SonoPhone...The Best Thing Since Sliced Bread....????

Sonos earned the drive by trashing. And tbh it’s gonna follow them for some time as the app is not back to where it was.

It’s sad that there are some owners here who see third party apps as “alternative flag waving” rather than complimentary apps that add value to their Sonos products. 

I’ll say this and it’s the last comment I’ll post. I’ve posted on subjects before in this community that were not popular. So, I’m accustom to the negative feedback. That said there are 1000’s of posts about the App that were at one time warranted due to the pain caused to Sonos users.  

Now, IMO many posts seem to be not about major issues; but problems users are experiencing and just calling them issues.  Then there are some members trolling the community looking for negative posts just to give it a “like”.

Along those lines members who do so; IMO seem to make it their sole objective to continue trashing the Sonos App and/or Sonos. Those members will unfortunately recommend alternative Apps like SonoPhone. Not to be helpful; but just continue the negativity about the App and Sonos in general. To be fair...there are members who may recommend alternative apps as a viable temporary option. At the end-of-day everyone has the freedom of choice.

Know this...my thoughts about SonoPhone remain unchanged; regardless of the baggering in this thread to the contrary. I have no apologies if this post offended you as that was not my intention. It is about the SonoPhone app.  I by no stretch of the imagination have any malice toward anyone; if they so choose to defend the use of SonoPhone. That is your prerogative. But it will not alter my perspective.

If you want this post to disappear there are two options:

• Petition the Moderators to remove it
• Stop posting and it will die, fade away, disappear via natural attrition 

Hey there, 

this is Stefan the author of the app (I was pointed to this thread). A guy from Germany who for some reason thought, it might make sense to write a Sonos app as a hobby :)

I’d love to share some details, why the app is hyped. As you focussed on subtle UI details, you eventually missed the main point.

Rumours say ;), that there are (some/many) people having trouble with the official Sonos app. You seem to belong to the category of users, where this is not the case, so big congrats! 
For people who DO have problems, the app is (often) a live saver, as it makes an expensive system, that is not operable with the official app, operable again. 
Like with skydivers: if you have a non-working parachute, you definitely don’t discuss which parachute has the best design, or if your parachute doesn’t work in the very moment you need it the most, because you have a suboptimal Wifi.  You are just VERY happy to have a backup ;)

Yes - Sonos improved with latest App releases a lot, but just a month ago, the Sonos App (for some/many users, who knows)

• has/had massive problems in detecting the players in your network at all (or in a fast manner)
• has/had problems switching between multiple Sonos systems (when you operated a Sonos at home, and one in the office and wanted to use the same app)
• didn’t highlight the currently playing song in longer playlists. 
• didn’t show cover art for the local music library
• lacked all features the save/store/load your locally saved playlists 
• had massive problems with grouped players and lagging volume controls

… and much much more …

Imagine you would’ve been affected by just one of theses problems, and eventually in addition your wife starts to question the money you’ve put in an (for them) unreliable system. Then you definitely don’t care of some icons on the now playing screen, because you can just decide between an app, that doesn’t work and a third party app that does.

I can see in my app statistics, that Sonos has improved a lot in the meantime. And this is a good thing, because we all are not helped, if Sonos suffers on the long run. We are all helped, when Sonos steadily gets its reputation back as a reliable system. 
I do know via feedback, that my app has helped a lot of users, and also that there is a significant amount of users, who didn’t throw out Sonos due despite of massive frustration with the official app. This bought time for the Sonos devs to improve step by step and get into a state of reliability from pre March 2024.

Yet: still on a daily basis I get support emails from users, where the Sonos app fails to properly function in users network environment, while SonoPhone does. 
Eventually these users have not the latest up to date network. But let’s not forget: just a year ago, Sonos supported also mediocre network setups, and only decided a year ago, that it expects the latest and greatings networks for proper operation.

Even with a working system, my app comes with some advantages. 

• we are backwards compatible a LOT. This applies for older S1 Sonos devices, which we can show alongside the S2 devices. But this also applies for older iOS version. There are many families, where the kids get a spare phone where the official App doesn’t run anymore. Now they can use the Sonos system as well. 
  My companion app SonoPad runs on older iPads that are still attached to walls.
•  there are people who want to run Sonos boxes at places, with a mediocre internet connection. The Sonos app heavily relies on a good internet connection. Just yesterday I received a support email from a user, confirming, that he can finally use his Sonos again (with a local music library) without any internet connection.
• my app doesn’t bother to show you adverts :D 
• there are also some people, who actually prefer a UI with LESS features and clutter around the screen. Or the drag and drop interface for player groupings. Or that menus always look the same, not sometimes with horizontal scrolling, then with vertical scrolling. Or that players are shown with little icons.
  
  This boils down to personal preference of course, but that’s why it eventually is also good to be able to choose between different apps.

I can also share some insight about the limitiations which I openly communicate in the app-store description: 

• missing YouTube Music support: YouTube is the only music service, where Sonos (and Google) decided to add an extra layer of encryption/authentication. They use client certificates, to make sure only the Sonos app can access the menus. While it’s possible to extract the certificate from the official Sonos app, I decided (for now) to not do it.
   
• not playing music stored on the iPhone: Sonos (many years ago) used to be able to stream music from the phone directly to the Sonos boxes. Independent of AirPlay (!), so  you could stream your locally stored music even to super old S1 Sonos connect Amps. 
  
  This feature was dropped (years ago) and people expected my app to support this then.
  
  The reason why neither Sonos nor my app can support this, is found with Apple app store limitations. With latest iOS firmwares they demanded that apps are not allowed to consume to much battery, when an app is in the background. iOS even kills apps automatically, when they consume to much battery or keep the network active, while they are in the background. 
  
  This streaming solution from Sonos required to keep the iOS device active all the time, as the App opened a little server, to provide the stream as download. So this just didn’t work anymore. 
  
  Of course nowadays you can just use AirPlay, this works with all boxes supporting AirPlay regardless of which app is used. Of course we can render the currently playing track, when you started music via AirPlay

Last but not least: 
That you observed an empty music services screen, is not normal. This should be resolved via support ([redacted]).
It sometimes takes some time after the app start, until the music services are loaded. Depends on the size of the system and how fast Sonos servers respond. But typically after 5-15 seconds (reenter the menu), the menu should be populated. 
I can definitely improve by showing a loading spinner and giving some context, while people have to wait, so thanks for pointing out this issue.

PS: my app sales increased by 20% in the last two days, though I don’t know if it’s related to this post.
My assumption is, that in this forum the majority of people HAS a problem with their Sonos, so while your intent was to brag about the app, eventually you help people with Sonos problems by pointing them to the app ;)

So thanks a lot for this!

PPS: I don’t observe this forum regularly, if anyone wants to contact me, please do so via [redacted]. 

Have a good and sunny day. 
Enjoy your Sonos with the app you like most!
And don’t forget, that Apple refunds paid Apps you don’t like [link removed]


Cheers
Stefan

Moderator Note: Modified in accordance with the Community Code of Conduct.

The Sonos app (whether original or third-party) is just a Wi-Fi remote control, and NOT a media player. However, the new app has been modernised under the hood and some home networks can’t handle e.g. the switch from UPnP-SSDP to mDNA well. Therefore I’d recommend to get in touch with Sonos support, when/if the Sonos app displays issues of any kind.

3rd party apps still rely on the old Sonos API (before May 2024), this is why they currently work more reliably than the official iOS and Android app resp.

S1 has essentially been code-freezed in June 2020.

And?

The point of the comment was the App being discussed was functionally like the old S1 App (despite it being able to control both S1 and S2 systems…) - but it actually can do things in S2 that the official S2 app still can't since the update debacle.

​@AjTrek1 .. curious if you read the reply comment from Stefan, the author of the SonoPhone app? Any different thoughts if so? 

You wouldn't want to control an S2 system with an S1 app whose source code and API has been frozen for five years. I was referring to the previous S2 app API.

How where you referring to the previous S2 App API by saying that “S1 has essentially been code-freezed in June 2020.”?  Which, in itself, wasn't what was even being discussed.

The comment that you replied to about S1 being frozen was actually saying that the App that's the subject of this thread has functionality in S2 that the official Sonos one lost a year ago and has yet to restore.

(the comment … ‘...it's the old Sonos S1 App’ wasn't mine BTW)

I wrote…

3rd party apps still rely on the old Sonos API (before May 2024), this is why they currently work more reliably than the official iOS and Android app resp.

“Old” was misleading, I guess.