Hi Edward R.

The Sonos app for Mac is one of the most infuriating apps I have ever used in my life. Sure, examples can be given, but where do you start? Sure, there are thousands of people using the app. I’m one of them. But I wouldn’t say I don’t have any issues, there are loads. I just haven’t been bothered to report it until now because there are some workarounds to sort of make it do what you want it to do. Today I decided to google “why is sonos mac app so bad” and I came across this thread and decided to chime in. Also, I think all sorts of profanity is warranted when expressing the frustration this app causes, but I’m going to refrain from using it because you clearly take issue with it.

I cannot disagree any more with what chicks and Smilja said about it doing exactly what it’s intended to do, that it’s a remote control and that it’s not outdated and feels and flows just like any other music app. It’s the worst remote control I’ve ever used in my life.

Actually, the Sonos app does not feel like a native Mac application at all. Try using something like Spotify or Apple Music on a Mac and you’ll get an idea of how an application should feel.

Here’s a very very basic example that you would expect would have been fairly straightforward in 2020. I want to listen to specific song in Spotify and add it to my queue, then I want to add a few more songs.

I search for Goldfrapp Ocean, because the artist is Goldfrapp and the name of the song is called Ocean. I get the message: “Search returned no results for ‘goldfrapp ocean’ in Artists. Please try a different category or a new search term.”

Ok, not quite fair enough, but in this terrible application you have to click over to Songs to find this specific song, so I click the Songs category. Now I get the message: “Search returned no results for ‘goldfrapp ocean’ in Songs. Please try a different category or a new search term.”

Hmm.. Ok, let’s try and remove Goldfrapp from the search. Now lots of songs are showing up, but not the one I wanted. Let’s try and add Goldfrapp at the end of the search. Bingo… I’ve found the song. But should I really have to go through this to find a song?

I add the song to my queue. But I want to add another song to it, which in my opinion should be fairly straightforward to do. Sparing you from my music interest, I go through the hoops again and finally find the next song, I grab the song and drag it to the queue below the current track. It randomly (this doesn’t happen all the time) adds the song above the one currently playing. I try to grab it to pull it down below that one, but the app is frozen.. Then a little message pops up saying “One track added to the queue” and I can’t do anything until that has gone away. And when it goes away the whole application just flashes and redraws the whole view. Annoying? Yeah.

So I have added a bunch of songs to my queue and I’m at the point where they can’t all fit in the view that I’m in, so I leave the app for a second (because I need to use Spotify to find songs since the Sonos app is so bad at searching) and when I come back and I want to add another song, I cannot scroll through the queue, it’s just stuck. If I grab another song and move it towards the queue, it sort of unfreezes and lets me move around it in while still holding on to the song. But really?

So yeah, adding a bunch of songs to a queue is super annoying and really hard work.

I am not surprised the app is not in the App Store, because if it was, the ratings would have been so terrible.

BTW, I’ve been using this app for a few years now on many different computers and many different versions of MacOS and it’s always been like this. The app for the phone works a bit better, but it’s still not great, it comes with its own issues + the weird counterintuitive search.

So those are the issues that I personally would like assistance with. Not sure about the op.

Edward R and SONOS,

If I can add my two cents, the SONOS App interface with Apple Music is terrible.  Have brought this up on the forum many times, to deaf ears.  The menu is very restricted and outdated as compared to Apple Music on virtually any other device.  It reflects Apple Music as it was back in 2015.  At this point, I have to assume it reflects the inability of all current SONOS hardware to be updated, otherwise why would this be left as is?  And yes, I know the immediate response will be - this is Apple’s responsibility, they must update their app using SONOS’s provided API, but that is a terrible cop out.  Many services besides Apple Music seem to either not update their interfaces on SONOS, or make them overly simplified, and I truly think SONOS has not admitted that their commitment to older and now outdated hardware has prevented such updates.

With everything that has gone down recently, I sincerely hope that SONOS will be motivated, now that it is leaving behind outdated underpowered hardware, to update in a timely fashion its interfaces with Apple Music, Spotify, etc.  

Otherwise, I do fear that SONOS is becoming, and will continue to become, increasingly irrelevant in the current wireless speaker and music streaming reality.

It's not just with Apple music. I use Android and YouTube music and there isn't an app on my phone I hate more then Sonos for listening to music.

Search is ridiculous, the interface is designed by developers, there are none of the views available that are in YouTube music.

I find that I'm using my Google home mini more then my Sonos one just because I can use it with the regular YouTube app.

I wish I could just use my Sonos device as a Google cast speaker and cast to it from YouTube and be done with the horrendous Sonos app apart from updates and setup.

Sonos does provide an interface, which other companies, like Spotify, use. Make your request to the folks at Google/YouTube, they already have access to the codebase, they’d just need to add it to their client. 

Much of this is personal preference. I absolutely will not use the iTunes or Apple Music interface. That said, other users like it and will not use anything else. With Airplay 2 enabled devices one can use either or both interfaces.

As @buzz says, much of this is personal preference and what you are accustomed to.  I also suspect that many people forget that the Sonos app is not a music player but a remote control for a system that is multiroom, multi-controller and multi-source.  Users with a single speaker, who are the only user, who only play (say) Apple Music are particular prone to overlooking this fact.

@Airgetlam @John B @buzz 

What you all say is all wrong. Completely.

Read the message I wrote above. An app that refreshes randomly as you add a song to it? Unable to scroll through the queue… That’s not a matter of preference, that is straight up poor software.

I also don’t agree that the app is simply a remote control, but ok, let’s say it is just a remote control. It’s the worst remote control I’ve ever used in my life. And I’ve used a lot of remote controls. But one would have to assume that the app on my phone is also a remote control, how come that is not as bad as the one I use on my Mac? I mean, it’s not great, but not as bad. Is that also Spotify and everyone else’s fault? Always trying to blame other companies. If you’re interested in making a good product, surely you’d make sure to work with the other vendors to make it a good product?

It’s weird how the people on this thread first goes: Stop just complaining about it being bad and give us specifics! and then you do, you fail to address the specifics and say it’s a matter preference. Crazy.

Why does this sentence auto complete on google: “why is the sonos app so bad”?

I guess the takeaway here is that the poor software reflects bad on Sonos.

I use Sonos at work because we have them there. Would I ever pay for one myself? No way..

Were you talking about the desktop app? Sonos have virtually abandoned the desktop app.  I haven't looked at it in years. Anyway, i am perfectly happy with the mobile app and respect your right to rant a different point of view. 

@John B 

Wow, virtually abandoned it but still promoting on their website? I guess they don’t care about their reputation.

Rant? I’m giving specifics. You have like over 11k comments on the Sonos forums and seem to do nothing but promoting Sonos, who’s ranting? What’s in it for you?

I don’t use the Mac desktop APP. I do use the PC desktop controller and while there are some details that I don’t like (mostly features added to appease the Mac crowd) I don’t notice it doing wild things.

If the Mac desktop user interface is similar to my iPad (for any APP) it can sometimes be difficult to scroll because Apple tends to hide scroll bars.

@John B @Airgetlam @buzz  

It’s interested that they just released an update to the Mac desktop app even though it’s “virtually abandoned” and it’s still no better. Same thing happened to the iOS app, new update, still crap.

It’s more common than not for them to release updates to all platforms simultaneously. I, too, received updates to both iOS and Mac apps, both continue to work without issue, probably as they’re merely remote control apps for the software running on the speakers. You’d continue to have issues if you’ve got an issue in your local network of some kind, but I’ve not experienced any issue since the update yesterday to 12.0.5. 

When John B spoke of abandoning the desktop apps, he was speaking of Sonos adding or re-adding features, not keeping the app current for use as a control for playing music.

If you’re having issues, I would urge you to post particulars, the community can’t respond to generalities effectively. Or contact Sonos support directly, and let them help you resolve the local issues. 

You may still not be happy with the current app, either mobile or desktop, but it will work. 

Thanks @Airgetlam , I did actually mention specifics higher up in this thread.

I can confirm that when i said Sonos had ‘virtually abandoned’ the desktop app i meant that it had abandoned any development work on it and was not supporting most admin functions on it.  So my point (not very well expressed) was that however valid any criticisms might be, they aren’t going to be addressed.

FWIW, I agree that the search isn't great on the mobile app, but i have learned to work with its limitations.  The ‘universal search’ gets me what I want reasonably quickly now.  I cannot comment much on the desktop app as I haven’t used it in years.  I have genuinely abandoned it (apart from a brief experiment just now).  The mobile app I find otherwise pretty easy to use.

Having just experimented with dragging tracks into the queue it seems to work fine on my PC controller.  Maybe the Mac controller is different.  Right-clicking to bring up context menus works well too - maybe that doesn’t feature on the Mac version?   It still isn’t going to tempt me back to using the desktop app.

So, @tiaskillen , I am not sure we have very different views on the search capabilities.  I cannot reproduce your other criticisms of the Mac app on the PC version.  But my main point in my previous posts was not to disagree with your analysis, just to say that I felt there was absolutely zero chance of any changes in response.

P.S. as an experiment, on tbe mobile app it took me less than 10 seconds to find Ocean by Goldfrapp and to have it playing. 

In the computer app search in Spotify - Artists - Goldfrapp - Top tracks -sixth song is Ocean. Only diffrecence with the iPhone app is that the iPhone app combines sources (i.e. Google Music and Spotify). Both do not have the possibility to search for a song by an artist. That would be good, but the computer app does not differ from the mobile app in this respect.

I think this is key point.  Some systems do allow artist / track searches but Sonos doesn’t - so you just accept that the route is to search for the artist then the song.  99% of the time you get what you want easily.