Sonos Staff

The New Sonos App and Future Feature Updates

Forum|Forum|2 years ago
May 11, 2024
2256 replies
156696 views

Hey all, today we're sharing a message from our chief innovation officer, Nick Millington in the announcement here. Going forwards we will update that topic and we therefore close this one for further replies.

We set out to create a more personalized and effortless listening experience with the updated Sonos app. It was rebuilt from the ground up to ensure it could support future innovation in the years to come. For its initial rollout, we focused on how we could answer some of the most common requests from our customers, including increased reliability, performance, and faster access to music.

Many of you have shared valuable feedback on both the improvements that have made your experience better, as well as the areas where we fell short. We are listening to all of your comments and working to address them as quickly as possible. Over the coming weeks, we will reintroduce the below features, while fixing bugs and performance issues. Thank you for your engagement and we look forward to building upon this first step to create a listening experience that meets everyone’s needs.

Available now

To access these changes, check for updates in the iOS / Android app store to download the latest version of the Sonos app. Make sure your Sonos products are also up to date.

Last updated: Oct 28, 2024. See release notes.

The update has the following version numbers:

80.11.38 - iOS
80.11.32 - Android

In this update:

Support for the all-new Arc Ultra soundbar and Sub 4
Music library improvements*
Improvements to product setup
Improved performance when browsing content in Home and in Browse on Android
Improvements to multi-system support on iOS
Fixes for multiple settings including Bluetooth display, EQ, and Sub bonding on iOS
The ability to schedule System Updates on iOS
Continued Voiceover improvements on iOS

* Requires player update - 81.1-58074 (or higher)

You can also follow along with updates in this article:

New Sonos App Update!

This topic has been closed for further comments. You can use the search bar to find a similar topic, or create a new one by clicking Create Topic at the top of the page.

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Parsnip62

Enthusiast II

I just play my local library compilation albums from ‘Folders/Compilations’… seems to work okay for me.

I don't have a Compilations folder.

Ken_Griffiths

I just play my local library compilation albums from ‘Folders/Compilations’… seems to work okay for me.

I don't have a Compilations folder.

Ah it might have been that you had not activated it previously then in the older S2 App - I think it can still be added in the Windows Desktop App IIRC. See old screenshot attached (taken from an S1 App, just as an example).

A

Alan_6

Prodigy II

It's just not acceptable.

Not acceptable but very “courageous” of them /s 🤣

You could use Plex for your local library as a workaround. If you have a NAS that supports it or spare hardware it’s somewhat easy to get up and running.

My understanding is that Plex doesn’t support 24bit files. And it probably means no local library browsing, search only (without Sonos desktop-and-3rd-party-but-not-mobile ability to jump instantly to “V” you can’t browse). But yeah, given Sonos’s disregard for people who own music, I’m expecting to have to find an alternative to the built-in Sonos server for local library access.

Ken_Griffiths

I don’t seem to have any difficulties finding compilation albums I’m looking for. The attached shows examples of two quick library searches to find some results from the compilations folder. Probably quicker than browsing the library, even with an A-Z index, er perhaps 🤔?

P

Parsnip62

Enthusiast II

I don’t seem to have any difficulties finding compilation albums I’m looking for. The attached shows examples of two quick library searches to find some results from the compilations folder. Probably quicker than browsing the library, even with an A-Z index, er perhaps 🤔?

With my use case, I often find what to listen to from my library by browsing / scrolling. This is on purpose because I don't always have an idea of what to listen to, and browsing gives me a reminder and prompt to listen to stuff which has fallen off my radar in recent years.

And I have a lot of compilations of various things. Scrolling through the album list and seeing the same album replicated for each track it contains is just painful. And very irritating.

Ken_Griffiths

With my use case, I often find what to listen to from my library by browsing / scrolling. This is on purpose because I don't always have an idea of what to listen to, and browsing gives me a reminder and prompt to listen to stuff which has fallen off my radar in recent years.

And I have a lot of compilations of various things. Scrolling through the album list and seeing the same album replicated for each track it contains is just painful. And very irritating.

Meanwhile you should be able to browse your compilations via the library Folder structure - it’s one entry per album/folder as per below screenshot (example) taken from my compilations folder… it doesn’t look as nice, but it’s a way to browse compilations. Or search albums in the library by a letter A, B, C etc. in the search facility.

P

Parsnip62

Enthusiast II

With my use case, I often find what to listen to from my library by browsing / scrolling. This is on purpose because I don't always have an idea of what to listen to, and browsing gives me a reminder and prompt to listen to stuff which has fallen off my radar in recent years.

And I have a lot of compilations of various things. Scrolling through the album list and seeing the same album replicated for each track it contains is just painful. And very irritating.

Meanwhile you should be able to browse your compilations via the library Folder structure - it’s one entry per album/folder as per below screenshot (example) taken from my compilations folder… it doesn’t look as nice, but it’s a way to browse compilations. Or search albums in the library by a letter A, B, C etc. in the search facility.

Appreciate that you're trying help, but the bottom line is that the app prevents me from doing from what I could before (again) and the workarounds are just that. They're not proper solutions nor reinstatements of recently functioning aspects of the UI.

Patience is wearing very thin.

Meanwhile, WiiM (I also have a mini) are releasing updates up to twice a week to their app, and they are introducing what used to be considered premium functionality for free. To products which cost a fraction of Sonos.

One company is moving forwards at great pace and the other is regressing beyond belief.

I'm actually starting to consider flogging my system but honestly, I wouldn't want to inflict it on anyone.

It's a mess.

almazri

Prodigy I

It's just not acceptable.

Not acceptable but very “courageous” of them /s 🤣

You could use Plex for your local library as a workaround. If you have a NAS that supports it or spare hardware it’s somewhat easy to get up and running.

My understanding is that Plex doesn’t support 24bit files. And it probably means no local library browsing, search only (without Sonos desktop-and-3rd-party-but-not-mobile ability to jump instantly to “V” you can’t browse). But yeah, given Sonos’s disregard for people who own music, I’m expecting to have to find an alternative to the built-in Sonos server for local library access.

I don’t know about the 24 bit files. But you can browse your library, no compilation bugs. There are no letters to jump quickly in any of the sonos services as far as I know, we still have to wait for Sonos to add this back, assuming the actually do as it’s not even on the roadmap.

There is Plex music app (Plexamp) that can cast to Sonos (airplay, not sure about Android) that has letter jumping and way better browsing options than Sonos. It might not be for you but worth checking out for sure as it makes the Sonos library seem incredibly antiquated.

As you mention looking at alternatives to the sonos library, I’ll also suggest Lyrion music server (recommended by another user here). It’s way better than Plex IMO but more complex to set up. Worth a look as well depending on how motivated you are :)

I

Ian_S

Prodigy III

I don’t seem to have any difficulties finding compilation albums I’m looking for. The attached shows examples of two quick library searches to find some results from the compilations folder. Probably quicker than browsing the library, even with an A-Z index, er perhaps 🤔?

It doesn’t look like you have re-indexed on the bad firmware, else the local library search doesn’t return just a single entry per compilation album as your screen shots suggest…

Also, how did you get local library to appear first?

A

Alan_6

Prodigy II

It's just not acceptable.

Not acceptable but very “courageous” of them /s 🤣

You could use Plex for your local library as a workaround. If you have a NAS that supports it or spare hardware it’s somewhat easy to get up and running.

My understanding is that Plex doesn’t support 24bit files. And it probably means no local library browsing, search only (without Sonos desktop-and-3rd-party-but-not-mobile ability to jump instantly to “V” you can’t browse). But yeah, given Sonos’s disregard for people who own music, I’m expecting to have to find an alternative to the built-in Sonos server for local library access.

I don’t know about the 24 bit files. But you can browse your library, no compilation bugs. There are no letters to jump quickly in any of the sonos services as far as I know, we still have to wait for Sonos to add this back, assuming the actually do as it’s not even on the roadmap.

There is Plex music app (Plexamp) that can cast to Sonos (airplay, not sure about Android) that has letter jumping and way better browsing options than Sonos. It might not be for you but worth checking out for sure as it makes the Sonos library seem incredibly antiquated.

As you mention looking at alternatives to the sonos library, I’ll also suggest Lyrion music server (recommended by another user here). It’s way better than Plex IMO but more complex to set up. Worth a look as well depending on how motivated you are :)

I’m guessing that browsing and the alphabetical index markers are low on the priority list / never to return, for the simple reason that while the local library is mostly identical to any other service (you stream music off a hard drive and across a network), there’s one key difference: scale. Browsing the whole library makes no sense for Spotify (millions of tracks/albums you don’t care about to scroll through) but a lot of sense for a local library (a few thousand albums, many of which you still care about, and a potentially manageable number of artists/albums starting with each letter).

Like many Sonos features I’ve taken for granted over the years (error logs and notifications, easy new-box system setup, favorites bookmarks, recently played, desktop controller) I’m expecting to have to get used to library browsing disappearing. Now if someone like Wiim starts taking the user experience seriously (I’m not impressed with the extremely basic UI on the one Wiim box I tried, but maybe they’ll improve) then my Sonos kit might find itself being replaced...

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