Contributor I

Answered

My speakers/app doesnt want to play music from my phone anymore

Forum|Forum|3 years ago
May 27, 2023
41 replies
1626 views

I used to be able to play music i have stored on my phone and suddenly "this device" option has completly disapered as an option under any tab on the app.

I updated by phone and the app, i check permissions, all the file locrion stored on my phone are under music, nothing has changed from when i could play from my phone to now when i cant.

This is very frusting as there are some songs i have that arent availiable on streaming services.

How do i fix it?

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Best answer by Airgetlam

Here’s the original announcement from May 4…

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MG1214

Avid Contributor I

@MG1214there are a number of android apps that will play music stored on your phone to a Sonos device. Admittedly you will still need the sonos app to group speakers together but the basic functions volume, start stop are in the 3rd party app. Hi-Fi cast and bubbleUPnP come to mind.

Thank you, but that is my problem. I need the Sonos app to group the speakers. I put a lot of time and money into building an audio system and that requires all of my Sonos speakers playing together as a group. I made a very intentional decision and sold very nice passive speakers and decided to transition to the active/lifestyle speaker approach. I put a great deal of time and effort into this, and had no inclining that Sonos would ever do this type of thing.

Suddenly, without any real warning, and in my opinion, just cause or need, Sonos devastatingly crippled their platform.

M

MG1214

Avid Contributor I

Should be inkling. My bad.

jgatie

Thank you, but that is my problem. I need the Sonos app to group the speakers. I put a lot of time and money into building an audio system and that requires all of my Sonos speakers playing together as a group. I made a very intentional decision and sold very nice passive speakers and decided to transition to the active/lifestyle speaker approach. I put a great deal of time and effort into this, and had no inclining that Sonos would ever do this type of thing.

Suddenly, without any real warning, and in my opinion, just cause or need, Sonos devastatingly crippled their platform.

Read the OP here:

As newer versions of mobile operating systems are released, it can sometimes change the way information is shared between devices, and this feature will no longer be compatible with newer versions of the Android operating system.

So Sonos didn’t do it, Google did.

melvimbe

@MG1214there are a number of android apps that will play music stored on your phone to a Sonos device. Admittedly you will still need the sonos app to group speakers together but the basic functions volume, start stop are in the 3rd party app. Hi-Fi cast and bubbleUPnP come to mind.

Thank you, but that is my problem. I need the Sonos app to group the speakers. I put a lot of time and money into building an audio system and that requires all of my Sonos speakers playing together as a group. I made a very intentional decision and sold very nice passive speakers and decided to transition to the active/lifestyle speaker approach. I put a great deal of time and effort into this, and had no inclining that Sonos would ever do this type of thing.

Suddenly, without any real warning, and in my opinion, just cause or need, Sonos devastatingly crippled their platform.

How have you been using your Sonos system since the end of May when the change took place? Have you not used your system since then, or you just haven’t tried to play audio from your phone since then?

Did Google say that Android local files cannot be made available to Sonos? Where was this stated? I freely admit that I may have missed it.

Google didn’t make a public announcement it to their customers. However, there have been android developers that have posted and confirmed that Google has changed their policy around access to the andorid file system by outside devices. I believe the post was somewhere in the original thread linked in this thread, if you want to look for it. The change does not impact Sonos alone.

Danny

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MG1214

Avid Contributor I

@melvimbe,

Hi. Actually I have not been using my system very much at all for various reasons, and when I did I was content to stream from my Tidal service, not even noticing the missing local device source. I would probably have to pay for Spotify and Tidal to back-fill holes each have in their collections.

Again, I am respectfully skeptical that Sonos was unable to allow this access. At the very, very, very least, Sonos should have published a complete and transparent rationale for this action. When companies don’t do so, they are frequently hiding something and as such being vague is their go to approach.

R

Ralpfocus

Prodigy III

Being a bit clearer - Using the 3rd party app for is to enable playback from your phone. Once that is going you can use the Sonos App to do most of its normal functions, add (group) additional speakers, change volume, etc.

Having just had quick play with HI-Fi Cast you need to use the 3rd party app to jump forward and back through the playlist. This makes sense as the sonos device does not know what is in the queue.

buzz

Grand Maestro

Some routers support a USB drive that could host your music library. There are no wires associated with this.

M

MG1214

Avid Contributor I

Thank you to everyone who has offered their suggestions and perspective. I am using Hi-Fi Cast and it seems to be working perfectly. What a relief. I am not thrilled at all of course that Sonos made this decision; however, I am at heart a pragmatic person and if the problem is solved, well it is solved.

Thank you again everyone, especially whomever suggested Hi-Fi Cast. Much appreciated. Cheers.

jgatie

Thank you to everyone who has offered their suggestions and perspective. I am using Hi-Fi Cast and it seems to be working perfectly. What a relief. I am not thrilled at all of course that Sonos made this decision; however, I am at heart a pragmatic person and if the problem is solved, well it is solved.

Thank you again everyone, especially whomever suggested Hi-Fi Cast. Much appreciated. Cheers.

For the umpteenth time in this forum, Sonos made no decision, their hand was forced by Google’s changes to the Android OS.

M

MG1214

Avid Contributor I

Thank you to everyone who has offered their suggestions and perspective. I am using Hi-Fi Cast and it seems to be working perfectly. What a relief. I am not thrilled at all of course that Sonos made this decision; however, I am at heart a pragmatic person and if the problem is solved, well it is solved.

Thank you again everyone, especially whomever suggested Hi-Fi Cast. Much appreciated. Cheers.

For the umpteenth time in this forum, Sonos made no decision, their hand was forced by Google’s changes to the Android OS.

Actually, from what I can tell that is not true. Sonos made a business decision that they did not wish to allocate the resources to continue to offer the functionality. There is absolutely nowhere that I have ever heard where Google said that Sonos could not access local files. It does seem that Google made a decision that would result in more work for Sonos and Sonos then made the business decision to not allocate development resources. So no, Google did not force anything, Sonos made the decision that they made.

I am not saying that things did not change for Sonos due to Google making changes, nevertheless, other companies are still able to access local files on Android so clearly it is still possible. I think you need to be accurate here, but I do take your point that Sonos did not do this without some rationale. Just not a compelling rationale in my mind.

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