The New Sonos App and Future Feature Updates

I feel the need to add my voice to the multitude of complaints from end users of Sonos products.

1. The release of the most recent app was not communicated effectively (if at all) to end users. Auto update is set automatically for most people, and automatically installing an app on your phone which removes huge swathes of functionality is appalling. The inability to easily reverse to an earlier version is also shocking.
2. The App UX/GUI is atrocious. It’s ugly and seems to be jumping on the bandwagon of other UIs (Windows 11) which is just as bad. It isn’t intuitive, it takes longer to do or find anything, and there are far too many large banners and bars crowding out the information we want.
3. The new app is incredibly slow and laggy. This is probably because Sonos is now pushing everything through their cloud to deliver it back to us.
4. Which brings me on to my next point: I don’t really care for an “amazing” web app. I want to control my Sonos system locally. Why send all of my data up to a cloud server somewhere only to send it back? That is completely illogical.
5. Missing functionality - How can you release an app that suddenly removes functionality that a lot of us use. I bought Sonos to be able to play my large collection of FLAC music stored on my local server. I listen to BBC Radio. I rarely use Spotify. I NEVER user Sonos Radio. I want to be able to set my alarms to wake up to in the morning. I want to edit my playlist and my queue. The basics of what a player should give you.
6. For goodness sake, give us the ability to remove Sonos Radio from our systems. Just because it’s yours, doesn’t mean we want it. We bought the hardware and the ability to use it, not to provide you with another marketing base.
7. There is “Courage” and there is “Stupidity”. Courage is doing something brave in the face of the unknown. If the CEO of Sonos thinks they were doing something courageous, then what the hell are they doing in charge, because the release of a half-baked, ugly, completely redesigned and rewritten application without sufficient warning or providing an alternative to end users is plain-stupid. I’ve been in the IT business for over 25 years, and as a Project Manager, I would have quit before I let this mess go public.
8. Give me a guarantee that any firmware updates to my Sonos systems won’t essentially brick my system and force me to upgrade to the new version 80 app. I have lost all trust in Sonos to deliver what I need which is a locally managed sound system with access to local music.

After investing over £1000 in a Sonos system, I can almost feel a class action coming on because this move by Sonos is essentially causing perfectly excellent hardware to become unusable through idiotic software updates.

I just got a request for a firmware update, since it’s a black box for me, can you guarantee that this software update will still make it possible to use Subsonic/Airsonic/Bonob on the 16.X Android app ?

Do you even care for self hosting users, I get no answers on that topic no matter how hard I’m looking.

Don’t install it you will be forced to install the new one and you won’t be able to rollback the old one 

Oh **** it’s awful,  this update will basically brick my system. Thanks for the heads up !

Edit : So I get censored by a mod in a matter of minutes but it has been days that I’m waiting for customer support ? Okay.

The “Community Code of Conduct” isn’t even accessible when logged off…

This is a bad joke.

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

Unfortunately, that is well and truly not what happened. For many others and me, reliability has significantly decreased, performance is terrible and it access to music is a lot slower. Please, please fix this or allow us to somehow roll back to a working version of the app.

Unfortunately I had the app on an auto update so now find myself having to use it and so far not impressed!

Appreciate that things change but not always for the better!

Here are a few things I feedback

Search - in old app I could search in the screen my speaker was playing - now have to click back twice to home screen to search next choice . Not streamlined 

Volume control - in old app when room grouping made one click on the volume slide brought up all volume settings for group Not in new app - have to now click back into the group setting to control Not streamlined 

The old bottom bar with link to home, rooms, and settings was streamlined and worked!!

Equally frustrating is the length of time taking to update my speakers to the new app.Done 4 another 9 to go - perhaps need to go mow the lawn.

I find it very coincidental that my Playbase in the master bedroom has audio skip issues from both the optical input and streaming (Spotify) after the software update last week, and now the Play:5 Gen 2 in my piano room is having streaming skip issues.  Additionally, my Beam in the keeping room didn’t automatically start playing a Spotify playlist that I use to help time my kids’ breakfast period so that they don’t miss the bus, and I couldn’t connect to it to play some thing.  All of my Sonos speakers, Amp, and Port are on Ethernet, so this should not be a network issue because I’m having zero issues with non-Sonos devices.  I have to keep the old app on my iPad because my iPhone has the new app already.  Sonos needs to fix this, or I will switch to another brand.

Obviously this app was delivered prematurely. I am no longer able to use my two Play 5 speakers that I paid good money for...$399. Each

I did manage to speak to someone in the beginning of this fiasco...little to no help...

Apparently I can play my 2 Play 5's speakers on sonos 1...Sonos 1 does not support my other 3 speakers ...oh!!! but I can play the other 3 on the new app!! ….great...if I want to listen to 2 different stations at the same time!!

😖😡

Yeah, I'm old enough to remember when software wasn't beta tested on customers.  Worse still, beta testing a new version while at the same time removing access to a perfectly functional previous version.

Honestly. I can't see how pissing off your customer base is a sound business strategy.

Usually companies ask their customers if they want to be in the Beta and offer an exit if they want out. Not with sonos!