The New Sonos App and Future Feature Updates

On day one I realised this was a train wreck of the worst kind. Apart from its inability to find the speakers, it is confusing to use, and I find myself lost in the screens not knowing where I am or the best way to get back.

I did email the CEO but got no response, not even an automatic reply.

One of the first lessons a software developer learns is to have a roll back procedure. Please, please give me an easy route back to V.2. 

Why not change the message to “Your Sonos system is up to date but not functioning. Pleas check back in mid-June.”

 

I posted this tongue in cheek reply because like many Mac desktop/iPhone users who use their local library as their primary if not only source for music, Sonos won’t connect with my Mac’s Music folder rendering the system useless. I’ve tried every work around posted so far and no joy, so I’m listening to my entire music library on my Ultimate Ears speakers using all the functions I want and thoroughly enjoying my music library. Sonos has made this experience so absurd that it’s now comical - hence the post above. Your results may vary.

A work around is to stream from the Music app via airplay to your Sonos speakers.  Once you get a zone active you can then share it with the other zones. If you have the Apple Remote app this can become less clumsy.  Or you can use the new Sonos app to control zones once you’ve started the streaming from your Mac. 
 

I started doing this once Sonos stopped syncing my apple playlists years ago and it still works. Suboptimal but better than not accessing your music library on Sonos. 

Really? - I find the new App really simple to understand and navigate around it - much simpler than the old S2 App. I appreciate there are some missing features and bugs (that are being worked on by Sonos) but the App design couldn’t be any more simple than it is.

This new SONOS app refuses to work for me at all. It balks because I do not want to update my SONOS speaker firmware. I failed to find an option to skip this message and thus lost all app functionality.

With the disaster move from S1 to S2 and Sonos back stabbing try to kick out all the old S1 systems, I highly distrust ANY of the SONOS firmware updates. Before I update the firmware, I give it a few week or month and check if there are any ugly side effects reported by the community. Reading the white washed release notes of SONOS does not help so this “wait and see” is my fallback position. BTW “wait and see” is a system operators best practice.

Looking at the official SONOS guidance “create a more personalized and effortless listening experience” I am getting even more suspicions. “Personalized” always means some body wants my usage data to run through some algorithm and present me some kind of obscure result with some advertisement sprinkled into it. Naturally, that data can also be sold to companies that want to know when I heard what music in my bedroom. And violá, the new app has removed all user made favorites and only provides the SONOS ones.

Either SONOS brings back the feature scope I have purchased my SOSONS speaker with, or I can only use those speakers via Airplay2. And then I fail to see any reason why I should not open up to other smart speakers in the market that can do Airplay2 as well. With the removal of support for the loudness buttons of my iPhone in the SONOS app, I have used mostly Airplay2 anyway. So much for this announced “effortless listening experience”.

@Ken_Griffiths The app is very simple. So simple in fact that virtually nothing of use actually works. Pleased for you that you like it. I prefer, you know, for things to work. Properly.

Pretty much can’t understand how anyone can actually say it’s simple to understand when the app is missing 3/4s of things you might need see/use to evaluate.

i do wonder though why I can’t put my favorites in any order I like, you can’t move them in the list, just delete… yep simple but no flexibility at all.

anyways, will wait at least another month to give a simplicity evaluation, when all the missing useful bits actually return. Roll on end of June.

The new app is easy to use only because the functionality is almost nil.  The lack of software quality control is almost as shocking as the lack of management that contributed to this complete failure of SONOS to support it’s customers.  Fix it by rolling your app back and re releasing it ASAP.

Apart from the known ‘exhaustively mentioned’ missing elements… both new Sonos Apps are just fine here. All speakers and services are still playing music & TV audio, installed subscription services and my SMBv2 NAS library is working and no issues seen with voice assistant services (Alexa in my case).

… a little slow to launch from a fully closed state, but apart from some optimisation, I find the App simple to navigate and use and undoubtedly it’s going to get better with each new update. 

Unlike some, my (Sonos) glass remains ‘full’, rather than ‘half empty’. 

It is, what it is and I can’t see the (Standstill-2) S2 App making a reappearance and I certainly don’t want to see Sonos fail otherwise we may all end up with paperweights around our Home. 

I’ll just wait patiently for any App updates and will be adding the new Ace headphones to my setup too in the not too distant future, as the Sonos hardware build quality and sound have me hooked, moreso than a software controller ‘remote’ App.

Local music library control or even awareness that there is even a local music library is incredibly flaky.

When I open the app it completely fails to realise that there is a local library attached. If I click on the Edit Home button then again I can’t see ‘Your Sources’ within the list. However, 5-10 seconds after I do this, the app will belatedly realise that the music library exists and add the ‘Your Sources’ section to the home page.

So apologies Mr Sonos but even your fixes are a bit rubbish, May need to go back to the drawing board again on this one

And also a round of thanks to you Keith for attempting to communicate around the stupidity of what’s been done here. And similar to the software devs, who I’m sure have had way more enjoyable Mays than this one

Much less kudos to the execs who came up with this brainwave