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Hello

Just wanted to pass along my impression of the Sonos App (fka S2) seven (7) months later. Before I continue let’s get this said and out of the way…The initial Sonos App release in May 2024 caused a significant amount of pain and anguish for many loyal Sonos customers. It most likely cost Sonos new customers as well. 🤔

I’m sure you can find many threads in this community attesting to the debacle Sonos brought upon themselves by releasing an unfinished product. It’s going to take time for Sonos to regain the complete trust and confidence of its customer base (as well as attract new customers) regarding their commitment to provide an outstanding product in both hardware and software.

Having acknowledged the above I can say unequivocally that the Sonos App; TODAY is performing as well as its predecessor and brought along some welcome improvements. I have installed three (3) Arc Ultras with subs and surrounds using Era 100’s or 300’s without incident. I have used Advanced Trueplay on all setups. Alexa and Sonos voice assistants are installed and working as expected. My streaming services of Apple Music, Amazon Music, SiriusXM and Tidal are great. I’m able to create and/or see thumbnails of favorites and recently played. Music queues are functioning properly as is AirPlay 2. I’m not experiencing drops when playing music (although I attribute such to network issues).

The App is not perfect by any stretch of the imagination; but I’ve never found one that is…100% perfect/bullet proof. Can improvements still be made…absolutely. However, Software/App development is never finished. It’s always a work in progress to the next level. 

The fact that the Sonos App is iOS and Android capable; as well as cross-platform within those OS’s, has not been loss on me. Please know that my primary OS is iOS (iPhone 15 Pro Max running 18.1.1). However, I have an Android tablet for comparison and testing (Samsung Galaxy Tab A9+ running Android v14_UI v6.1). For further disclosure I have thirty-one (31) Sonos Units. My network is an Asus AiMesh configured using three (3) Asus ZenWi-Fi Pro ET 12’s on a wired backhaul. My Sonos system is very stable.

Again as of TODAY the Sonos App performs almost identically in iOS and Android in terms of looks and overall User Interface. There are a few differences that are to be expected in competing OS platforms such as TruePlay for my Fives in stereo pair that is available in iOS; but not Android. 

In closing let me say that issues you may have with the Sonos App as of TODAY (regardless of OS) can be corrected. However, you will have to be willing to face a few hard facts that not all issues are the fault of the Sonos App. A few that come to mind are lack of knowledge by the End-User, network issues and trying to make Sonos work in unconventional ways. The good news is that aforementioned can be resolved in over ninety percent (90%) of the posts I see via Community help and/or Sonos Tech Support. 

Enjoy this Holiday Season and your Sonos!

I have to respectfully disagree. Seven months later and the new app is still very buggy. The most annoying bug is when settings don’t change without having to do multiple app restarts. Last night I had to restart the app twice just to enable/disable the Loudness setting on my Arc setup. Today, I restarted the app because changing the volume on my Arc didn’t register on the app. Recently I have been using the Soro widget more because it is more reliable than adjusting settings within the Sonos app.

Is there something in my system/network that is causing the app to be this buggy? Possibly. But I didn’t experience any of these issues with the old S2 app.

Other than the bugs, there are a few useful features from the old app that have still not returned:

  • Shortcut to the EQ settings on the Now Playing screen

  • “HD” and “Hi-Res” icons on the Now Playing screen when streaming lossless or hi-res lossless music from your local music library

  • Under About My System, the audio format displayed after “Audio In:” while playing TV audio

  • Alphabetical search/quick scroll feature for local music libraries

These features aren’t vital, but there is a reason why they existed on the old app. They made the Sonos app more user-friendly and more enjoyable to use.

I love Sonos and their products, and I am not as angry about the app fiasco as many users seem to be. But it has been seven months. If you gave me a choice to use the old S2 app or the new app, I would choose the old S2 app in a heartbeat.

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