can you rearrange the order of favourites

  • 14 February 2014
  • 16 replies
  • 1407 views

Userlevel 1
the sonos pc app stores your favourites alphabetically - how can you change the order to your own choice?

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16 replies

Userlevel 7
Badge +26
Hello Tim,

The Favorites listing is only sorted alphabetically. We have an Idea thread open for more management of Favorites which I'll merge this thread over to to add your Support to the Idea.

Cheers.
Userlevel 1
+1 for rearranging the favorites. Even if they grouped by type would be better then current
Userlevel 1
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Agreed with both of the other guys....Allowing the favorites to be Grouped by the type and then allowing us the option to sort the order within each group would serve a dual purpose of: 1) a more aesthetically pleasing interface, and 2) a more user-functional service.
Help...yes being able to organize favorites by groups (I title the folders) and move the stations etc to my choosing inside would be a major upgrade.
Please address.
Please add this soon. The random order of the items under my favorites is driving me nuts.
Userlevel 7
Badge +22
Please add this soon. The random order of the items under my favorites is driving me nuts.

It's not random.

It's listed alphabetically.

What sort order would you like?
- Ascending in order of ASCII number of 1st, 2nd, 3rd letters and so on
- Date of adding
- Sum of the digits
- Random
- Random, change every time app opened
I would also really like to be able to customize the order of my favorites.
Userlevel 5
Badge +10
What's really needed is quick access to favourites. Like the desktop controller (thankfully still) allows. Sorting (other than a standard alphabetical sort) isn't a big deal when the favourites list is deliberately (and correctly) limited to 32 items. Grouping by category is great, but it's currently of limited usefulness. Currently, I cleared down my favourites list to be 20-odd artists, and my "My Sonos" screen allows access to the following favourites:
1. The first 8 "others" (that's "Artists" in English / Sonos Desktop / every other music app in the universe), with a "see all" button linking to a screen of all my favourite artists - not a big deal, I'm now used to favourites access being an extra click on mobile compared to desktop
2. The first 8 of every Sonos playlist I ever created for any purpose, of which I have flagged exactly zero as favourites

Ironically, if Sonos kept notes of play / activity counts, they could replace a user-curated (plus playlists) screen with a "most popular". But they'd probably insist on making it difficult to have favourite artists/albums and follow a "but everyone listens exclusively to playlists and individual songs these days" design...
When using phone app, stations under My Sonos only show first few, without second step of See All. Need to be able to rearrange station order, so most frequently used appear on first page of phone. Also, would like to add on this phone to my Sonos selections.
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Even having them in order of most recently played (like Pandora) would be much more helpful.
Userlevel 5
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Even having them in order of most recently played (like Pandora) would be much more helpful.

Yes it would. But Sonos doesn't store any usage data, so your Sonos has no idea what you actually listen to.

Failing that, grouping into separate artist/album/song/playlist categories would probably work, if it was actually a "fast access to your favourites" screen, and not the current "a dashboard of some of your stuff" My Sonos implementation on mobile. In fact, a few months ago Sonos experimented with showing all favourites (instead of just the first 😎 per category, on the My Sonos screen (and then decided they preferred to revert to the less-than-awesome approach they currently have, because "reasons").
As this thread goes back 4 years, and the sorting in all areas of Sonos controller is very poor by 80's stadards. Sorting of user data is a standard in any application, even if it's held under advanced settings. If any file access software didn't have optional sorting it would never gain any traction, imagine Windows Explorer alpha sort only.
How in this day Sonos feel they can specify how a piece of 'user' software has to present its data is beyond me. Don't get me wrong, Sonos is very good hardware, and reasonable software, but Onos seem to think thy have everything right.

Sonos you need to listen to your users or they 'will' move on!
Userlevel 5
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How in this day Sonos feel they can specify how a piece of 'user' software has to present its data is beyond me.
Sonos you need to listen to your users or they 'will' move on!


The world is full of software companies that believe that "their" way of using the software is correct, rather than just letting the users operate it however they want. Sometimes this is actually the smart thing to do. Users don't always know what they actually want until they see it. Consider that giving us sorting options adds extra complexity - for the users, for development and testing, and for screen clutter.

The real question is "what is the problem the software is trying to solve?". For me, the entire point of "favourites" is to provide "fast navigation to my favourite stuff (mostly my favourite artists)". Sonos desktop solves this problem very well - the favourites are sensibly ordered (alphabetically), the list is deliberately constrained to force me to choose what qualifies as a "favourite", sorting is unnecessary with such a small list, and navigation is fast. The phone/tablet implementation is less successful - it's an extra click to get to most of my favourite bands, and favourite playlists are lost in a sea of never-played lists of tracks I created five years ago.

So ignore whether Windows Explorer's superior search can handle thousands of items. What are you trying to achieve with your Sonos favourites, and how does the app succeed or fail at this task?
Userlevel 7
Badge +23
If you want a Favorite to show at the top, edit the name to start with A. Or use numeric prefixes. Problem solved.
Userlevel 1
Badge +2
Is this ever going to be fixed by Sonos? (Other than the user-suggested work-around of numbering your stations.)
Userlevel 5
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Is this ever going to be fixed by Sonos? (Other than the user-suggested work-around of numbering your stations.)

What is the problem you think needs "fixed" / what are you trying to achieve?