chromebook and sonos


acer chromebook 14 cb3-431 according to google this chromebook runs google apps . when i install the sonos app it will not connect to the internet even if sonos is running on my phone
i would really like to link sonos up to my chromebook as my lap top is getting old . this problem only seems to have occured after the last uodate . before i could play the radio through sonos but could not find my external hard drive ?

can any one help

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When you say detects multiple controllers Ratty what does that mean Please? I have quite a few Sonos units and models and seems be fine on all right now.I said 'multiple households' (i.e. systems). I have two (at least, sometimes more) separate systems co-existing on the same network, each with multiple players.

Nearest I can find to a fault is that on the track play image screen (showing queue or not) that it can drop out to the room list on white background. Mind I think the Android version on phone or Nexus also does that from memory.
If the Now Playing is collapsing down to the bottom spontaneously it's most probably the connection dropping and re-establishing.


OK, and unfortunately (after about 24 hours) I just got the 'application has just failed would you like to close app' message .... shame but best I've seen for a few months.
When you say detects multiple controllers Ratty what does that mean Please? I have quite a few Sonos units and models and seems be fine on all right now.I said 'multiple households' (i.e. systems). I have two (at least, sometimes more) separate systems co-existing on the same network, each with multiple players.

Nearest I can find to a fault is that on the track play image screen (showing queue or not) that it can drop out to the room list on white background. Mind I think the Android version on phone or Nexus also does that from memory.
If the Now Playing is collapsing down to the bottom spontaneously it's most probably the connection dropping and re-establishing.
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Comes and goes; your queue will likely be stale tomorrow, and won't properly update.
Yep. Working okay(ish) last night, but this morning it's back to its usual hit-and-miss behaviour. Difficulty finding the system, and not consistently updating.

The acid test is whether a reset controller will correctly associate with a household when it detects multiple households on the subnet and asks for buttons to be pressed on a player. This indicates whether it can open ports in the firewall for the player's broadcast, and hence for regular event notifications. Still no dice.


When you say detects multiple controllers Ratty what does that mean Please? I have quite a few Sonos units and models and seems be fine on all right now.

Nearest I can find to a fault is that on the track play image screen (showing queue or not) that it can drop out to the room list on white background. Mind I think the Android version on phone or Nexus also does that from memory.

All my devices are on wired connections but of course Pixelbook to Router is wireless. Have not rebooted or suchlike but behaviour is near to perfect right now.
Comes and goes; your queue will likely be stale tomorrow, and won't properly update.
Yep. Working okay(ish) last night, but this morning it's back to its usual hit-and-miss behaviour. Difficulty finding the system, and not consistently updating.

The acid test is whether a reset controller will correctly associate with a household when it detects multiple households on the subnet and asks for buttons to be pressed on a player. This indicates whether it can open ports in the firewall for the player's broadcast, and hence for regular event notifications. Still no dice.
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Comes and goes; your queue will likely be stale tomorrow, and won't properly update.

ChromeOS market share is growing very, very quickly, will be among the primary OS's in a few years (already is in Education, having basically taken over the market from the arrogant and always over-priced Apple). So, hopefully, Sonos will take notice, realize how simple it is to support (as it runs Android apps), and add official support.


Agree that ... huge market and growing at a rate. Not to be ignored. And agree the Apple comment for what it's worth.

Well 18 odd hours on and everything still working remarkably well, off multiple services and zero wireless issues so far. Too good to be true. No amount of time to play today but will this evening if still up and running.

Have not applied the mid Jan ChromeOS update mentioned. May leave a couple of days to run Sonos and see how the patient does. Will keep you posted.
Comes and goes; your queue will likely be stale tomorrow, and won't properly update.

ChromeOS market share is growing very, very quickly, will be among the primary OS's in a few years (already is in Education, having basically taken over the market from the arrogant and always over-priced Apple). So, hopefully, Sonos will take notice, realize how simple it is to support (as it runs Android apps), and add official support.
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Am I deluding myself or is it all working fine just now?

Just updated to latest Sonos on my i7 Pixelbook and is doing absolutely everything asked of it right now .... multiple rooms, queues, playlists, Amazon Music, NAS access, Spotify, Audible, Sound Cloud, Radio the lot! Not missed a beat.

Has only been 20 minutes of playing but right now everything hunky .... wifi solid etc.

Anyone else had same?
Finally, a way to resize the Sonos app, at least to half screen. Install the Taskbar Android app, right-click on the Sonos icon in the Taskbar, select New Window... then Half Screen (Left) or Half Screen (Right). Either way, it can be moved using the mouse.

Halfway there, Sonos. Now please add the resizer to the window, like everyone else...

Feb 10, 2019: I was able to get it working on the pixelbook by starting the app, turning off the wifi, waited until the "turn on wifi" error comes up. After that, go into the menu and turn your wifi back on. From there it gave a small error, then I tapped on the sonos app, and the error went away and I was able to connect like normal.

Sonos controller v10.0
That lasted about a day, the current song and queue stayed in sync nicely, then suddenly stopped again. Rebooted, and they're back in sync. Thankfully, rebooting ChromeOS takes about 10 seconds, lol. It sure ain't Windoze!

Next time it loses sync, I'll just log out and back in, who knows? Android under ChromeOS is still a bit of a work in progress, looks like.
Huh. All of a sudden, the SONOS app is working perfectly on the ChromeBox; the queue is correct, the currently playing song/album is displaying correctly. I made no changes, yesterday the queue was off, and the current song wasn't displaying. Weird.

Only issue is that it's always full screen. Sonos, please allow the window to resize, then it will work perfectly on ChromeOS!

So, have tried most of the Android streaming apps on the ChromeBox, to see which will cast to Sonos. Since I don't have subs for some, not sure if they will actually cast with a sub.

Google Music (which requires the Sonos app to be installed to cast to Sonos) is a good choice for ChromeOS users. It's fully resizable, though for some reason, it only show part of the album art, no matter how you resize the window. It does show all Sonos speakers (as well as Chromecast devices), and can cast to them.

YouTube Music app will cast to Chromecast devices, works very well on ChromeOS (it's Google, after all), but no Sonos devices show up, just like on Android devices. I suspect Sonos and Google are working on this, though, since it will eventually replace Google Music (maybe, Google seems to change its mind a lot).

iHeart Radio can cast to all Sonos / Chromecast devices, and is also resizable.

Pandora can also cast to everything, but unfortunately, the window is not resizable, takes up the entire screen.

Deezer doesn't show any cast icon, but I suspect that's because I don't have a sub, as it doesn't show up on Android, either. It works beautifully in ChromeOS, though, to the local audio output.

Spotify app doesn't work at all, just a black screen.

Amazon Music app is super buggy on ChromeOS, tends to crash often, and no cast icon, despite my having a sub. The Chrome browser extension doesn't cast at all.

WEYV only casts to Chromecast devices with a screen, oddly, no Sonos.

I may do another Deezer trial sub, since it works so nicely in ChromeOS, is available in my car via Aha Radio, in a limited fashion, and is integrated with Alexa/Echo and Google Assistant. Pretty much everywhere I would use it. I do remember their Flow going WAY out of my comfort zone quite often, though, not nearly as good as Pandora or some of the other services.
Interesting that Google appears to have opened whatever incoming port used by Chromecast devices. No issues at all with casting apps keeping up with what’s playing on any of my Chromecast devices. Also, Pandora and iHeart apps track Sonos speakers just fine.
They may simply poll the Chromecast while the app is in the foreground. And Pandora et al could well get the Sonos player status via the cloud.
Interesting that Google appears to have opened whatever incoming port used by Chromecast devices. No issues at all with casting apps keeping up with what’s playing on any of my Chromecast devices. Also, Pandora and iHeart apps track Sonos speakers just fine.

With Chromebooks having overtaken sales of MacBooks several years ago, seems like a prime platform for Sonos to target, with Google’s cooperation. Win-win.
Indeed. The problem all along appears to be the security built into ChromeOS' networking architecture. The Sonos controller's failure to stay up to date with what's playing etc is presumably because it can't receive unsolicited inbound notifications. The same issue prevents a reset controller from associating with a household when there are multiple households on the subnet; it asks for buttons to be pressed on a player but never hears the broadcast.
So, probably a firewall issue. This Chrome extension for Sonos won't work on ChromeOS because of an incoming port being blocked. Doesn't appear to be an easy way to open ports on ChromeOS, without going into dev mode, which does a powerwash. Not ready to go there right now.

https://github.com/siboulet/zonos

Known Issues
Firewall on Chromebook
Zonos uses port TCP/3400 for receiving events from the Sonos system (as per Sonos documentation). Currently, it is not possible to open the firewall on Google Chromebook.
Clearing out the data and cache fixed the issue with the missing music services, and it does play selected items, but still doesn't show what's playing, and the queue doesn't work correctly. Ah well.

Per Google's Android developer site, Android apps should just need some UI tweaks to work properly on Chrome OS. Nothing about networking issues. But, as any developer knows, docs don't always tell the whole story.

https://developer.android.com/chrome-os/intro

but apparently, if they were to stick more closely to Android development best practices, it should "just work" on Android in ChromeOS.
But would it? Other network-centric apps such as Fing don't work properly on ChromeOS.

But Sonos doesn't support their app on ChromeOS. I get that it would be a benefit to some if it was supported, but doing so would required extra development and testing to please a relatively small set of customers.


Yes, but apparently, if they were to stick more closely to Android development best practices, it should "just work" on Android in ChromeOS. The fact that other apps, using Sonos' own API, work perfectly, says that it ought to be possible. Just sayin'
Sonos controller release 10.0 mucks up pretty much everything in ChromeOS. All services except TuneIn have disappeared.

A bit ironic that the Pandora and iHeart Radio apps work perfectly when casting to Sonos, using Sonos' own Direct Control API.

Everything I've read about Android in ChromeOS says that it's quite strict, and that apps that don't stick very closely to the current Android API will not fully work. Time for Sonos to clean up this app, IMO.


But Sonos doesn't support their app on ChromeOS. I get that it would be a benefit to some if it was supported, but doing so would required extra development and testing to please a relatively small set of customers.
Sonos controller release 10.0 mucks up pretty much everything in ChromeOS. All services except TuneIn have disappeared.

A bit ironic that the Pandora and iHeart Radio apps work perfectly when casting to Sonos, using Sonos' own Direct Control API.

Everything I've read about Android in ChromeOS says that it's quite strict, and that apps that don't stick very closely to the current Android API will not fully work. Time for Sonos to clean up this app, IMO.
Hi-Fi Cast android app works very nicely with Sonos on the ChromeBox. It immediately recognized my "NAS", which is a Twonky UPnP server on my router, with the files on a thumb drive in the back. It also has the ShoutCast directory. Resizeable, decent UI, fast. Render to left Play:1 recognizes stereo pair without issue.

Picked up an ASUS Chromebox 3 to play with. It supports ChromeOS, Android and Linux. all in a tiny box with plenty of IO ports.

The ChromeOS apps will cast to ChromeCast for the most part, but annoyingly, they run in a browser tab, and when browsing in another tab to any page with an embedded video will stop the music. Unacceptable.

Installed the Noson Linux app, which looked promising, but it won't find my Sonos system. Darn, it's the only app that will resize properly, unlike the Android apps, which always run full screen.

The Sonos Android app kinda sorta works, though it for some reason doesn't always update the queue, or show the correct song if it was launched elsewhere.

The Android Amazon Music app mostly just crashes. Spotify works, but I don't have a sub, so can't cast to Sonos. Google Play Music will cast to Sonos without a sub, and lets me play from my NAS. It's pretty ugly on a 24" monitor, though.

Pandora will cast fine to Sonos (and Chromecast), looks fairly decent, and has the nice artist bios. Probably the best choice for a Chromebox right now.

The Google Home app for Android works nicely and looks great on the 24" screen. It can, of course, launch Pandora and play from there to Sonos. Will be great when the Google Assistant integration is finally done, will bring more control to Sonos from ChromeOS.

Pandora mini controller on the notification popup.

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Hi there, on ChromeOS .... .98 and whilst app fires up, I'm not seeing the same reliability you seem to. Possible to check if you still seeing good results?

I'm on an i7 Pixelbook on version .98 of chromeOS and latest Sonos.

It fires up but hunts around for wireless ... sometimes succeeding, then dropping and hunting.

Just to check were others are right now. Read with high hopes but not seeing the same just now
Solved with current Sonos update!