Why is it not possible to play directly from my Android phone anymore

This drives me nuts! Why would I ever again buy Sonos products when they remove essential features like this? I don’t subscribe to a music streaming service, and the Sonos devices I have (Arc and Sonos Ones) don’t have bluetooth. The only solutions offered are to subscribe to streaming or invest in NAS - so spend more money to replace the storage my phone does just fine. Effectively Sonos has just decided to deny me access to my music. Thanks!

And if Google or Apple tell you you are in violation of their rules and must remove the functionality or be removed from their store, do you still maintain that functionality?  

Right, but specific to what was of great utility for me and other users was the capability of playing our library from our phone. Desktop/laptop/NAS solutions don’t cover this unfortunately. 

It seems challenging to me to lay the responsibility for that removal of access on mobile devices that run mobile operating systems at the feet of Sonos. 

Perhaps, but their communication/clarity on this has been awful and judging from so many more complaints on the issue I think they could have done a far better job of informing their users. I started skimming through this forum to get more info on the actual root cause and that’s not completely clear either, just some . In any case, I came here to voice my displeasure, am happy to find I am by no means alone with this frustration, and now understand Sonos’s limitations to guide my next purchases.

Your government bans the use of diesel. Local gas stations stop carrying it. Is it correct to lay the blame on the local station? Or should you blame the government who banned the use? 

That’s exactly the same as what we’re experiencing here. The Android OS has banned the use of their devices as a local drive, affecting Sonos, among some others, and following in the footsteps of Apple, who banned the same thing a couple of years ago. And yet we seem to be blaming Sonos for this change.

I’m not sure this change would have been something Sonos was in favor of, I have heard rumors of them fighting with Apple about it (my ‘source’ is no longer valid, so I don’t know about discussions with the Android folks, but it seems likely). 

Is it frustrating? Sure. Can we all wish the OS makers didn’t have to make this choice, and force Sonos to alter their connection methods? Absolutely. 

I went through this issue a couple of years ago with iOS. Is it life changing? Not to me, it just required a relatively minor change in my habits. I still use Bluetooth to communicate with my Roam, and group it with my other Sonos speakers to play content from my iPad or iPhone. I’ve moved my library to other places (an NAS) for normal playback, especially when my mobile devices are not on the same LAN as the Sonos is. 

So that would mean "nobody" said they aren't supporting local libraries.  Gotcha.

The firmware on the devices is what has changed this - the app is just a remote to the devices.

It used to be nice and simple to connect to a Sonos system and play music directly from my Samsung phone; being limited by the host’s music library or being forced to use another godforsaken streaming service is a big step backward.

Sad to see Sonos not adapting to Google’s changes and removing features and functionality. When my company’s software is broken by new iOS or Android requirements we patch and update the code to maintain functionality. Sonos is pitifully doing the opposite.

Completely agree with the above angry comments.  The Sonos app has always been known as one of the biggest bag of b******* ever programmed and now they have tampered with it even further to make it impossible to play the songs I own from the phone that I own to the speakers that I own.  I have spent literally thousands on this piece of * over fifteen years and they cannot resist every opportunity to ruin people’s experiences with they system.

*Moderator Note: Modified in accordance with the Community Code of Conduct.*

I’d be surprised if the music library went away, there are enough customers that have content not available via streaming that would be quite unhappy.

Remain a very low priority, probably.

I do not think anybody has put a positive spin on the end tp playing music that's on your phone, be it from Android recently or from an iPhone years ago. For many users this has not been a good experience.  It's just that some believe that they are not being lied to when Sonos says it is unavoidable. Others keep going back to the past. 

But why is everyone blaming Sonos when, by all accounts, it’s Google that has discontinued a feature that Sonos was making use of? Or are you agreeing you should/will/have complained to Google? 

And when Android updates their OS, even devices with older Sonos OS’s, this feature will stop working. It’s the Google/Android OS that is forcing this change. Just like when Apple changed iOS and broke ‘on this device’ playback from all iOS devices. 

You could, I suppose, never update either your old Sonos software and your Android software, and keep both of them unchanged in perpetuity.