Please go back to the last app, the update sucks SO bad!

I have never know Sonos to purposefully mislead about anything. They are very careful to never promise anything until it is coming to fruition. They don't make false claims.

So basically it's a PR tactic to shut us up 😉

The crappy part is that you can't even keep the old app like some other apps can, sonos forces you to update which sucks cause in our bars and restaurants the music stops on next reboot then the manager calls me on how to get it working again and it gets old quick cause there has been a lot of updates now.... FIX IT PLEASE

As has been noted in several places, 'Intuitive' and 'familiar' are not the same concepts.
Fully agree on that one. Intuitive means easy to understand and use, regardless of familiarity (although that may be a helpful factor). The key point is that you shouldn't have to put much conscious thought in it to use, it should just feel natural to interact with.

And when you see people stumble over the same issues time and time again, and even sonos - albeit reluctantly - agrees there is a steep learning curve, it's fair the say the new interface is not intuitive.

Doesn't mean the previous app was perfect either, but it sure was a lot more intuitive, and thus for the large majority of us, a lot better.

My point is that the tortuous series of steps described in the post I was responding to is mostly unnecessary
Yes, and who's the blame for that, the customer - who didn't have issues with the previous app - or the badly designed new app?

From the scenario it looks like both not being able to switch rooms from the now playing screen tripped Free Will over, as well as the rooms screen not providing a sense of 'selection', resulting in a second click.

I am hoping that Sonos does make a change to keep the bottom navigation bar immediately acessible at all times. I think that would address most of the confusion experienced by those struggling with app.
It may ameliorate things, but it still be far from ideal. Not only was the previous design more intuitive for most (the upside down effect I mentioned earlier), the new design will, whenever you need to scroll, be wasting space by always showing that nav bar - and on tablet even more so - without there being a meaningful benefit.

Swiping is only required if you repeatedly bring up the 'Now Playing' screen.
Which is for many, if not most, the logical thing to do, as that's what we use sonos for, to play things now.

The now playing screen coincidentally contains all the features you need quick access to: artist/song info & art, play/pause, previous & next, queue, etc. In fact the only thing missing is being able to switch rooms (because it was removed from the red room thingy), and quickly browse for audio not related to what's currently playing (because the direct access to the menu was removed as well).

Look at the new app from this perspective and it's obvious why so may are unhappy with it: it's 'designed' upside down, with a focus on navigation instead of the main functionality.

I fell in love with the Sonos product about five years ago when I purchased my first Play 5. Everything worked great. Now they put out this new app update that has destroyed everything great about Sonos! The glitches in the app do not allow me to play different audios to different speakers. In addition, It takes multiple attempts to change what I am playing to the speaker before it actually works. I am extremely frustrated with the lack of testing by Sonos before releasing this app update. I want the old app back!!!Please try this. Please just try. Let's say you have two rooms and you want to put a track from your music library on in the Kitchen, and you want to search for a particular artist to put on in the Living Room. Substitute your room names obviously.

1. If you are on the Now Playing screen you will need to swipe down the screen. If not, the tab bar should already be visible at the bottom of the screen.
2. If Kitchen (K) or Living Room (LR) is already the highlighted room, go with it. If not, tap either K or LR. Let's assume we have Kitchen highlighted.
3. Tap Browse on the tab bar, and then Music Library, and then just do what you have always done - i.e. find the song and tap to play it.
4. Tap the Rooms button
5. Tap LR once to highlight it
6. Tap Search and then search for what you want just as you have always done. Tap to play your choice.

Does that help?


It isn't always this simple. The extra swiping is a big pain, waste of time. K.I.S.S. principle in effect to remain high end. My family can't use Sonos without my help any more. That is very sad.

This morning I ungrouped office from an office + spa group. Spa remains selected. I select my music from Pandora. It begins blaring in my office. But office isn't selected. I swipe out of spa and select office. But office show a play button because even the app doesn't think office is playing music. I swipe out of office back to spa and pause (but there was no music playing in spa. Now the office group shows music playing. I swipe out of spa and select office. I can finally pause office, but now I have woke someone up with music I never wanted to play in that area of the house at this time. I swipe out of office and select spa. I select my Pandora station. Finally after about 12 pointless swipes I have my music. But Pandora stops after 10 seconds and says "can not play media". I go back to the media tab and chose another Pandora station, and finally I get to chose the station I want again. This process took 90 seconds. Played music in areas I did not want. Required more than a dozen swipes and selections. This is not audiophile satisfaction. This is annoying nuisance and a bad way to start the day for everyone in the house. It just sucks.

Still no response from Sonos regarding this crappy app! Looks like the writing is on the wall. This is the way companies respond when they are going down. By the time they figure out they need to make a change it will be too late to recover.

Unfortunately for the two apps scenario, Apple policies allow only a single app to be updated on the app store. Sonos could leave the old version of 7.4 up, but it is immediately missing Settings menus for basic setup, along with all the new features like Alexa and play through Pandora, and as the firmware gets updated, eventually it will cease working altogether. This is why they cannot release two apps.

The new app really sucks! Sonos needs to learn the lesson Coke did in 1985 when they tried to shove the "new Coke" down our throats! The people spoke out and Coke was forced to bring back what is now know as "classic Coke". The more we speak out against the new app there is a better chance they will produce an app that flows like the old one. Evey one I know that uses Sonos absolutely hates the newer app.

And the vast majority of my posts are helping people. You would see that if you ever ventured out of these complaint threads.

Wtf Physician heal thyself, your post history shows this to be completely false.

But like you say you can post what you want where you want since Sonos is all good with it.

....... The easy sell of Sonos products in the past was showing a friend how easy the app (and the hardware) was to use. Now I'm confused. Please Sonos take this to heart and work on an update that will dramatically change/improve the UI.

May I suggest you look at the SonoPad and SonoPhone apps on the Apple AppStore. Very intuitive and easy to use. On YouTube you can find some vids how it looks like. I didn’t like the version 8.x while in Beta, but Sonos seems not to listen to their customer base. Luckily I could stopped Sonos to update my speakers and app (to block some things on my router) and continue using version 7.4. I also use the user friendly SonoPad app. It even works on a old IPad 1 which is in my bathroom 🙂