Android notification and lock screen controls

Because the OS manufacturer doesn’t allow it and threatened to remove the app from the Google Play Store if Sonos didn’t remove it

Nah. The Tesla app on android lives as a permanent notification and has shortcuts to unlock, open the trunk etc. Sonos could do something similar to play/pause and skip at least, even if it has to show up as text.

That's not the reason. Not sure what is though 

Really missing the controls on lock screen. Was very useful as your don't have to open the app.

 

If it wasn't broken why remove it?

 

Because the OS manufacturer doesn’t allow it and threatened to remove the app from the Google Play Store if Sonos didn’t remove it

Nah. The Tesla app on android lives as a permanent notification and has shortcuts to unlock, open the trunk etc. Sonos could do something similar to play/pause and skip at least, even if it has to show up as text.

That's not the reason. Not sure what is though 

 

Not even close to the same thing.

Really missing the controls on lock screen. Was very useful as your don't have to open the app.

 

If it wasn't broken why remove it?

 

Because the OS manufacturer doesn’t allow it and threatened to remove the app from the Google Play Store if Sonos didn’t remove it

Nah. The Tesla app on android lives as a permanent notification and has shortcuts to unlock, open the trunk etc. Sonos could do something similar to play/pause and skip at least, even if it has to show up as text.

That's not the reason. Not sure what is though 

 

 

Not even close to the same thing.

Please elaborate. I'm genuinely curious. It felt pretty similar UX to me (remote control of a device over any air interface) so not sure what I missed.

It’s not so much the widgets as the lock screen FF, Play, REW controls and the volume hard buttons.  The OS makers require those to be used for media players only, i.e. apps which play the media through the app.  The Sonos app is not a media player, it is a controller.  The media is streamed directly to the hardware, it doesn’t pass through the app, so the lock screen and hard button controls cannot be used.

For iOS, Sonos at one time used a hack to get around this limit, playing a silent file in the background to fool iOS into thinking it was a media player, but Apple got wise to it and sent a cease and desist.  Not sure what the background is for Android, but I imagine it is something similar. 

I get that but you’re not addressing how the Tesla example is irrelevant then. Half the thread here is that Sonos isn’t responsible, Apple is and so “maybe” android also is.

Clearly Android has no issue with Tesla allowing remote controls in a notification panel for doors unlocking, so how different would it be for sonos to use similar UX to enable remote controls? It would not be about tricking the OS into thinking it is a media player, on the contrary it would be transparently NOT being one, and pushing shortcuts to actions sent to the controller. 

Remote controls for door locking are not anything like the remote controls for a media player.  One is a unique function for that particular app, the others are standard functions present in every media player app made (and there are thousands).  That is how they are different (I can’t believe I actually had to explain that).

And once again, I’m not talking about the notifications thing.  My post was expressly about the lock screen controls and hard buttons.  I know nothing about the rules on notification screens.

Don't worry you didn't have to explain the difference between play/pause and unlocking doors. All I see is buttons triggering api calls to a server that will remotely either unlock doors, or pause playing on a sonos speaker, and send back the new state. I never suggested this to be the same function, only similar implementation. In the previous sonos all the lock screen control setting was nested inside the notifications settings of the Sonos app, that's why I assumed they were pretty much the same thing (before you say "no they're not": I mean in terms of implementation, not philosophical function).

Let's not assume we are all talking to idiots, and rather try to put our brains together to figure out how this could be implemented if we want sonos to try. Might be wishful thinking, but what's the point of these forums anyway? (Besides belittling each other so we can feel were right). "It's not even close to the same thing" without further explanation felt a bit dismissive in that regard.

I’m quite sure Sonos knows far more about their own implementation than any of us, not to mention the OS rules they need to adhere to.  They don’t need us to think for them.  As a developer myself, some of the biggest laughs I’ve gotten in my 35+ years in the business have been from people who don’t know my job telling me how something can or should be done.