The New Sonos App and Future Feature Updates

I don't have a Compilations folder. 

Ah it might have been that you had not activated it previously then in the older S2 App - I think it can still be added in the Windows Desktop App IIRC. See old screenshot attached (taken from an S1 App, just as an example).

My understanding is that Plex doesn’t support 24bit files. And it probably means no local library browsing, search only (without Sonos desktop-and-3rd-party-but-not-mobile ability to jump instantly to “V” you can’t browse). But yeah, given Sonos’s disregard for people who own music, I’m expecting to have to find an alternative to the built-in Sonos server for local library access.

I don’t seem to have any difficulties finding compilation albums I’m looking for. The attached shows examples of two quick library searches to find some results from the compilations folder. Probably quicker than browsing the library, even with an A-Z index, er perhaps ?

I don’t seem to have any difficulties finding compilation albums I’m looking for. The attached shows examples of two quick library searches to find some results from the compilations folder. Probably quicker than browsing the library, even with an A-Z index, er perhaps ?

 

With my use case, I often find what to listen to from my library by browsing / scrolling. This is on purpose because I don't always have an idea of what to listen to, and browsing gives me a reminder and prompt to listen to stuff which has fallen off my radar in recent years. 

And I have a lot of compilations of various things. Scrolling through the album list and seeing the same album replicated for each track it contains is just painful. And very irritating. 

Meanwhile you should be able to browse your compilations via the library Folder structure - it’s one entry per album/folder as per below screenshot (example) taken from my compilations folder… it doesn’t look as nice, but it’s a way to browse compilations. Or search albums in the library by a letter A, B, C etc. in the search facility.

Appreciate that you're trying help, but the bottom line is that the app prevents me from doing from what I could before (again) and the workarounds are just that. They're not proper solutions nor reinstatements of recently functioning aspects of the UI. 

Patience is wearing very thin. 

Meanwhile, WiiM (I also have a mini) are releasing updates up to twice a week to their app, and they are introducing what used to be considered premium functionality for free. To products which cost a fraction of Sonos. 

One company is moving forwards at great pace and the other is regressing beyond belief. 

I'm actually starting to consider flogging my system but honestly, I wouldn't want to inflict it on anyone. 

It's a mess. 

I don’t know about the 24 bit files. But you can browse your library, no compilation bugs. There are no letters to jump quickly in any of the sonos services as far as I know, we still have to wait for Sonos to add this back, assuming the actually do as it’s not even on the roadmap.

There is Plex music app (Plexamp) that can cast to Sonos (airplay, not sure about Android) that has letter jumping and way better browsing options than Sonos. It might not be for you but worth checking out for sure as it makes the Sonos library seem incredibly antiquated.

As you mention looking at alternatives to the sonos library, I’ll also suggest Lyrion music server (recommended by another user here). It’s way better than Plex IMO but more complex to set up. Worth a look as well depending on how motivated you are :)

I don’t seem to have any difficulties finding compilation albums I’m looking for. The attached shows examples of two quick library searches to find some results from the compilations folder. Probably quicker than browsing the library, even with an A-Z index, er perhaps ?

 

It doesn’t look like you have re-indexed on the bad firmware, else the local library search doesn’t return just a single entry per compilation album as your screen shots suggest… 

Also, how did you get local library to appear first? 

I’m guessing that browsing and the alphabetical index markers are low on the priority list / never to return, for the simple reason that while the local library is mostly identical to any other service (you stream music off a hard drive and across a network), there’s one key difference: scale. Browsing the whole library makes no sense for Spotify (millions of tracks/albums you don’t care about to scroll through) but a lot of sense for a local library (a few thousand albums, many of which you still care about, and a potentially manageable number of artists/albums starting with each letter).

Like many Sonos features I’ve taken for granted over the years (error logs and notifications, easy new-box system setup, favorites bookmarks, recently played, desktop controller) I’m expecting to have to get used to library browsing disappearing. Now if someone like Wiim starts taking the user experience seriously (I’m not impressed with the extremely basic UI on the one Wiim box I tried, but maybe they’ll improve) then my Sonos kit might find itself being replaced...

I just go into the Music Library from the Home Screen and search from there… same as with any service if you just want to search that one service only, like Amazon Music only or Apple Music only etc.

Ah ok thanks… I feel a feature request where you can configure the search result order based on service coming on… 

I think you should re-index your collection though as that also brings another bug into focus, which is you can only have 100 items in the found list which currently is about 2 and half Now compilations worth… and then you’re stuck again. 

So your video is not representative… 

Ah okay I’ll consider re-indexing later - I’ll just think about it, as it is working at the moment.

I like the idea of configuring the search result order and would like to see it match the music services order in the App (which also cannot be sorted at the moment). I’ve put in a feature request to be able to sort the music services in the App.

An alternative is Jellyfin - originally a fork from the Plex codebase. Works well, open source, well supported.

...and today’s “upgrade”, which updates the desktop and firmware to the same version as before, doesn’t seem to have fixed anything. Local library unchanged - compilations/guest artists are still unavailable, no viable local browsing, no local tracks/albums on the recently played. No update showing for the mobile app that might fix any of the hundreds of issues with it. What a surprise.

The mobile app update was meant to be today but has been put back a couple of days.

There was a firmware update yesterday but it certainly didn’t keep the same build number. There was no desktop app update so maybe that’s why you’re seeing the same number for that? The release notes for the firmware are meant to be appearing on the Sonos release notes page imminently so people can see what changed. 

Are there any updates for MacOS that will actually make it work as it did?

No sign of it yet. 

I know I'd rather they took a bit longer to release something that doesn't break things further, than rush out a half baked update, but their release cadence is as unpredictable as the errors in the thing.

From the outside looking in, it's just shambolic. 

Actually, an “unpredictable release cadence” could be a good thing, if they’re just doing “continuous delivery” and pushing small changes/fixes whenever they have them, although for UI changes and new features, a predictable fortnightly/monthly release cycle is better. Sonos haven’t exactly demonstrated much in the way of “good software engineering practice” this year.

But it’s that first point that’s the important one - shipping actual working software that fixes issues and doesn’t introduce new bugs.

Grouped Alarms not working.
 

Please fix the grouped alarms bug. Right now, even if you create a dedicated ‘Group’ and select ‘Include Grouped Rooms’ in Alarms menu, the alarm only works if your current music has all the grouped devices active / selected. It defeats the entire point of presetting an alarm. 
 

Suggestion - Simplify the menu options in each alarm, so you can just nominate exactly which speakers the particular alarm applies to.

And still nothing... 

This Trello board that Sonos tweeted out is very interesting. Have they been hacked? Are they just trolling us? The “(local) Music Library Search is not accessible in the controller without access to the Internet.” comment. They couldn’t be that incompetent as to have built a local database search that requires an internet connection, could they?

 https://trello.com/b/4T9rbg8t/sonos-app-improvement-bug-tracker

I would expect for the initial speed to get local library search back in place it is a code module that sits within the search subsystem that already existed for the online services, rather than the extended time to develop and test either a separate dedicated local only search subsystem or extend the existing search subsystem to handle online and offline and combine the results..

It stated in the release thread when it was added that it was to be a temporary limitation to be removed in a later release.

Haven’t read all 85 pages….My music library, once accessible, now not for 4+ months. Have spent hours on the phone with both Sonos folks and Apple techs to no avail. 8000 songs on my Mac laptop purchased via original cds then downloaded plus iTunes songs purchased individually not selectable/playable. My playlists still exist but now have a ‘.m4a’ extension on every song resulting in ‘unable to play…..’, not there before the May software debacle. I just want access to my music that I purchased, downloaded and had access to for years , that worked seamlessly pre-May. Furious.

We had a power outage a couple days ago; after which nothing worked in the Sonos app and phonos+ wasn’t able to help.

I decided to take the plunge and download the latest app update, then update the system when prompted in the app. 

At long last Sonos playlists display and will play in the Sonos app. Phonos+ doesn’t do anything, but isn’t needed either.

Oddly, everything is slooooow. It takes a few minutes after I display playlists or select a playlist before album art will fill in, if it ever does. The same old quirks remain, like defaulting to the top of the queue, that’s still there and still annoying but not disabling.

But it’s progress. Is there any more recent indication from Sonos if and when ‘queue editing’ and saving new Sonos playlists will return? I assume the app remains very much a work in progress.