Contributor I

Why is the new Sonos App crap?

Forum|Forum|2 years ago
May 10, 2024
268 replies
26148 views

How does the app keep getting worse and worse over time. It's too bad, I've had some of my Sonos speakers for around 10 years now. Even on a brand new phone the current app is not user friendly, missing functionality that it used to have. And removed the playlists I had. So disappointing given how great the whole experience used to be. The new update is much worse, missing basic functionality now, So irritated.

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FozzyB

Lyricist III

Just did the update without seeing this thread first. iOS user and Sonos owner for a dozen or more years. We have a speaker in every room.

it's all been working like a charm using a boost and Sonos net, but after the update it's a mess.

Aside from the awful user interface that is unbelievably unintuitive my music stops playing after a track, but the app says it's stil going.

Had issues connecting and once it did the whole thing runs like poop.

Can we please roll this back . It's a mess. Going to revert to Roon and see how I get on with that controlling the Sonos

F

FozzyB

Lyricist III

Under the system menu is anybody else able to see network info - I just have a black screen with the title Manage Networks

C

CuriousDonkey

Lyricist I

Owning Sonos might now be my biggest purchase regret. The app is so bad I can’t use the speakers any more - but I have 6 of them in the house. The app never connects to the system first time, it won’t find my library on the NAS any more and its interface with Spotify is now seriously clumsy. Once it does finally connect to the speakers it’s really unresponsive - if I turn the volume up or down, the actual volume will suddenly blast up or down about a minute later. Music will be playing but when I go to pause it, only the play button is visible - or vise-versa. We used to love passing the iPad around when we have guests over to create party playlists on the fly, but this is now always an awkward mess where no one can use it and the songs jump and glitch constantly. It’s honestly become one of the worst things I own.

floresep

Enthusiast I

If you want to prevent the app update from loading on your devices:

Turn off automatic updates

iOS:

https://www.lifewire.com/turn-off-auto-update-iphone-5206079

Android:

https://www.lifewire.com/turn-off-automatic-updates-on-android-5192496#toc-how-to-turn-off-automatic-app-updates-on-an-android-phone

(Scroll a bit further to next section titled "Stop Automatic Updates for Specific Apps")

P

Phil.Top

Lyricist I

I now I’m going against the grain here, but I think the design overall is good. I appreciate that if the missing items are important to you then you would feel differently (and bear in mind that most of those are coming in pending updates).

But I have always hated the old app, to me it felt bland, boring and a bit like a toy. The new app has most things on one screen, and I’m not going to get upset about things like volume numbers and mute buttons when I know they will arrive soon.

Again the criticisms about the bugs and missing functionality are valid ones. The rest is subjective and if you hated the old app as much as I did, I think the new app is moving in the right direction.

Well that might be OK, if the new app for you is “form before function”, but I have half a dozen speakers sitting around at home that can’t be addressed anymore in a way they could before.

The fact that upcoming updates may or may not fix this or other issues is barely satisfying, as everything was working with the old app, but doesn’t anymore now. If a new app isn’t able to support at least everything its predecessor did, it’s ill designed - no matter the questionably nicer interface.

Or put differently, if I buy a new car, I expect it to come with wheels, as every car did since the last 120 years, I don’t want to have to wait for an update for a basic functionality.

B

Bonnar

Lyricist I

Does anyone know of a decent alternate app that will control Sonos. I want to be able to bin the Sonos one. Going back to S2 would be fine, but vindictively, Sonos won’t allow that.

V

valsha

Contributor I

I tell everyone I know not to buy anything from this company.

Totally agree, new app is complete mess.

G

Garboni

Lyricist I

Making the point that better things are coming is weird unless Sonos wants people to get angry at them thus making them a topic of conversation. But if you know how to put an app out that works...geez get it right in the first place instead of smacking your public around.

M

MagicGeoff

Contributor I

Amongst other things..

- why has +/- 30 sec skip been removed from the seek bar controls?
- why does it now take two clicks to launch a radio station from the home page when previously it took one?
- why does the 'favorites' rail now default to square icons so that circular logos like BBC 6 Music, BBC Radio 2 now have ugly grey corners filling in the square?
- (and please localise 'favorites' to the UK spelling 'favourites’, ta)
- why have all my standard shows being replaced with the error messages 'no longer available. Please edit to delete it'.?
- what's with all the weird rounded lozenges. It looks and feels cluttered now.
- what's with the weird fade above the search bar?
- why is search awkwardly placed above the control panel?
- why have a slow, annoying scrolling display of the current show in a tiny space instead of just finding the room to display the whole title in one go? Not helped by plonking two icons to the right of the irritatingly slow scrolling display thay only has enough space for four words.

why….is it so terrible?

Etc..

Copied to CEO too.

Q

QPRGARY1882

Lyricist I

Would like to get the old app back was bad but this one’s crap. Am also probably going to eBay this lot and get Bose

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