why does my sonos app use so much bandwidth

If you are streaming tracks or Internet Radio the streaming continues if you Mute a player. Pause will stop streaming to the player. If you Group players, Mute will make that room silent, but streaming continues.

What happens if you force stop the SONOS controller App on the Android?

Buzz, I've been through this with Sonos second level support. Trust me. The app uses wifi even if your Sonos gear is switched off, even if you don't use the app. If you force stop the app it wakes up again later. It's a vampire app, you can't kill it.

I have the app on my phone and a tablet. I rarely use the app on the phone. If the Sonos kit is switched off and the app unused it will still clock up MB. If you're in luck maybe 2 - 3 MB per day, otherwise 15+, or in Daryl's case...

Try it. Leave your Sonos kit off, don't use the app and you'll see it clocks up wifi. Most people won't notice because wifi doesn't cost anything, so long as it's working within the home network and not going out onto the internet. Make sure you have "share data with Sonos" switched off, switch off "scan music library". If it's using wifi then it's using battery. Try killing it. It makes no difference. It'll be back. It's doing "helpful things" say Sonos, though they couldn't say what these "helpful things" might be.

It's a crap app.

John

Tooslow2007,

Using WiFi and creating Internet traffic are two different functions. Yes, if you have WiFi enabled, there will be some local WiFi traffic and battery drain as the Android device keeps the WiFi connection alive. I keep my Android WiFi turned OFF unless I specifically need WiFi.

Even when you have not launched the SONOS App, does it show up in the Battery use table?

I haven't launched the Android SONOS App in a while and I see zero SONOS battery use and zero 4-G data use. I'm not setup to log Internet traffic from my router.

Are you sure that the SONOS related Internet traffic is generates by the SONOS Android App? Are you running any other SONOS controllers?

buzz, I have not said that the Sonos app uses mobile data, nor have I said that it creates internet traffic. I said "wifi doesn't cost anything, so long as it's working within the home network and not going out onto the internet".

I have spent a long time with Sonos second level support. It uses wifi in the background. Take a look at Settings, Sonos app and down at the bottom are "Battery use since last charge" and "Memory". Mine currently shows "0% since last full charge" BUT take a look at any other app that you have not used recently and it shows "No battery use since last full charge". Zero in this case means more than 0% but less than 1%. Sonos support agree. Next down is memory. I often, but not always, get a non zero memory usage "in last 3 hours" showing here, indicating that the app has been waking up. Remember that you have control over the period reported. If you see zero, look again later. The app appears to wake up, do whatever it does, set a timer to wake up later and then end. That's why you can't Force Stop it. The timer goes "ting!" a few hours (?) later and off it goes again.

If your app is showing zero that's great. Mine doesn't. it doesn't use much but at the end of a month when it's showing 450MB and I've not used the app (I've maybe controlled the Sonos kit from a tablet or another phone) I'm left wondering what the **** is it doing and why is it so poorly written?

Apparently the way you exit the app is important (say Sonos support). The approved method appears to be to pull up "Recent apps" and slide the Sonos app off to the left or right. Otherwise it clocks up data at a heck of a rate. Like I said, it's not well written.

I don't know what your point is. Mine is that the app uses resources when I'm not using it, it isn't doing anything useful to me and would Sonos please fix it. I doubt they will. I'm not happy with them.

John

Tooslow2007,

I'm curious. How did you measure that the SONOS Android App generated 450MB of WiFi traffic?

On your Android device; Settings, Data Usage, Wifi and then scroll down to view usage by each app.

John

Absolutely agree. The app is a nightmare. I have a restricted usage policy as I use satellite BB. The app and Sonos playbar constantly poll each other creating huge data usage. I've asked them to add a feature request for a wifi off option. Still waiting. In fact even if you switch off all play speakers apart from a playbar and use it to enhance your TV film sound experience and connect via a optical lead connection, the app on your phone/ipad/etc will STILL poll. Sonos need to fix it. Been waiting 18 months.....

Also, there may be 8 clients on my network but all the bandwidth above is going to my 2x Play1s.. here are graphs filtered by client.

Graph for "left" speaker in pair:

Graph for "right" speaker in pair:

Figured I'd add another "me too" but judging by this thread it's probably not going to help. Note that I see a significant amount of data usage on an Android phone (514MB in the last month alone of mobile data, all background; I've launched the app once.. use my desktop or iPhone to control the speakers primarily) *and* coming from each speaker. I use Open-Mesh wireless gear in my home which tracks bandwidth usage of every connected client. The Sonos speakers upload about 4MB/hour and download "only" about 400KB/hour. For a speaker sitting idle this is pretty absurd. I have a pair on my desk (paired as a stereo pair) and they both show the same upload usage when idle but only the left speaker shows download usage when streaming (I'm guessing Sonos streams to the right speaker via Bluetooth from the left). Bandwidth usage graph for the last 2hrs (speakers were 100% idle) attached. In the last month, each speaker has uploaded nearly 3GB of data to somewhere.

So rest assured, the app isn't the only thing chewing through data. If you have a metered internet connection, each speaker will happily chew through your internet bandwidth as well even when not streaming. Judging by the age of this thread, it looks like all the competent engineers must have left Sonos and found better jobs..

I'm not familiar with Open Mesh, so I have a question about the graphs.

First, to my knowledge no Sonos gear uses Bluetooth at all. It's WIFI (Sonosnet). Is the data upload you're tracking actually going outside the network? I bring this up because some of the posters seem to be conflating the two as the same thing.

It may be worth discussing if Sonos, idling, uses 4MB hourly (although really for most broadband plans even that wouldn't be noticeable). However, if it's all staying internal that's utterly insignificant.

For what it's worth, I checked my app WIFI usage. It's right about 300MB in the last 30 days. 1/3 of that is foreground, the rest is background.