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I’ve been using Sonos for 5+ years. Besides setting up your system, I am confused about what is the Sonos App for? 

My use case is really basic. I would like to see at a glance what is playing on all my speakers. Help me easily combine speakers for the source I want. But it’s clear this is not the top use case for the app. 

What does everyone use the app for? What is the user interface optimized for?

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FWIW: here is my experience trying to use the app for my use case above:

When I launch the app, it shows a recently played that’s always empty.

My connected services (Apple Music & Spotify) - the Sonos interface takes more taps to get to the playlist and album with the nested menus. It also slower since it doesn’t seem to cache locally. So I usually have the music already playing from Apple Music or Spotify.

My sources: which only shows the TV. I don’t understand the user value to start from the Sonos app for external sources. It doesn’t allow me to control my TV. 

Floating Play Bar - Defaults to one of the speakers. It’s not obvious how to get to other speakers. I often just tap on it which triggers the Now Playing view. Then I tap on the new Speaker icon on the right side of the bar (which is not standard and always takes me a min to go from books > speakers), it shows other speakers that I can combine with the default speaker (which is not what I want).  Then I finally notice the little gray bar at the top of the panel signaling maybe this panel is swippable. At last I found the other speakers. 

 

 

 

As you have stated in your last paragraph, to quickly see what is playing in all your rooms, swipe up on the bar in the Now Playing room at the bottom and you can scroll through all the rooms.  You can then tap on a room to make it the Now Playing room. After that, any music selections will play in the Now Playing room.