The New Sonos App and Future Feature Updates

I had a feeling Sonos might try and force an update after their lack of remorse and refusal to roll back the app, so have made sure I have signed out of their server on all of my apps, just in case. Appears that was a wise move. Originally went to the new app, found it made my speakers useless, spent a large amount of time on an app rollback ,once working again, then signed out ‘just in case’ as I said.

You also need to make sure that auto updates are off on the iphone as well as the auto updates in the Sonos app, and Don’t click ‘update all’ on the iphone apps in the app store.

Disaster.  They have ruined the app and I can’t access any of my imported play lists.   Get it right before you launch.  You have ruined your brand.  
 

brutal.  

I had autoupdate turned off in the Sonos app on my phone. I never ‘update all’ in the app store. I’ve studiously avoided the Sonos update on my phone for weeks, after I had mistakenly updated the app on my tablet. It’s as though Sonos hacked my phone. My network security sent notifications that it was blocking ‘suspicious incoming’ from Sonos for days. I guess Sonos figured out a way around it.

I spent considerable time with Sonos support yesterday… via chat, where I started as number 30 in line. Their only ‘fix’ was a further update, which I broke down and did.

Now I can actually create a queue, although it cannot be saved as a playlist. Unfortunately, half the time the queue will fail to load and I’ll get error messages. Often the app won’t find one or two of my three stereo pairs. Volume control works intermittently. Virtually all functions are sluggish. I honestly don’t know and don’t much care whether the buzzers and bells like trueplay work… I’m not gonna sweat the small stuff when the basics are still nonfunctional.

The new interface is abysmal. It’s cluttered and difficult to read. Searches by artist fail to find albums and tracks I know are there. Quite a few times, I had to resort to google, find an artist’s discography, get the exact title and return to Sonos to search the album or track by title. 

And still no sign of the playlists I’d saved over the course of a decade; and no way to create new playlists. 

It’s a fiasco. This wouldn’t pass muster as a beta testing version of a new app. And we’re all being force-fed the little monster. What really ticks me off are the damn popup ads, every time I open the app, touting their new headphones and the ‘Roam2’… both answers to questions nobody asked outside of a Sonos corporate conference room.

Other than ‘The New Coke,’ I can’t remember another time a business so thoroughly trashed its own brand.  It’s like corporate seppuku.

Are your ipad and phone using the same apple id ? as the app version will be the same for any devices using that Id. If you update it on one of them, it will propagate to the other devices. Most of us found that as soon as you updated one device all the rest failed to work at all, until you downloaded the new version.

However, provided you have experience of IT systems, reverting has been achieved. Have a look at the following thread 

it provides some pointers on how to get there. It does require use of a proxy server and it is advisable to understand the behaviour of this type of system before attempting it.  If you decide to do it and want the app build version number I can give you the one I used if you need it, just PM me on here. On a further note Charles is not a person.

Once back to where I wanted and configured, I logged the app out of sonos.com in the app settings.

Most of my over 800 CDs are stored locally on my NAS drive and I perform routine backups. I recently was able to restore my music directory by accident. But as a result, I have a lot of duplicates in various playlists that I have to start rearranging. Please don’t introduce any more major bugs in the future updates. I think the tiles are very graphic intensive and are affecting the overall response time of the app. 

jennydeione, I’m all thumbs when it comes to IT stuff; which was the attraction of Sonos to begin with. It was marketed as an entrée to digital music for dummies who weren’t inclined to go beyond plugging some hardware into an AC socket and downloading an app to run the hardware.

That’s pretty much all that was required, and suddenly I had access to a vast library of music, much of which I had purchased on vinyl and CDs but never gotten around to playing after the equipment to play them had been stashed in storage.

I really enjoyed using my Sonos system for quite a few years and perhaps foolishly assumed I could continue to do so without going back to college (at age 70) to study computer science.

That should have been a safe assumption… and it was until some damn executives and tech nerds decided to screw around and fix what wasn’t broken.

They’re like kids who decided to disassemble a watch and now can’t figure out how to put it back together. Only this watch belongs to about a million people.

Not true… I have 2 ipads, both with the same id, one I updated, saw the mess, and didnt update the other, and that one still uses the old version app.

You have to make sure that “Automatically download apps purchased on your other Apple devices” is off

BRAVO @chambolle, your post above is cogent and on the money! I live and work in Silicon Valley and I am constantly reminding people that they must think about Normal People such as yourself.

Most unfortunately, this entire Sonos “new app” episode is a case study in how not to do things for Normal People.