New Sonos App

Do you know that tabs bar was despised when it first came out (as was most of the app overhaul from 6 years ago).  People hate, hate, hated the tabs bar.  They also hated the color scheme, the number of clicks, the number of swipes, the grouping features, the way the app changed rooms, and there were thousands of more posts (and hundreds of threads) on how “unintuitive, clunky, inelegant” the new app was, along with very familiar sounding “Allow us to rollback to the last version!!!!!” pleas.  Fast forward to today, and that “unintuitive, clunky, inelegant” app is the one people want back.  

Give it time, you will get used to it (just like users did last time). 

Does Sonos have ANY idea just how bad the user experience (ie, your customer experience) is with the new app?? Just about every possible aspect of it is worse than before. The UI is terrible, features are missing but worst of all it just doesn’t work! It takes ages to connect to my system and it’s then completely random as to whether the app will actually control anything. I simply shake my head that a consumer electronics company can release something this bad. Your CEO needs to go, at least.

Regardless of where anyone stands regarding sentiment of the new app, what’s not debatable is how poorly it performs. Fix this or connect with blockbuster employees on LinkedIn 

I cant even open the new sonos app on my android phone after trying everything support says to try, and now I am listening to music on the sonos support phone line for the past 40 minutes, this ridiculous after spending over $2000 on sonos equipment. After this experience with sonos, I will not be purchasing anything else from sonos unless they step up and help all of us sonos customers. HELP!!

This app is horrible!!!  I finally was able to get my equipment to show up on the app but it does not allow to control volume on more than one of my speakers.  When coupled with other rooms unable to uncouple …..the most frustrating thing EVER!!!

Very sad to have to consider scrapping all this expensive hardware.  I’ve been very happy streaming Apple Music via airplay to my Sonos systems both at work and at home for many years.  Never had to leave one ecosystem, never had to fumble with apps, just fling whatever was playing in my workshop to my car on the way home, and then over to my system when I got home.  Now I can only get music out of one speaker via airplay.  No amount of updates, reboots, or reinstalls will help…...UNLESS I use the new Sonos app….. which streams to all speakers…..but DOESN’T WORK.  Every single action either takes an eternity or doesn't function at all.  Simple music selection takes an insane number of actions and is missing tons of data and options.  Volume control is like some kind of puzzle game (I used to just spin the crown on my apple watch!).  Even if I do manage to get it all working, no settings or preferences seem to be retained the minute you leave one window for another.  I understand that Sonos doesn’t have any obligation to support 3rd party streaming and hardware, but that has always been central to their marketing, and let's be honest, its how many of us use their products.  Most of us use Sonos to play libraries we have been curating for decades on other systems.  This feels like an underhanded attempt to force us to use their inferior app.  I’m a confused old man.  I’m not willing to let my music become another computer interface learning-curve nightmare. I’d sooner go back to copper wires and cabinet speakers.

I now live in a house with NO MUSIC.  I won’t put up with this for long.  Sonos products are about to be really cheap on eBay.

ttmatt…. We’re all waiting. The bulleted list shows local libraries will be updated and/or restored in Mid-June. When the first update to the update appeared, they reported that local libraries would be resolved then.  Not so.  I have my music libraries on USB drives in two locations and… the iOS iPhone app doesn’t see them at all and I can’t reinstall S2 on my iPhone. I’m dead in the water.  If you don’t stream, you’re out of luck.  I don’t stream nor am I interested in streaming.  I spent a lot of time installing my library of music onto my “NAS” (network attached storage) units and I expect them to play.  Until my system was fried from the iPhone update, I didn’t know that I owned an “NAS” drive.  Now, when it’s too late… I found out.

Today I researched how to plug into my line-in jack on my 5s to see if I could put my music library onto my iPhone and then get music to play that way.  Unfortunately, since I have them set as Surrounds, I can’t utilize the line-in function.  My TV sound still works through my Sonos gear only because my ethernet cable is plugged into my Playbar and the optical out on my TV goes directly into that.  Oh, and those 5s…. I upgraded to those about one year ago.  I have $1100.00 TV surround speakers.  I’m so happy.

One more thing… the web app doesn’t work either.

The issues are real. I couldn't care less about the design. It is different, not better, not.worse just different.  What is different is the new app does not function. From not loading every time "system unavailable ", to volume controls that are completely off, I can only play podcasts from my PC (not phone or ipad), can't access my music library,  inconsistent access to radio stations, etc, etc. They have added back in sleep timers, now if I could only play a podcast from my phone. 

This new app has rolled back functionality and is unstable. That is why we are complaining 

There is some sort of schedule, according to this FAQ article.

My understanding is that the FAQ article will be updated as needed. But I also don’t think that data is exhaustive. 

You can see what has already been added in the release notes here.

As so many have pointed out, like above I implore the staff at Sonos to really take a look at these comments.  I believe they have missed the point that the app and controllability that comes with Sonos when using the app is really what makes them special.  In a world full of high-end home stereo and portable speakers Sonos is not the best of either, especially for the price.  Long-time customers have already been bitten because the older speakers can’t be used with S2 and new speakers can no longer be used in the S1 app.  This has caused a lot of irritation and extra costs for loyal customers.  Now that only S2 works with pretty much everything you sell you really need to make the S2 app at least what the S1 could do then add on.  The last couple years has been more than a blunder and if things don’t get back on track you’re going to lose a lot of customers.  I have 10 Sonos speaker, a connect and plus a record player I purchased.   I can’t use the record player any longer due to my Sonos Connect and Sonos 5 not being able to work with your new app.  In addition, 4 of my other speakers will no longer connect to my network on S2.  It is just not the same that I can’t play songs on a single network that is located all around my home.  If you can do anything to assist, please make it so the new speakers can be added to the S1 network, since I can’t add so many to the S2 and because the S2 app isn’t worth using as is.