The new app is GARBAGE

I can't agree with you more. I have no idea how this could have past the Beta stage. Sonos is usually pretty good with things like this. No one likes change but I've used this app extensively now and it is extremely frustrating and non-intuitive. I sure hope they are rushing to fix this. It's so bad I think Sonos should go against anything they've ever done and revert to an older version if this thing isn't fixed in the next few weeks. I've become so frustrated that I am using the system significantly less.

I've gotten used to it, but I agree it is less intuitive and took quite some time for me to cool off about it. It also usually takes more steps for basic functions. It really is a complete shift in thinking/executing what you want to do. You need to, in order, make choices about the "Where", then move to the "What" in terms of playing music. This is counter-intuitive since by and large anyone's first thought is about "What" should play before the "Where".

I don't hate it as I did to begin with, but then again, I've found myself using the Sonos controller app on my PC laptop (which is largely unchanged) far more recently.

We must approach things differently. I rarely have to ask the question 'where?', just ''where am I?'

In fact..... you cannot hit 'Play' on your choice of music until you have decided where you want it to play. The choice of music cannot be assigned anywhere. And what if you want one thing and someone else wants a different track in the room they are in? If it were music first, in a multiroom, muti-user system, you would have to go music - room -music to get it going. Is that intuitive? I'm in the Living Room, so I select Living Room. Then I put some music on. I cannot see what is unintuitive about that..

But if you really prefer your way...

1. Tap Browse or Search (say) on the nav bar, and select an album (say)
2. Tap the Rooms button, and when you have chosen your room, tap it.
3. Tap Browse or Search again
4. Tap Play All

Music - room - music, but it is still pretty quick

At the end of the day the new interface is more taps and swipes to achieve the same end-result, and the layout is comparably unintuitive. I'd not really asked about or discussed any of this with my fiance until this evening when I simply asked for the first time "have you updated and been using the new Sonos app on your iPhone?" ... to which she replied "yeah... what the heck did they do to it? It's really confusing."

But if you really prefer your way...

1. Tap Browse or Search (say) on the nav bar, and select an album (say)
2. Tap the Rooms button, and when you have chosen your room, tap it.
3. Tap Browse or Search again
4. Tap Play All

Music - room - music, but it is still pretty quick

This works for Music Library but not other selections, such as Pandora radio.

But again, the new UI is "fine" to me, just not quite as functional. I can't identify any way that it is actually better, personally.
Previously, in the prior UI, both PC/Mac applications, as well as mobile/tablet apps, the music source, speaker groups, and now-playing/queue sections were all located in very different logical areas of the app and always accessible the same way. Now all of these are access from the same Nav "toolbar" below, which is not always present and returning to it is not always done in the same way. It's simply more swipes and taps, and they're not always the same swipes and taps. It isn't the end of the world, and it isn't inconvenient, but it is lateral step at best as far as I'm concerned, and not a step forward.
It does look nice.

Back to my fiance... I've mentioned elsewhere that the downward swipe gesture to return to the toolbar from the Now playing screen was a huge help once I discovered (from a comment here). I didn't mention it to her until this evening and she hadn't found it either and was glad to know about it. She's 10 years younger than me - phone apps are a part of her DNA and she'd not found it.

May I ask. Do you use a phone or tablet as main controller?

May I ask. Do you use a phone or tablet as main controller?

Both, depending on what's nearest. 🙂 We've an older iPad always on the coffee table and our phones (as they are) are usually nearby. But I most often (moreso recently) use the PC controller which I find the best overall still. Why do you ask?
(My fiance has and still does usually use her iPhone).

May I ask. Do you use a phone or tablet as main controller?

Both, depending on what's nearest. 🙂 We've an older iPad always on the coffee table and our phones (as they are) are usually nearby. But I most often (moreso recently) use the PC controller which I find the best overall still.
(My fiance has and still does usually use her iPhone).OK thanks. I can understand your comments better if used to the tablet app, but I don't think the phone version has ever had everything on view, there just isn't room.
If you pick room first, then it's easy, which has always seemed more logical to me.
The sequence I gave seems to work for all my music sources though.
As an alternative to swipe down, there is the down arrow top left. In fact this signals swipe down. I used swipe down a lot in the previous app, this is not new.
I still respect your right to prefer the previous app!