We set out to create a more personalized and effortless listening experience with the updated Sonos app. It was rebuilt from the ground up to ensure it could support future innovation in the years to come. For its initial rollout, we focused on how we could answer some of the most common requests from our customers, including increased reliability, performance, and faster access to music.
Many of you have shared valuable feedback on both the improvements that have made your experience better, as well as the areas where we fell short. We are listening to all of your comments and working to address them as quickly as possible. Over the coming weeks, we will reintroduce the below features, while fixing bugs and performance issues. Thank you for your engagement and we look forward to building upon this first step to create a listening experience that meets everyone’s needs.
This update will be rolled out for iOS and Android separately.
iOS - (Available starting today) Version 80.09.05
Improvements to setup flow
Improved performance when browsing content in Home and in Browse
Improved queue management including ability to delete, reorder and scroll
Added ability to set appearance between light mode/dark mode/system default
Continued improvements to the user interface
Added Trueplay support for iOS 18
Note: This iOS update will be deployed in phases over the coming days. Please allow until Tuesday to receive via automatic updates. If you add a player to your system, you’ll be prompted to update during setup. If you’d like to get the update sooner, go to the App Store, locate the Sonos app, and tap the Update button.
Android - (Scheduled for September 24)
Improvements to setup flow
Added ability to set appearance between light mode/dark mode/system default
Added setting to change the Alexa wake word language
You can also follow along with updates in this article:
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have 7 products from sonus 1, 5s, move2, etc. use iphones w/sonus app here are some suggestions
search bar in library under artists albums etc.
put alphabet for quicker scrolling in mus lib source on iphone sonos app
fix interface (more clicks now) to select what music to play on what speaker. have 6 location speakers and new app more tedious to join rooms, play music on a romm more clicks. simpler less clicks
above is a few to start - have real suer focus groups to go through what is better what users want not what some dev peep thinks is best … aka we still use our libraries! how could that get struck out of any release?
Now have a few thousand dollars worth of speakers that are paperweights because of the SH!! App.
when will the App work as the old version - old version was not perfect but at least you could listen to music for hours - not it works for a few minutes because everything disappears - constantly getting messages about adding devices that are already part of my network.
THANKS FOR CREATING A MESS.
Hard to believe that stable streaming of music between multiple zones is still not in place. I lose functionality (or hear disruptive chirps) when I try to do “too much” with a zone when the app doesn’t refresh. Btw, “too much” may mean just turning up the volume for 1 zone only...
Would like to see queue follow the progress showing the track playing rather than just the first page. Also local library album art in the queue.
Hard to believe that stable streaming of music between multiple zones is still not in place. I lose functionality (or hear disruptive chirps) when I try to do “too much” with a zone when the app doesn’t refresh. Btw, “too much” may mean just turning up the volume for 1 zone only...
I’m not seeing those issues - I’m using Sonos at Home on a WiFi mesh and multiple zones are working here without any problems, whether I use the iPhone App, or the iPad App.
if using WiFi, then perhaps check the device SNR levels in the new Sonos App and ensure they are providing a strong connection to the LAN. I have the devices here set to 45dB, or higher.
Hard to believe that stable streaming of music between multiple zones is still not in place. I lose functionality (or hear disruptive chirps) when I try to do “too much” with a zone when the app doesn’t refresh. Btw, “too much” may mean just turning up the volume for 1 zone only...
I’m not seeing those issues - I’m using Sonos at Home on a WiFi mesh and multiple zones are working here without any problems, whether I use the iPhone App, or the iPad App.
if using WiFi, then perhaps check the device SNR levels in the new Sonos App and ensure they are providing a strong connection to the LAN. I have the devices here set to 45dB, or higher.
That may seem to you like a helpful comment but honestly do you really think most users want to learn technical work arounds for a functionally deficient app. The controller should have all the necessary programming to deal with multiple user scenarios. The old app did a much better job.
That may seem to you like a helpful comment but honestly do you really think most users want to learn technical work arounds for a functionally deficient app. The controller should have all the necessary programming to deal with multiple user scenarios. The old app did a much better job.
Well Sonos do mention these things here (see link below) - it’s just basic strength of WiFi connection signal to the player… it was suggested to perhaps assist, rather than confuse, as a poor wireless signal is likely to cause the type of issues seen and these things can easily alter, from time to time, even arising sometimes from a simple reboot of a router or other WiFi AP, that auto-selects its WiFi channels on startup.
But just to say these type of issues may not always fix themselves and it’s not anything that Sonos can fix either.
That may seem to you like a helpful comment but honestly do you really think most users want to learn technical work arounds for a functionally deficient app. The controller should have all the necessary programming to deal with multiple user scenarios. The old app did a much better job.
Well Sonos do mention these things here (see link below) - it’s just basic strength of WiFi connection signal to the player… it was suggested to perhaps assist, rather than confuse, as a poor wireless signal is likely to cause the type of issues seen and these things can easily alter, from time to time, even arising sometimes from a simple reboot of a router or other WiFi AP, that auto-selects its WiFi channels on startup.
But just to say these type of issues may not always fix themselves and it’s not anything that Sonos can fix either.
I think the overwhelming experience of users (and also acknowledged by sonos), is that the new controller app isn't working properly. It is simply not good enough to replace a functioning system with a system that does a fraction the previous system did and is also less stable.
I think the overwhelming experience of users (and also acknowledged by sonos), is that the new controller app isn't working properly. It is simply not good enough to replace a functioning system with a system that does a fraction the previous system did and is also less stable.
The only thing I’m missing is queue management, but that’s in the pipeline - I can’t think of anything else I need personally, for how I use my Sonos Setup - I have Amazon, Apple, Plex, Sonos Radio, Podcasts, local NAS SMBv2/3 Shared library and plenty of other things besides the working Sonos App including…
3rd Party Apps (Soro/SonoPhone/Orto etc.) (useful for grouping speakers too)
I appreciate though that some users are having device discovery issues and in some cases LAN/WAN issues too, but otherwise there’s still plenty of options to help keep the music playing, even without the App, which is a ‘remote’ anyway, rather than an audio ‘player’ in its own right.
I think the overwhelming experience of users (and also acknowledged by sonos), is that the new controller app isn't working properly. It is simply not good enough to replace a functioning system with a system that does a fraction the previous system did and is also less stable.
The only thing I’m missing is queue management, but that’s in the pipeline - I can’t think of anything else I need personally, for how I use my Sonos Setup - I have Amazon, Apple, Plex, Sonos Radio, Podcasts, local NAS SMBv2/3 Shared library and plenty of other things besides the working Sonos App including…
Airplay 2 (useful for grouping speakers too)
Direct Control (PlexAmp/Spotify/Amazon Apps/iBroadcast/Emby)
Bluetooth Audio
UPnP/DLNA
Alexa Voice Services (useful for grouping speakers too)
Google Voice Services
Sonos Voice Control (useful for grouping speakers too)
TV Apps (YouTube/Chromecast/Plex)
Line-In audio
3rd Party Apps (Soro/SonoPhone/Orto etc.) (useful for grouping speakers too)
I appreciate though that some users are having device discovery issues and in some cases LAN/WAN issues too, but otherwise there’s still plenty of options to help keep the music playing, even without the App, which is a ‘remote’ anyway, rather than an audio ‘player’ in its own right.
You should really spend sometime reading the “most recent” reviews on the App Store. The one star reviews and extensive descriptions go on and on. Both newer and veteran users describing their difficulties. Many users are probably not tech savvy, but many are. With a system like Sonos that appears simplistic but is actually sophisticated there needs to be a better path to troubleshoot the upgrade. A utility app that checks the system to be certain the hardware and software is compliant would be something useful, especially since the base requirements have changed. With so many issues it’s hard to distinguish whether there’s an application issue or a configuration issue.
Hi @Ken_Griffiths, an observation for your consideration … a lot of customers are attracted to Sonos specifically because they do not know any of the items on your bulleted list. They want a rich music experience that “just works” … I’d venture that a good portion of Sonos’ success was built on delivering that combination!
People like you and me enjoy learning and deploying technology. While we are well represented here on these forums, we’re in the minority out in the real world. I’ve lived and worked most of my life in Silicon Valley, and trust me, very few companies crack the code of satisfying what I call Normal People.
Three months on I’d bet that we on Team Technically Savvy have navigated the ‘new’ Sonos okay. A greater and greater portion of users with issues, therefore, will be Normal People. It behooves we ‘helpers’ to keep in mind who we are helping at this point. Give it a think ...
I take on board what you mention @press250, but I look at my own siblings, children, grandchildren and friends and they (collectively) use voice services and AirPlay (lots) with their Sonos products and my daughter-in-law uses Spotify (direct control) a lot more than she ever uses the Sonos App.
So the list isn’t just what I use myself, to play audio on Sonos products, but what I see other people around me using too… Alexa is really popular for Sonos music at a good many friends parties that the Wife and I are invited too.
So I think these things are still worth mentioning to others to perhaps help them to keep their music playing - the Sonos App is not an exclusive music playback ‘controller’ and if people were not aware of that fact, the list in my post may give some users some things to research and explore for use with their own Sonos system.
(Edit: Just to briefly mention, I’ve now gone back and added some helpful hyperlinks to my post, just to help anyone interested to research some of the options in the list too).
From all I have seen of Ken’s posts, there is no arguing that his system works for his family and for him, and that his help given to many struggling since May 2024 is well meant.
But the use of a home audio system in 2024 should not need such elaborate support/handholding - at the most, what should be needed is the old classic “turn off the power and reboot the units”.
Which is all I have to very occasionally do for all my Echo Show units that now drive my five zone Sonos kit as if that was just dumb HiFi hardware. And no, I have not had to reserve IP addresses for any of the Echo units, that work fine in a home WiFi set up created by a base router and many WiFi access points that are ethernet wired to the base router/switches, that use a mix of 2.4 and 5 GHz radios. The Echo devices just work.
Note my post followed on in response from @amblue02’s post - who has working Sonos devices, but was having trouble with zone-grouping and sluggish volume control - I was merely offering an alternative list of ‘playback’ options that provides ways to listen to audio without the Sonos App and provide some ‘room grouping’ features (which I highlight in the list too) and some different options to try that include different forms of volume control (outside the Sonos App) - I just thought it better to try those things whilst waiting for the fortnightly Sonos App updates to ‘perhaps’ fix the issue.
In my view, the things in the list are not that difficult, I have family and friends that use the things mentioned, but I have returned to the list and added some links to maybe assist, particularly as @press250 highlights they are perhaps a bit difficult for ‘normal people’ to follow - I thought they were straightforward. It just didn’t occur to me that they were difficult, so I’m sorry if people see them in that way. The links added hopefully should assist.
From all I have seen of Ken’s posts, there is no arguing that his system works for his family and for him, and that his help given to many struggling since May 2024 is well meant.
But the use of a home audio system in 2024 should not need such elaborate support/handholding - at the most, what should be needed is the old classic “turn off the power and reboot the units”.
Which is all I have to very occasionally do for all my Echo Show units that now drive my five zone Sonos kit as if that was just dumb HiFi hardware. And no, I have not had to reserve IP addresses for any of the Echo units, that work fine in a home WiFi set up created by a base router and many WiFi access points that are ethernet wired to the base router/switches, that use a mix of 2.4 and 5 GHz radios. The Echo devices just work.
That sounds similar to my experience with my new Yamaha devices. Plug them in or attach to wifi depending on location and they just work. My remaining Sonos devices are still on 16.1 and have behaved as they always do. Apart from one I rebooted last night, they haven’t been restarted in a year and just work.
Next week when I get the house to myself I’m going to let the upgrade monkeys loose to see what happens. I don’t use them for playing music anymore, so if they don’t behave I’ll have something to poke around in at my leisure.
I don’t do anything special to my network, apart from my internet gateway, vdsl modem, currently 4 servers and 3 switches and 10 floating k8s loadbalancer IPs nothing gets static or reserved IP addresses. Everything else, including my Wireless AP, smart home hub and zigbee gateway are on whatever dhcp address they receive and have never given any issues.
I can appreciate people spending time to configure and tweak everything in a specific way, similar to how I used to marvel at the effort some companies put into the choice of cable colours, meticulous cable routing and presentation of their cabinets in datacentre cabinets. At one time I could tell who owned the equipment in cabinets in different datacentres because they had the same designs and meticulous cabinets.
But my network is far from that and some may considere unfriendly for Sonos. There’s a mix of powerline, wifi and ethernet, servers that could leak their multiple virtual networks and overlay networks onto the lan, floating virtual IP addresses, multicast, unicast. It is used as much for work and experimenting as it is for the home network.
Will be interesting to see what happens next week.
To follow up on what I wrote about Echo; Sonos apologists always rebut this by saying that Sonos architecture is such that with a lot of Sonos units talking to each other all the time, Sonos is more susceptible to network issues.
But: the average user does not care about all this and nor should he have to. All he wants to know is what all the Sonos complexity does for him that an Echo, with perhaps lesser demands on the network, cannot or does not.
For Echo, substitute any present day equivalent, that works out of the box like Echo does.
New app still is terrible. So sad because I feel you eroded trust so bad this is going to mean the end. Up to now we loved our whole home Sonos system.
Specifically we are still having lots of trouble adding and removing speakers from groups. Sometimes it is really slow to take effect, sometimes it just doesn’t work and we have to go back to the phone and try again. Sometimes it starts right away, then drops with a long pause, then finally returns stable.
good luck fixing this - I’ve been a fan for years but this is a mess
Hard to believe that stable streaming of music between multiple zones is still not in place. I lose functionality (or hear disruptive chirps) when I try to do “too much” with a zone when the app doesn’t refresh. Btw, “too much” may mean just turning up the volume for 1 zone only...
I’m not seeing those issues - I’m using Sonos at Home on a WiFi mesh and multiple zones are working here without any problems, whether I use the iPhone App, or the iPad App.
if using WiFi, then perhaps check the device SNR levels in the new Sonos App and ensure they are providing a strong connection to the LAN. I have the devices here set to 45dB, or higher.
Okay Ken, I will check. Could be a WiFi issue with a Play 3 zone that is on the fringe of connectivity. I will try to resolve
From all I have seen of Ken’s posts, there is no arguing that his system works for his family and for him, and that his help given to many struggling since May 2024 is well meant.
But the use of a home audio system in 2024 should not need such elaborate support/handholding - at the most, what should be needed is the old classic “turn off the power and reboot the units”.
Which is all I have to very occasionally do for all my Echo Show units that now drive my five zone Sonos kit as if that was just dumb HiFi hardware. And no, I have not had to reserve IP addresses for any of the Echo units, that work fine in a home WiFi set up created by a base router and many WiFi access points that are ethernet wired to the base router/switches, that use a mix of 2.4 and 5 GHz radios. The Echo devices just work.
There’s also the misconception that it is just the app, and therefore if you have one of these many other points of control you’ll be just fine.
The new Sonos ecosystem is a combination of new controller invoking new methods in speaker firmware to achieve the same (one day, maybe) as the old controller and older firmware methods. What’s slightly concerning is that attempts to fix the former now appear to be regressing the latter on the speakers themselves, depending on how far down the update path you’ve managed to get.
I agree with @Kumar, none of this should matter. Sonos play (or not!) in a space where people expect to take it home, plug it in, download an app and get it working. That’s it. If it doesn’t do that, most people will take it back. If the new way of doing things doesn’t fit that model anymore then Sonos have made a big mistake and need to figure out a way forward that gets back there.
The problem Sonos now have, whether they like it or not is they have a reasonable number of customers with systems that are unstable enough to mean they can’t apply more speaker updates. So they may need a tool to allow a speaker update after something like a factory reset… if they can’t get the app to a point where it can get round whatever the issues are that currently make discovering some people’s speakers difficult.
Sorry to pile in on this.
But,
I had hoped I might be able to play my music on my Sonos 9 Sonos devices soon.
They are pretty looking devices but would really like to play music from my music library.
I know there has been and shake up and re-prioritzation of features is there any hope for using them to well play music again soon? It has been a few months.
Trying to re-add my Music library just gets this error message.
Anyway I hope that this eventually gets fixed and allows my music speakers to be used for playing music.
Sorry to pile in on this.
But,
I had hoped I might be able to play my music on my Sonos 9 Sonos devices soon.
They are pretty looking devices but would really like to play music from my music library.
I know there has been and shake up and re-prioritzation of features is there any hope for using them to well play music again soon? It has been a few months.
Trying to re-add my Music library just gets this error message.
Anyway I hope that this eventually gets fixed and allows my music speakers to be used for playing music.
The latest support pages go into great detail how to add your music library using the current apps. You need to follow the link to add a share on Windows, MacOS or an NAS drive before you attempt to add the library. Then you must add the library as a Network Share (not as a Music Folder). The above error looks like you attempted to add a Music Folder, which uses HTTP sharing that is no longer supported by the Sonos mobile apps. Follow this link (and the links contained therein EXACTLY, the instructions are not intuitive!):
I am pleased that finally Sonos has accepted that the upgrade was a stuff up. Yes it happens, however a bit sooner and without blaming the users would’ve been nicer. Either way, I think we and Sonos are finally on the right track.
A key thing is however that software upgrades for a product that includes physical hardware MUST always be backwards compatible. People spent serious $$ on your systems and expect them to function throughout their lifetime. Matching it with compatible software is more than doable so please do so. This does not hinder innovation. You are free to release new hardware and matching software products.
My greatest issue so far is that I am unable to access my local music library containing hundreds, if not thousands of albums which were painstakingly digitised after I made the switch to Sonos. I am said to uncover that this issue does not appear on the proposed fixes list. Please add this to your priority list. Not just for me, but for the myriad of users you’ll find on your forums complaining, shouting, crying over this matter.
Kind regards
_d
I am pleased that finally Sonos has accepted that the upgrade was a stuff up. Yes it happens, however a bit sooner and without blaming the users would’ve been nicer. Either way, I think we and Sonos are finally on the right track.
A key thing is however that software upgrades for a product that includes physical hardware MUST always be backwards compatible. People spent serious $$ on your systems and expect them to function throughout their lifetime. Matching it with compatible software is more than doable so please do so. This does not hinder innovation. You are free to release new hardware and matching software products.
My greatest issue so far is that I am unable to access my local music library containing hundreds, if not thousands of albums which were painstakingly digitised after I made the switch to Sonos. I am said to uncover that this issue does not appear on the proposed fixes list. Please add this to your priority list. Not just for me, but for the myriad of users you’ll find on your forums complaining, shouting, crying over this matter.
Kind regards
_d
@jgatie recently wrote:
The latest support pages go into great detail how to add your music library using the current apps. You need to follow the link to add a share on Windows, MacOS or an NAS drive before you attempt to add the library. Then you must add the library as a Network Share (not as a Music Folder). The above error looks like you attempted to add a Music Folder, which uses HTTP sharing that is no longer supported by the Sonos mobile apps. Follow this link (and the links contained therein EXACTLY, the instructions are not intuitive!):
I had hoped I might be able to play my music on my Sonos 9 Sonos devices soon.
They are pretty looking devices but would really like to play music from my music library.
I know there has been and shake up and re-prioritzation of features is there any hope for using them to well play music again soon? It has been a few months.
Trying to re-add my Music library just gets this error message.
Anyway I hope that this eventually gets fixed and allows my music speakers to be used for playing music.
The latest support pages go into great detail how to add your music library using the current apps. You need to follow the link to add a share on Windows, MacOS or an NAS drive before you attempt to add the library. Then you must add the library as a Network Share (not as a Music Folder). The above error looks like you attempted to add a Music Folder, which uses HTTP sharing that is no longer supported by the Sonos mobile apps. Follow this link (and the links contained therein EXACTLY, the instructions are not intuitive!):
you were close, I had tried adding the local music by selecting
‘Another folder or a drive connected to any computer ‘ because my Music folder is a drive connected directly to my Mac. I had not occurred to me that the hard disk in my computer was a connected network drive.
but this is Sonos logic so.
created an SMB share of the Music Library.
Created a Sonos Library user - granted full permissions
Go to another computer and smb://Plex-M1/Music Library using the credentials created for it
and voila takes me straight to the Music Library, logged in and all.
now try to add the local folder as a network share in Sonos using the networked share option.
//Plex-M1/Music Library and using the same credentials, copy pasted to ensure consistency
and you get
of course…
Sonos was unable to add the music folder
Access to the shared folder “//Plex-M1/Music Library” is denied check username and password
Now in all fairness
attempting to access an smb drive from the same computer as the destination, ie from Plex-M1 to smb://Plex-M1/Music Library fails, where it does work from another Mac on the LAN.
So we return to, given that you cannot connect to a local Music Folder using Sonos either through it is a local folder or even a networked folder.
When will the ability to play your own Music be restored to Sonos?
For giggles I will setup the Sonos App on another Mac and see if I can get it to access the Music Folder.
but realistically if it works, it is a workaround but a damning indictment of Sonos if you have to have two computers to get a local music library to work.
Nah doesn’t work either.
Sonos asks me to enter using backslashes not the macOS forward slashes and then reports failure using forward slashes.
tried using forward or backward slashes they end up with same forward slash error.
A step forward for Sonos, consistency…….. all we need now is consist working rather than the now default consist fail.
I am pleased that finally Sonos has accepted that the upgrade was a stuff up.
…
Kind regards
_d
@jgatie recently wrote:
The latest support pages go into great detail how to add your music library using the current apps. You need to follow the link to add a share on Windows, MacOS or an NAS drive before you attempt to add the library. Then you must add the library as a Network Share (not as a Music Folder). The above error looks like you attempted to add a Music Folder, which uses HTTP sharing that is no longer supported by the Sonos mobile apps. Follow this link (and the links contained therein EXACTLY, the instructions are not intuitive!):
Thanks BVRx2 - been there, tried that and failed miserably - not to mention that I had my NAS happily serving my music for a decade until whoosh, it’s gone AWOL with the update. Connecting the app and the NAS shouldn’t be rocket science and it wasn’t. It’s simply broken and I am thoroughly dissatisfied that it hasn't even received a mention in the upcoming fixes
I was planning the extend our system with some outdoor units (until I learnt that the latest hardware isn’t compatible with the older ones), now I am contemplating to chuck the whole lot into the bin…
