Sonos Staff

The New Sonos App and Future Feature Updates

Forum|Forum|2 years ago
May 11, 2024
2256 replies
156772 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.

Show previous replies

C

Coopecs

Lyricist II

I can’t get the Alexa set up to complete and I’m using an iPhone / iPad / Mac…. Interested to see on here that people are having success using an iPhone but it just won’t work for me at all. I now have 2 Sonos One speakers and a Beam Gen 2 with no Alexa on them. Do I scrap these and go back to using Echo devices?

I had similar issues 3 months ago and got around this by copying the URL into Firefox and completing the set up there, but this now longer works. Its appalling that Sonos has been aware of this problem for so long and not only have they not fixed it, they have made it WORSE! I have worked in IT for more than 30 years with a large Global company you will know if I named it, and if our code deployments were this buggy and useless, we’d be paying out in penalties and losing customers all over the place. Sonos need to prioritise the basics and stop mucking about with the pretty app interface. It’s no good if it looks nice but there’s nothing worth a damn under the surface and you’re pissing off all your customers because they can’t get the full benefit of the products they have paid hard earned money for. I’m really regretting moving to Sonos from Bose, and rather than my speakers being the source of pride and indication of sophistication and discerning taste they should be, they are a constant embarrassment that I would never in good conscience recommend to a friend.

C

Coopecs

Lyricist II

https://www.washingtonpost.com/technology/2024/05/17/sonos-new-app-update-problems/

T

timc995

Prominent Collaborator I

So, there was an update to the app on May 21. There were 10 items called out in the release notes, including “support for the all new Sonos Roam 2” (great for Sonos I guess, but useless to existing customers experiencing fatal system issues), and also “Added the ability to Search for content to use with an Alarm” (something so basic that it’s clear a true beta of the software was never performed).

The next update was 8 days later on May 29. That included only two items that Sonos noted in the release notes: “Fixed issues encountered when adding a product that is running older software” and “Fixed an issue where VoiceOver on iOS could not toggle switches in settings.”. Those two items remain the only apparent fixes released in the last 10 days.

Given the scale of issues reported here on this forum and elsewhere, and the reports of extremely long queues to get in touch with technical support, it seems to me that the pace of fixes/patches is extremely slow. In a situation like this, I would expect to see either very frequent updates to the app, or in the event Sonos prefers to have releases a week or so apart (as has happened so far) then I would expect those to be chock full of fixes. Failing that, at a minimum I would like to see a list of acknowledged problems, and a ranking or priority to each. There are many issues that have not even been acknowledged, meaning that users are left to find forums like this on which to compare notes and complain/commiserate.

On May 22, CEO Patrick Spence said “What I wish we would’ve done is probably communicate the roadmap a little more clearly.”

Now is as good a time as any to start.

T

that metal man

Enthusiast I

Continued improvements to navigation for visually-impaired customers: mid-June

Adding to queue and playing next: early June

Sleep timer: mid-June
Use the Sonos app for macOS or Windows or Sonos Voice Control to set sleep timers today.

Local music library search and playback: mid-June

Update WiFi settings: mid-June

Snooze alarms: TBD

This list remains so funny and embarrassing. Just basic functions, pretty much the things I used most in the old app. When are we getting any sort of acknowledgment of how bad this app rollout has been from the CEO or an official statement? How is this how this company works? It’s so embarrassing and pathetic.

I like to say, ‘CORE FEATURES’.

I work in IT development for a large online retailer, and to have a new UX feature set released without consultation, is unheard of.

If there aren’t sore backsides courtesy of the CEO’s boot, there should be.

M

Martin E Hansen

Contributor I

How about making the search function work. I can’t find any music at all. The app is totally useless !!!!

Y

Yorkshire_Kev

Avid Listener

Continued improvements to navigation for visually-impaired customers: mid-June

Adding to queue and playing next: early June

Sleep timer: mid-June
Use the Sonos app for macOS or Windows or Sonos Voice Control to set sleep timers today.

Local music library search and playback: mid-June

Update WiFi settings: mid-June

Snooze alarms: TBD

This list remains so funny and embarrassing. Just basic functions, pretty much the things I used most in the old app. When are we getting any sort of acknowledgment of how bad this app rollout has been from the CEO or an official statement? How is this how this company works? It’s so embarrassing and pathetic.

I like to say, ‘CORE FEATURES’.

I work in IT development for a large online retailer, and to have a new UX feature set released without consultation, is unheard of.

If there aren’t sore backsides courtesy of the CEO’s boot, there should be.

Far from me to suggest Sonos’ policies, but whoever signed that code off has pretty much destroyed the company’s reputation - possibly irrevocably.

I repeat what I said earlier. If as a network engineer / consultant I’d applied a router update remotely which crashed every customer’s network and disabled core functionality, I’d have been straight out the door and been unemployable.

I’m not asking for that; I just want the update reverted and the working app back without delay. Continuing to fire fight, apply random patches, hacks and untested features will simply exacerbate the problems they’re facing. They’ve already said the new code is totally different to the old, so they can’t just import features they forgot about.

B

BVRBVR

Contributor I

So I wonder whether others without issues have anything similar to this? i.e. is there a pattern to who has issues and who doesn’t..?

The pattern is simply how users use their system. If they are trying to use any of the numerous missing or broken features, which are well known and acknowledged by SONOS in this very topic, then they will have problems.

You say you have no problems, yet you have no queue management. If you cared about that feature, then you’d have a problem. If you don’t have any music that you play on a NAS, then you don’t have that problem either. You may be the poster-child for Sonos’s new direction and those of us who built a system based on those missing features deemed secondary may be getting “notice” that our party is over.

For some issues there are workarounds and for some, apparently no workaround (based on what SONOS has posted).

There is also a SONOS post about issues caused by partially updated systems where the speaker firmware is not up to date across all devices, or the controller (app) is not up to date. Some people are probably having issues due to this. However, updating the controller app as suggested will break many features, but it’s also necessary for other features. A conundrum.

Additionally, some have unnecessarily mangled their systems thinking they needed to do a reset when they saw all the brokenness of the new app when all they really needed to do was remain calm and find a working version of the app (desktop, rollback, or 3rd party). I could see how a reset could be a disaster as so many features for setting things up are not working yet either.

There are your patterns.

I acknowledged “no issues (OTHER THAN the queue management, etc)”. Throughout my post I was clearly referring to the functionality of people’s systems overall, not software options. My stating I wasn’t having issues was in relation to showing my set-up in case others said “I’m set up that way, but I have issues” OR “That’s like me, and I too have minimal issues” to present a pattern. It’s just as useful to developers to know where issues are not occurring as where they are.

Your reply is quite terse in response to a post intended to try to help find a route for people to work together to determine what might be at the root of collective issues. Apologies if my method of listening to music via streaming makes me fall into being ‘a poster child’ for Sonos’ new direction. But unfortunately, like it or not, hard drive storage of music is not the future.

I also experienced problematic issues.

Y

Yorkshire_Kev

Avid Listener

On May 22, CEO Patrick Spence said “What I wish we would’ve done is probably communicate the roadmap a little more clearly.”

I’ve just read that interview. The CEO is clearly tone deaf to customer complaints, and that report is an absolute insult! 😡

W

Waldemarhøyveien

Lyricist I

The new app is extremely disappointing.

All that Sonos stood for; excellent integration of music services/library, intelligent playlist editing and many other features are simply gone. As well as multiple bugs and problems.

Please re-issue the old app. Fixing the new app will not work.

In the meanwhile, I shall start returning my products to retailer, under the 5 year product guarantee.

Best regards, Thomas (Sonos user since 2008 / 16 zones / 2 houses)

R

Rhonny

Prodigy III

In the meanwhile, I shall start returning my products to retailer, under the 5 year product guarantee.

On what basis? I think you’ll struggle to convince any retailer to take your products back. I don’t doubt you’ll try, but I don’t hold out much hope for your chances if it’s based solely on an app temporarily not functioning as it should.

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