The New Sonos App and Future Feature Updates

I don’t doubt that there are device-specific concerns around how UI components work (also, good use of the available screen resolution is a concern). But I’m still of the opinion that the Sonos controllers should, as you switch from Desktop to web to iOS to Android, have a somewhat-consistent appearance and feature parity. The current “mobile and desktop apps look like the products of different companies” approach is just… odd, given how many times Sonos have rebuilt/refreshed the UI.

Of course, I also, selfishly, want a controller that I find intuitive to use, one that fits my crazy use-cases and supports all the niche features I use, etc. And I’m one of those weird people who favors “use the nearest device” or “use the device with the bigger screen” over “use the one device that you always have on you”. I fully expect both the desktop controller and “several useful features scattered about the various Sonos controller apps” to disappear as Sonos evolves its controller strategy into… “whatever Sonos think their product is this year”. I don’t want to criticize the general design approach of the currently-half-finished new Sonos mobile app - yet - but I don’t know who the app is designed for.

But hey, UI/UX design is hard. Even apple get it wrong.

Sonos has said that the desktop app will be no longer supported in the new year. So there will be consistency between the new mobile apps and the web app as the old app will be gone. 

I know, let’s pour salt in the wound. 

is it just me or can we still not simply delete a track from the queue/playlist??

Queue management is coming [back] from September-ish…

Was supposed to come back July, then August now September/October. So who really knows. 
 

It’s wild it is taking so long to bring back something as basic as this. Well maybe not so wild since they told us it wasn’t going to be missing before the app release. 

I am still hoping they fix the automatic connection between systems - the old app connected seamlessly when I moved between the house and the garden office on separate wifi systems as soon as my phone had connected to the router in each - I currently have to manually find each system every time I move...which is often!

Separate wifi networks? That sounds like a highly unorthodox setup. I’m surprised it ever worked.

It's a different set of speakers in each obviously - as I say it worked seamlessly with the previous App....

A workaround would be to use the same Sonos Household at each location and add the WiFi network to the system. The advantage of doing that too is that voice services, such as Alexa, can be used at every location using the same Alexa account. Plus there’s no need to then reset the Sonos App.

Consider all the other really crazy bugs and annoyances introduced in the last few months (eg. suddenly not dealing with the “Artist” tag properly so you can’t play compilations or albums with a guest artist on track 3, or the useless “favorites sorted by the date you added them” navigation). Some of these things are a basic change. Some of them will be somewhat tricky to fix. Code is hard.

I’m sure Sonos has a big bug backlog list, and unless the broken feature you found really useful is at the top of their priority list, good luck.

Perhaps unusual for a home setup - but segregating a network, WIFI or wired into seperate zones isn’t unusual. Splitting work/home makes a lot of sense to keep each seperate to restrict whoc an access each network

Like I said back in May when this disaster began to unfold.

Will we be seeing RSTP support; or at least STP that conforms to standard?  This has been a feature request for years.

We are overdue for “new software updates on a bi-weekly cadence”.

Current software version

80.06.04 (Android)
80.06.03 (iOS)

Release date: 8/6/2024

True … but the 8/6/2024 release was much less than 2 weeks after the previous one.  So perhaps it’s just regressing to the mean now!

is it just me or can we still not simply delete a track from the queue/playlist??

Was supposed to come back July, then August now September/October. So who really knows. 
 

It’s wild it is taking so long to bring back something as basic as this. Well maybe not so wild since they told us it wasn’t going to be missing before the app release. 

Consider all the other really crazy bugs and annoyances introduced in the last few months (eg. suddenly not dealing with the “Artist” tag properly so you can’t play compilations or albums with a guest artist on track 3, or the useless “favorites sorted by the date you added them” navigation). Some of these things are a basic change. Some of them will be somewhat tricky to fix. Code is hard.

I’m sure Sonos has a big bug backlog list, and unless the broken feature you found really useful is at the top of their priority list, good luck.

Like I said back in May when this disaster began to unfold.

 

I read in an interview on the web that the old app can’t be rereleased because the cloud technology has been so changed that it would be unstable and worse than the new app.
 

The strange thing is that I’m using the old s2 app and it works as it always did, just fine. I have ports, amps, a move and a roam.  I don’t stream, I just use my local library. 

@BVRBVR 

i on the other hand just stream and play vinyl my s2 16.1 app still works fine so not sure what cloud changes they are referring to but it seems untrue in my opinion 

@BVRBVR 

I wasn’t referring to you being the untrue person in this case 😊

I think you have to read between the lines of what Spence said sadly. 

For people like @BVRBVR who are still running the old S2 app, by definition they are also not on the latest firmware. We know that 16.3 firmware and later causes the old S2 app to stop working and tell you that you now have to update it, breaks some existing SSDP discovery and breaks local library indexing. 

Now, if you are lazy (again) and *just* re-release the S2 app alongside the new speaker firmware just disabling the upgrade nag, it may well no longer be stable, but mainly because the speaker firmware has taken a bit of a nose dive too. 

However, clearly if you release the old S2 app *with* a tool to take your speakers back to the last level of firmware before the new app, it would function just as well as it did before. I doubt *anyone* would care too much if the newer cloud stuff didn’t work as the old app didn’t use much of it. 

But Spence clearly only mentioned the app… which is evasive and dishonest IMO as re-releasing just that would be as stupid as their new app launch. 

Makes sense they would need to match the firmware with the app version. From everything I read it sounds like the combination of new firmware and new app isn’t very robust either. 
Seems to me that the old firmware could be made available as well. Separate S2 v16 from S2 v80 and make S2 v80 become S3; otherwise, it seems Sonos will stumble from week to week with continued problems for some time, forcing their users through the pain of being unwilling Quality Assurance workers. The unhappiness will continue for both the company and the customers.

There are so many ongoing complaints. I wonder how many nontechnical customers haven’t said anything online and just gave up. How many third party integrators are running away?

It’s a shame, I really like my Sonos system, but I now can’t recommend it.

abysmal app/eco system.
completely destroyed my listening experience.

downgrading to S1 gives functioning products as it can index my local library but had to lower my NAS file share to SMB1

Proved the issue with S2 local libraries is isolated to the “enhanced user experience” as it still  cannot fully index my library under S2. 

Latest S2 feature, it will randomly skip to the next song after 30 to 60 seconds, simply appalling since May 2024

SMB1 support is one of the explicitly called out changes - Sonos S1 only supports SMB1 (and only ever can).SMB1 has been retired by most vendors/operating systems due to multiple security vulnerabilites.

I had previously accessed my music library which was stored on an external hard drive plugged into my router. That stopped working when smbv1 was no longer supported. I'm not technically minded to fiddle around with NAS drives but another user saved me with a suggestion to store your music on ibroadcast. It was easy to upload my music collection and add ibroadcast as a service on Sonos. So far it's working like a dream. It's also free and no adverts!

https://www.ibroadcast.com/home/