Password to avoid guests changing music

Why did you give him your wifi password?

Hi John, he got it from the Router in the hall way.

I will have a look at the router
Thanks

Take the plastic card off the back, assuming there's one there.

I own a restaurant and use Sonos and our wireless is available to the public for use. I am going to have to get another router and set up Sonos on it because all my staff have downloaded the app and change the music. No, they don't have the authority to, but policing it is a pain. Would be so much easier if Sonos did have password protection, just my 2 cents. I don't know why this is such a big deal.

I own a restaurant and use Sonos and our wireless is available to the public for use. I am going to have to get another router and set up Sonos on it because all my staff have downloaded the app and change the music. No, they don't have the authority to, but policing it is a pain. Would be so much easier if Sonos did have password protection, just my 2 cents. I don't know why this is such a big deal.

Most routers allow you to set up both a private and a public or "Guest" WiFi. If your guests/staff have access to your private WiFi account, I would be far more concerned about them having access to your local LAN than being able to change the music on Sonos. Any documents, pictures, invoicing programs, etc. you have on your LAN will be exposed to anyone who has access. For your own security, get your guests and staff on a guest account and keep your private WiFi private.

I don't have time to read the entire thread here. But from what I have read the most fundamental reasoning for password protection or pins for device access have been overlooked. In my house I share with my not so technical flatmate, in our common areas of the house we have sonos. But in both our bed rooms and bathrooms we also have sonos speakers. In addition to this both our guests rooms have a similar set up. Lovely setup. That is until someone comes home 3am in the morning and makes a mistake and music full blast into your bedroom. In the past 3 weeks this has happened to me twice and has really strained my relationship with my house mate and our guests. This is a nightmare. We are not network guys. Does not seem reasonable that we would need 4 or more segmented networks to protect from this when a simple pin access number could be used to limit access to the private speakers versus the common area ones. We also have chromecasts in all the same areas and their simple pin access overcomes these problems from people casting content into my room.
This is a big deal. I love the system in every single way except this one omission. I can't believe that many havnt suffered this problem, been blasted in the middle of the night accidentally by a valid user of the system. Another small side effect is I listen to pod casts in my bathroom speaker. I just control playback with the hardware switch. But if someone takes over that speaker, I lose my place in my podcast.
Look again, I really hope someone is still taking this thread seriously. I have 25 sonos units (playbars/play5-1/connect amp etc) not cheap. If there is some solution without having to get a network specialist in to firewall each private zone I would love to hear about it. Amazingly enough this was the last technical issue I expected to have with the sonos system. I made the biggest common mistake people make, I just assumed zones/protection would not be a problem. I am so passionate about this, I want to just keep writing. But I will stop and hope someone is actually listening and understanding the negative effect this is having on my relationships in our house.

I think the trouble is it is not a case of simple pin. In your case it would need to be pin for Each Sonos unit and then the ability to store different accounts, plus an admin account.

So whilst I can see your need I think the task would take some considerable work so unless it is being worked on current it would be quite some time before it were to appear. Probably after you current situation has been resolved by other means 😞

@bockersjv, thanks for your reply. I understand for the users looking for a security solution to this problem a admin portion of the app would be required. But to stop accidental access to specific speakers could be an easier job. But given sonos penetration in both homes and commercial spaces you think that this would be a given.
Each unit has a MAC address already (unique addressable id) , so you would think something could be done with this. Or the other way, you supply a list of MAC address's (white list) of the devices that are able to add a speaker to a group. It would seem a single higher level other than groups is required, zones (a group of groups). And the ability to grant the zones permissions in one way or another. This is a basic fundamental that almost everything authorisation on our devices uses. Workgroups/user etc...sure there are other auth types, but just looking for some basic commonsense way here. The accidental use case does not need to be un-hackable.

I can see why this is a problem for a lot of people, but I can also see why it would create some issues with the product as well.

First, although it would add features to the system, it would also make it more complex. Even if it is a one time setup, it would deter a lot of customers sense something really easy now became complex.

Second, I don't think the framework of the software is setup to accommodate this very well. I am guessing here, but from my experience, a change like this wouldn't be adding code in a spot or two, but a major rewrite of existing code. You'd have to break it and rebuild it. That means that what currently works without issue might be a little buggy. Some of the older hardware not be able to accommodate the change very well. I don't know, still guessing here.

That said though, I think I would welcome an implementation of user profiles. As suggested, a user profile could have access to specific zones. That way, a kid's profile would not be able turn on music in the parents bedroom. A guest would only have access to a zones setup for a guest profile. I can see myself utilizing this as I don't want my kids setting music in my bedroom (not that they would anyway). I also would allow guest to set music in the zone outside, but nothing inside.

But if you're going to do that, why not also set a profile for music sources? Your kids will only access sources they need, while I can have my embarrassing Celine Dion playlist in private. Perhaps guest only have access to basic radio stations.

So your flatmate couldn't turn on the music in your room, play your music, or set your queue. I would be as if it user profile sees an entirely different Sonos system.

To be clear, I see this as somewhat of a pipe dream. I don't know that this could be done on the existing hardware, and perhaps may need to be some sort of cloud setup. I also think it will be less necessary, and also less enforceable with voice control (how do you stop someone from speaking?) coming soon.

In the end, given that I don't know what I don't know, I would opt to leave it up to Sonos to make the best choices for features like this. They know what can be done in their framework and obviously put more effort into considering the user experience than I do.

As someone who just setup their first Sonos system on an Enterprise network I can honestly say that once you configure your environment correctly, which Sonos is severely lacking in documenation for those kinds of setups, the system itself sounds fantastic.

But if Sonos ever wants these to be user friendly in large scale networks they need to implement a simple password process to take control of a discovered Sonos system. This is the systems only flaw that I have found.

Yes you can setup special SSID's just for system to use but if you want users to be able to discover and control the system from a completely different network you are opening up that system to be controlled by other users. Can you segment the networks so you can only control the Sonos from a particular subnet or SSID....yes. But you shouldn't have to create 3 networks (1 for general users, 1 for the sonos system and 1 more for Sonos control). That is a completely unrealistic request when Sonos could just attach a password process for zone/system control upon discovery.

For those of you saying that adding a password to control a sonos system is just adding complexity to a system that is supposed to be easy to use....a user has to enter a password to jump on a separate SSID setup for sonos control, or enter a password to join a wireless network to begin with anyway so that argument doesn't hold water. For those of you saying it would be difficult for Sonos to implement that's total BS. They systems themselves are already able to do WPA2-PSK authentication to be able to join wireless networks so implementing an access password to take control of a system is something they should be able to do with a firmware update.

Get to work Sonos! You've created a great sounding wireless speaker system. Now make it so these systems can securely be used in all kinds of networks and not just in your home.

Possibility of this happening just to accommodate Enterprise networks - Zero.