this.

I’m rather confused - my lock screen controls, including hard buttons, work fine. I just tested it, then played something from my iPad to my one Airplay compatible Sonos device, grouped it, then ungrouped it, then started playing something on a non-Airplay Sonos zone. Each time, lock screen controls were there, and worked as expected. With something playing on a non-AirPlay zone, locked the screen and the controls are there. When I used airplay2 to send something from the music app, it worked fine, and the on screen controls were for that track. When I stopped the music, set my iPad to play local instead of AirPlay, and then restarted something on the other zone, locked the screen and controls reappeared. Volume control with slider and hard butttons worked. Has this issue been changed already?

Very unhappy with this. It has effectively broken the basic functionality of my Sonos system.

There are so many reasons why this is an issue, but essentially it comes down to the update removing an essential feature which most users would use multiple times daily, in order to introduce a new feature to a small number of users that would benefit them in only a very specific use case.

I am unable to switch off AirPlay functionality on my other devices, my AV Receiver needs to be on in order to amplify my Sonos connect. The AirPlay functionality is built into that device and cannot be disabled.

This definitely needs to be resolved ASAP, because the current scenario is unworkable and frankly unacceptable. My Sonos has effectively been broken by the update, as it no longer functions in the way it did when I bought it.

During 2018 Sonos has succeded in removing every instant remote control from their product line. In April the support for CR100 (the old sturdy quick access remote control) was removed. And now a few month later the quick access for controlling Sonos on iDevices has been removed.

And Yes - I am using AirPlay (Not AirPlay 2) for multiple purposes in the household - and a wast amount of other people are as well.

I am used to be able to turn down volume within a few seconds (when the phone ring or someone is at the door), this is no longer possible.

You (Sonos) has changed an elegant sophisticated integrated music system into some neerdy gadget that totally lacks the instant, convenient usefullness. You are scaring your own customers away.

In a multi-room, multi-user household, AirPlay is useless for audio. When I start a playlist on Sonos, anyone with the Sonos app on their device (iOS, Android, PC, Mac), can open it up, see what's playing, change the track or the volume, etc.

With AirPlay, the only person who can do that is the one who started streaming it from their device. Why would Sonos choose to hobble the great functionality they built over the years to cater to a niche Apple-only use case?

A quick look through the Apple developer docs show it is possible to enable/disable AirPlay support. Heck, Sonos suggested we do this for our 3rd party apps. If 3rd parties can do it, why can't Sonos? This would solve this mess and provide users a choice for how they want to engage with their Sonos system.

This thread has 3500 views as this time. I'm sure there are many more users besides the posters that feel the same as we do.

Please fix this Sonos.