Best answer by Ryan S
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Alarms "hidden" in System Settings with 10.4
Ah come on Sonos, alarms used to be so easy. It used to be click ‘More’, click alarms. Now in 10.4 it’s click ‘Settings’, click ‘System’, scroll around a bit, click ‘Alarms’. Why? Sometimes it feels like Sonos is constantly changing stuff for the sake of change, not to improve the functionality.
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Happy to report both Android and IOS devices in my system have the new shortcut into the alarms page.
Credit to the developers for quickly implementing this 'navigation to alarms page', fix .
Userlevel 1
Not available on my 10.4.1 for Android...
Please speed up the deployment and think about a widget or a lock-screen notification with next alarm time.
Thanks
Please speed up the deployment and think about a widget or a lock-screen notification with next alarm time.
Thanks
Just arrived for me on iOS. Works for me. Brilliant! Thank you so much to all on the Sonos development team for coming up with a potential solution. Hoping that it gets adopted. If so, I can go to sleep each night after checking my alarms so much happier! Now if you could make the new Alarms and Edit Alarm screens a little more compact to reduce scrolling, and the sliders a tad larger to avoid false hits, and I’ll be more than satisfied! 🙂
I want to say how rubbish it is to hide the alarm function away. So it is the middle of the night and you wake realising that you need to change the alarm. What you do not need to do is navigate through multiple tabs to get to the alarm settings. Whoever made these changes just does not use or understand the product.
Userlevel 7
+26
I think it’s based on your account number, and a random number of account numbers are included.
Once they’re happy, I’d assume they’d turn it on for everyone, unless they’ve determined an issue that needs to be fixed, and re-tested before general release. Fixing things in the live environment (where our client is) is a signiificant challenge, rife with potential for breaking everything and anything. While it’s great for the end user, since they get to “see” it ASAP, it’s not great for the development team, due to those risks.
In the case of the Inbox, the way they constructed the menus it seemed to fit best where it wound up, as opposed to other fields. Regarding the so called "spam," you can turn off in app notifications on your system by going here and unchecking the field for notifications in the Sonos app.
I’m sorry but your first sentence is just nonsense. People may not change their alarm times often but they want to set them several times each week but maybe not every day. This move was a hugely retrograde step in the latest release.
Userlevel 7
+26
I’ve made sure the team knows people are still looking for a shortcut to the Alarms. The shortcut that was shown earlier in the thread is only available to some systems, but depending on how it goes, it may get to a wider audience in the future. I’ll be suer to let you know when I hear more.
In various games that I’ve worked in, we had the ability to set in software a certain percentage of people, at random, that would be included in an A/B (and C/D/E….) test, in order to see what features were most appealing to people. Occasionally, we would do this based on geographic region (i.e. all users of the game in the Phillipines), but in the software we used, we didn’t have the ability to define hardware requirements.
Software may have changed, and now allows that, but I’d be a tad surprised. I’m working under the assumption that they’re doing A/B/X testing right now, and it’s totally random as to which group you’re part of.
Hi.
I appear to be on version 10.6 build 54272031 I have checked for updates but it says non scheduled. Still no bell symbol for the alarms. Not sure if it makes a difference but I have 13 zones and a total of 16 Sonos products. I have sent a diagnostic report ref. 640990193.
Many Thanks
Userlevel 1
Not the first time that Sonos has taken a retrograde step with a UI upgrade. Usual test - if an infrequent user has to give up and shout “can you do this for me?” Then the change has failed. I’m now the one having to set up the family alarms because no one else wants the hassle it now involves. Wasn’t that way previously...
Userlevel 7
+26
Thanks for sharing the feedback everyone! The team is still aware of this request, and I make sure to check in with them for you pretty regularly. I don’t have any news to share right now, but as soon as I do I’ll let you know.
So I gave in and got myself an Alexa Show 5 two weeks ago, it makes a great smart alarm clock. I can now set and change alarms by voice. And I can confirm at any time that the alarm is set correctly with a quick glance at the display. I can also set or cancel alarms from anywhere in the world using the Alexa app. None of those things were possible with the Sonos Alarm.
I changed the Echo’s wake word to “Echo” so that alarm commands are done with Echo and music commands are done with “Alexa”.
The only (minor) drawback is that my alarm sounded better on Sonos obviously. But, once I’m awake, I can simply stop the alarm and then ask Alexa to play music if I want. And that uses Alexa grouping (another thing the Sonos alarm can’t do)
Sonos’ decision to bury the alarm settings really pissed me off and forced me to look at alarm alternatives, but now I’m glad it happened. This works so much better for me than Sonos alarm ever did.
Userlevel 1
While you are “reinventing” the UI, could you please consider adding a grouping feature in the alarms, so a single alarm can play on multiple speakers?
Having to manually group speakers before bed is aggravating to say the least.
The team does appreciate getting feedback, and they are still working on this alarm shortcut as well. I’ve made sure to share the requests on this topic with them.
Can you also please pass along my thoughts (which I’m sure others have expressed):
- When viewing the Alarms page, consider adding the source of the audio to each alarm; bonus points if it includes the duration. For example on iOS:
Patio
9:30 AM
Daily * Groovy Radio * Pandora * No Limit
12:30 PM
Daily * Groovy Tunes * Music Library * 1 Hour
3:30 PM
Daily * Groovy Playlist 1 * Sonos Playlist * No Limit
5:30 PM
Daily * Groovy Playlist 2 * Plex * 2 Hours
Neither the iOS app or the MacOS app have source info on the alarm page and its difficult to figure out if I want to duplicate an alarm, say, for a one time use, or play something on demand that is setup as an existing alarm, but can’t remember where it is sourced.
Also, I’m sure other have chimed in already, but here’s my +1 to the request…
- Instead of or in addition to an alarm, it would be beneficial to have an actual scheduler with start and stop times; bonus points if it included zone group themes & music schedule themes. (ex, a schedule setup to play holiday music from a variety of sources including streaming services.)
Looking forward to seeing any and all UI improvements from Sonos. Thanks.
+2
Thank you, Sonos. The inconvenience of the previous alarm setup had me enviously eying the Andoid-based clock thing on my wife’s nightstand.
Userlevel 1
Thank you - That is a huge improvement!
What a very very terrible choice of “fixing” a feature that is used so often. Sonos really needs to rethink it’s UI/UX design!
Why would making it a shortcut visible all the time from the main Now Playing screen instead of hiding it in a menu in Settings be a “terrible choice”?
I'm using the Sonos app (version 10.6 build 54272060) on Android version 9, but when I go to the rooms tab, I don't see an alarm icon in the top left corner. When should I expect to see it? Thanks.
In terms of frequency of changing alarm setting, I probably change them between 2 and 3 times per week to suit my work pattern, either to adjust the time or to enable/disable.
Straight after 10.4 update, I went to enable my wake up alarm for the next day to find its now further down a sub menu and page.
Completely agree with the OP that moving the Alarm option is not a good thing.
I just checked and I reckon it took an extra half a second (if that) to get to alarms. Even on your unusually high usage of say 3 times per week, I reckon that's only about 75 seconds per year (at worst) it would take for the extra navigation. I guess if there's enough feedback to suggest that people do use it more frequently then I'd like to think it will change in a future update.
Personally, I quite like the new menus as it makes finding things easier but obviously each to their own.
Cheers
Userlevel 7
+23
Ah, i see the 10.4 update for PC this morning. Fortunately no UX changes like messing with Alarms though.
The post by the employee above seems to imply they used the data they collect to inform this change.
While you wait for Sonos to respond, can you confirm that you’re running 10.6 version of the Sonos software?
Currently, Sonos does not support going back to a previous controller.
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