Password to avoid guests changing music


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Hi
Let's say i'm having a party, and my Sonos is playing the music.
Many of my guests are friends that earlier has gotten access to my WiFi. During the party, these guests could download Sonos Controller/app, connect to Sonos, and start controlling the music.
There is no way in Sonos controllers to set a password, to avoid this behaviour.
Other workarounds would be setting up a guest WiFi network that doesn't have access to Sonos, but this would require a new router (in som cases), or change my original password in my entire existing network, which would be annoying ;)

Are there any plans to add this feature?
Maybe even a possibility to require a password for each Sonos device (tick box in controller preferences for each device?)

Am i missing something, other than keeping my guests sober and not annoying 😃

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186 replies

As far as it being an easy fix to just add a password on your Sonos system, I agree that it seems that way on the surface, when you're only considering users who access Sonos through the Sonos app. However, there are a lot more entry points these days. You can cast to Sonos from Spotify or Pandora. There will be airpplay2 pretty soon. There is voice control. There is Smartthings, Logitech, and quite a few other third party products and apps. So if you add a password requirement on the Sonos app, you have to close the 'backdoor' entry points as well. And that means all those other things have to change their code for the password functionality. So it's just a matter of a easy code change (if that's what it) but a huge coordination effort as well.

As far as allowing guests to play their own playlists for a party and such. I somewhat solved this by keeping an old phone around (or any spare tablet would do) that I can give to guests that I trust to run the system. She wanted to use her Spotify playlist, so after setting that up, there were no issues. I don't use Spotify myself, not sure if you can setup multiple services of the same type.

The basic point is, have a cheap phone or tablet around as an extra controller you can give to guests you trust instead of letting them access with their own phone. Chances are, their playlist is coming from a music service, that will have to be setup anyone, not stored locally on their phone or device.
Userlevel 1
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I don't have time to read the entire thread here. But from what I have read the most fundamental reasoning for password protection or pins for device access have been overlooked. In my house I share with my not so technical flatmate, in our common areas of the house we have sonos. But in both our bed rooms and bathrooms we also have sonos speakers. In addition to this both our guests rooms have a similar set up. Lovely setup. That is until someone comes home 3am in the morning and makes a mistake and music full blast into your bedroom. In the past 3 weeks this has happened to me twice and has really strained my relationship with my house mate and our guests. This is a nightmare. We are not network guys. Does not seem reasonable that we would need 4 or more segmented networks to protect from this when a simple pin access number could be used to limit access to the private speakers versus the common area ones. We also have chromecasts in all the same areas and their simple pin access overcomes these problems from people casting content into my room.
This is a big deal. I love the system in every single way except this one omission. I can't believe that many havnt suffered this problem, been blasted in the middle of the night accidentally by a valid user of the system. Another small side effect is I listen to pod casts in my bathroom speaker. I just control playback with the hardware switch. But if someone takes over that speaker, I lose my place in my podcast.
Look again, I really hope someone is still taking this thread seriously. I have 25 sonos units (playbars/play5-1/connect amp etc) not cheap. If there is some solution without having to get a network specialist in to firewall each private zone I would love to hear about it. Amazingly enough this was the last technical issue I expected to have with the sonos system. I made the biggest common mistake people make, I just assumed zones/protection would not be a problem. I am so passionate about this, I want to just keep writing. But I will stop and hope someone is actually listening and understanding the negative effect this is having on my relationships in our house.


Surely you just unplug it when you're asleep, problem solved.
You could put guest and Flatmate players into a different Household so they can't control your units. I believe different households can share music sources in most cases.
Userlevel 1
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You could put guest and Flatmate players into a different Household so they can't control your units. I believe different households can share music sources in most cases.

How do you do that? Is it possible on the same network?
Hey guys, I have this problem -keep it simple, change the language in room settings for the party that no one speaks. nice
Userlevel 3
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Any recent comment from Sonos on this?
This is the Feature Request with Most Comments.
This is the Feature Request with Most Comments.
Just to set this in context: 182 posts from only 48 unique users in 5+ years.
Userlevel 3
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182 posts [...] in 5+ years.
One could say it's a long awaited feature
182 posts in 5+ years.
One could say it's a long awaited feature

A selective edit, misquoting my response.

It doesn't matter how long it's been awaited if only 48 users (in this thread, at least a couple of whom are forum 'helpers') are interested.

By the way, the solution to this problem has been pretty simple for quite some time: don't give access to your network to people you don't trust. Most modern routers offer a 'guest' network facility.
Userlevel 7
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Hi everyone, there's no official news on this topic I can add today, but I'll make sure the team knows people are still asking. As ratty suggests, the best thing to do is to add a guest wireless network with restricted access to your home and not to give out the main wifi credentials to people you don't trust with the keys to your music, or your data, or any other personal details you might have on the home network.

Guest networks are very common these days and most all major routers are capable of broadcasting one.
Userlevel 3
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As ratty suggests, the best thing to do is to add a guest wireless network

Thanks Ryan. I already have this but it does not allow for any control of sonos.

My problem is that I want the guests to have some control, just not full control

Like for example, I'd love them to have control of all the common areas (Living Room, Kitchen, etc), but not the bedrooms.
For overnight guests, this is particularly appreciated.
My guests don't do it on purpose. They are just trying to learn how to use a new app in a house they don't live in and end up playing musing in the bedrooms when people are sleeping...