Some of you might have questions when you have had a week to get to know the new Sonos App interface. Because of that, we want to give you all a chance to ask some of the people who were integral in its creation and design, the questions that have come to mind while you have used the app.
Diane Roberts, Senior Director of Software Development
Kate Wojogbe, Senior Director of User Experience
Tucker Severson, Director of Product Management
It will be hosted on the 14th of May from 11:00 until 14:00 GMT -07.
But instead of me telling you what they do and what their role with the app update has been, here are their own introductions:
Diane
Diane Roberts is the Senior Director of Software Engineering and Product Management at Sonos responsible for the Sonos Apps. Her group of cross-disciplinary teams build Configuration, Control, and Content experiences on a foundation of Core mobile application technologies. She received dual Bachelors’ of Science in Computer Science and Music from WPI. Diane holds 6 granted patents as a co-inventor.
Kate
As Senior Director of User Experience, Kate leads the UX team responsible for Sonos’ home audio hardware, software, and app user experiences. This includes user interfaces on speakers and soundbars, setup for hardware and services, first and third party content experiences, and a variety of methods of control of the Sonos system. Kate graduated from the University of California Los Angeles with a Bachelor of Arts degree in Design.
Tucker
Tucker Severson is the Director of Product Management and leads the PM team responsible for the Sonos Apps. Tucker received his BA from Bates College and his MBA from the University of Vermont.
We will do our best to answer as many of your questions as possible within the 3-hour window, but we can’t promise to answer every question, especially those you know we can’t discuss.
But if we see a question repeated or a reply getting a lot of likes, don’t worry. We will prioritize those to ensure that many people get the answers they seek.
Remember, we can’t talk about things on the roadmap - but if you have questions or feedback about the app redesign, want to know more about our panelists, like their background or favorite band, then the sky is the (cough cough.. NDA) limit!
Thank you, everyone, for participating. We covered as many of the most asked questions as possible. We know tracking the responses wasn't as easy as we had hoped. But we wanted to let the community air frustrations and have their questions answered.
I got a lot of DMs during the AMA, and I will be sure to answer them when I can. Thanks for reaching out!
Keith and I will work on recapping all the questions and feedback we have responded to, and we will update the post here when that is complete. If we didn't get to your question, don't worry. Keith and I are grabbing all the feedback from this thread, even the things we didn't respond to, and ensuring the right people will see the message. This was the first time we created a live AMA in the community, and we learned a lot for future AMAs.
We appreciate all the feedback and questions you gave through this AMA. It helps us understand your most significant feedback and your reasoning. We hear you, and we will ensure the right teams get your feedback. They are listening.
We look forward to seeing your reactions to our future app developments. We hope you all appreciate the work our developers are putting into making the app as fast and easy to use as possible for the general user.
Page 24 / 31
SO, will the forced update pending for the Windows controller screw up my system? We’ve been OK with rolling back to 16.1 on Android and disabling all updates, but now we can’t use Windows?
Nothing I’ve seen here has instilled any confidence that Sonos is slowing its roll or pumping its brakes in any way, which is a shame. No matter what I do I can’t avoid losing functionality I had days ago? Have to go with the lesser of all the evils and stick with 16.1 Android and pray nobody hits the Update button on me. No way am I updating the Windows controller, not a fan of Sonoscide.
I’ve only observed up till now. There are only three respondents to, what — 400 users here ? While the Sonos replies are too few and too infrequent, they each generate further exponential posts, many just to get in a snarky response. This was never going to work. There have been plenty of pertinent questions posed, but also far too much mud-slinging which was never going to add anything. Maybe next time, a different platform for the Q&A, and hopefully a few more adults in the room.
Please upvote this post: Can you please provide an immediate easy way to rollback the mobile app to the prior version for those who can’t make the current version meet their needs.
Thanks @bkk. Also, @nelliott and others had similar questions.
Rolling back to the previous version of the Sonos app is likely to cause issues. As Sonos continues to advance forward with new updates to the firmware, the old apps will fall out of compatibility quickly. Our priority is to release improvements to the Sonos app rapidly to address your needs.
Well, I rolled back to the previous version a couple of hours after the upgrade, and I have had no issues at all.
I am sure that they will "fix" this backward compatibility issue with the next firmware update.
I am not sure that this format for an AMA was appropriate. You basically have people posting hundreds of questions with responses coming based on the popularity of the question. How is this different than any other forum within the community? So, I am expected to scroll through 22+ pages of questions to figure out what has been asked and answered? And the amount of pages are growing by the minute.
Why didn’t you do a Teams/Zoom meeting? Or even a Twitch event would have been better than this!!!
Yeah this forum/community is a terrible platform for this type of event.
But text-based forums can work. Reddit works well for this type of event because threads can be sorted by upvotes so the most popular questions rise to the top of the thread. Much easier to quickly see the most popular questions, and the answers associated with those questions.
All I want is to be able to listen to music from my local library. Right now I’m able to access the files, but I can’t add them to a playlist (all my previews playlists, consisting of local music, are gone as well). Cover art is not showing as well. Please tell me that this function is still a priority to you. I didn’t invest in my Sonos system to be eventually be forced to pay for a streaming service…
Me too. This is why I brought into Sonos.
I just now launched the new Sonos app and it told me my system could not be found. (I have blurred my network name in the screenshot for privacy.)
But just below, under Nearby Systems, it showed that it had found my system on the same network. What the heck?
Will Patrick Spence have the courage to make an open apology to all the SONOS users in regards of the new app release?
Will we see numbers re-added to the volume adjusters or is Sonos sticking with this UI decision?
@danull Yes - volume numbers will be returning to this UI. We are continuing to refine our volume UI based on user feedback and will soon be providing an update to these controls. Volume numbers should be visible now in the grouping menu.
@KateW Will you also be bringing back the group volume slider pop-up so we don’t have to go back to grouping to adjust volume ratios?
As someone who was about spend a not inconsiderable amount of money to replace my NAS please can Sonos please provide some clarity on future functionality in the near future.
Specifically is SMB v1 gone (confused as my very old NAS seems to be working still)? Are the SMB v2 bugs I heard people using SMB v1 to avoid fixed? Will search and navigation in the app be fixed to make using a NAS and local library worthwhile again?
Thanks
SMB v1 is gone. I can confirm SMB v2 works just fine. Keep in mind though, once you approach 65,000 tracks it can get dicey.
Same. Been running SMB 3 for almost a year. My NAS is a Synology.
How is kowtowing to investor interest in a new product category and forcing a release of a clearly undercooked and unfinished app instead of delaying the new product until the software is ready “courageous”?
How do i stop this AMA from emailing me every reply?????
Yes I wondered that too….but if you open one of the emails there is a link to remove it from your Favourites (not that you knew you had added it) - then peace will be restored (a bit like alarms not going off ;-))
How do i stop this AMA from emailing me every reply?????
Here, have another one
Can I return my Sonos One since I can’t add my NAS to it and therefore it’s completely useless to me?
How do I roll back to a prior iOS controller. The current controller broke too many of the functions and features i use (or used to use) every day.
How do i stop this AMA from emailing me every reply?????
Here, have another one
You can go into your personal settings and turn off replies in the top right corner of the page (You should see an initial that’s the start of your username. Click that. Go into your settings and you can turn off replies.
As someone who was about spend a not inconsiderable amount of money to replace my NAS please can Sonos please provide some clarity on future functionality in the near future.
Specifically is SMB v1 gone (confused as my very old NAS seems to be working still)? Are the SMB v2 bugs I heard people using SMB v1 to avoid fixed? Will search and navigation in the app be fixed to make using a NAS and local library worthwhile again?
Thanks
SMB v1 is gone. I can confirm SMB v2 works just fine. Keep in mind though, once you approach 65,000 tracks it can get dicey.
Same. Been running SMB 3 for almost a year. My NAS is a Synology.
Interestingly, my NAS has been set for SMB v3 exclusively (server and client) and Sonos wouldn’t connect from the Windows controller. Bumped the NAS back to SMB v2 and Sonos immediately connected. This was for a new connection.
I use(d) Navidrome and Bonob for Subsonic connection to Sonos and that’s broken as of this update.
How did you approach the difficult decision to exclude blind customers with this update, and was there extra consideration to doing this without pre-warning them?
I find it interesting that a premium speaker company released an obviously unfinished app after gloating about it for months, aren’t addressing the issues, aren’t acknowledging them, is gaslighting us into thinking it’s some marvel, and is wanting some pat on the back for starting from scratch.
Insult to injury is this AMA that is going terribly.
I’m your customer, not your colleague. I don’t care what you did when what you released isn’t functional or even remotely close to what I was using before. Thankfully, I have Android so I was able to go back to the old app, but I want you to know my very serious additions to my eco system is now on hold because of this. Repeating the same positive things about the app to get us to be quiet about the glaring issues is only making matters worse. READ THE ROOM!
I have huge problems with adjusting volume between devices and unbelievable delays on track recognition - up to 30 seconds! I’ve tried adjusting group volume, it just does one device, then I just do that device and the whole system crashes and no music plays. What the actual have you done to my listening experience? Absolutely destroyed it, that’s what. You need to fix this very quickly or those buying new products will be getting their money back and going to Bose. this is a bigger than the transition From S1 to S2 and the lack of support for older products.
Mod Edit: Removed the swear words. Keep it civil.
I find it interesting that a premium speaker company released an obviously unfinished app after gloating about it for months, aren’t addressing the issues, aren’t acknowledging them, gaslighting us into thinking it’s some marvel, and is wanting some pat on the back for starting from scratch.
Insult to injury is this AMA that is going terribly.
I’m your customer, not your colleague. I don’t care what you did when what you released isn’t functional or even remotely close to what I was using before. Thankfully, I have Android so I was able to go back to the old app, but I want you to know my very serious additions to my eco system is now on hold because of this. Repeating the same positive things about the app to get us to be quiet about the glaring issues is only making matters worse. READ THE ROOM!
To read the room they would have to read our questions….
Please upvote this post: Can you please provide an immediate easy way to rollback the mobile app to the prior version for those who can’t make the current version meet their needs.
Thanks @bkk. Also, @nelliott and others had similar questions.
Rolling back to the previous version of the Sonos app is likely to cause issues. As Sonos continues to advance forward with new updates to the firmware, the old apps will fall out of compatibility quickly. Our priority is to release improvements to the Sonos app rapidly to address your needs.
@tuckerseverson But rolling forward to a new release is certain to cause even more issues. So why not just package the v16.1 app as a seperate legacy release and leave us all to decide for ourselves?
I noticed that the re-introduction of alarms actually required an update to Sonos devices as well as the app today. Does this mean that the new UI revamp was in fact much more than just a revamp to the UI? Are there currently bigger changes happening on the device side as well?
@Aleksander H
The app is definitely a revamp, but it’s not just the UI that changed! This new app is using new features on the speaker firmware and new cloud services as well. Let me share a bit more about what happened with alarm settings.
On the morning of the app launch, we discovered a data corruption error around the new Alarms APIs. The corruption could cause alarms to go off in the wrong room at the wrong volume with the wrong content! In order to save your alarms, we made the difficult decision to remotely disable the alarm settings feature and then completely lock it out. It allowed us to make sure your alarms stayed as they were - but at the steep cost of taking away your ability to change them yourself.
The team rallied to make sure we could turn this feature back on safely - and today we are so delighted to say that we have re-enabled alarm settings. To get this feature, you must do a full system update.
But that’s not how we expect to introduce features every time. We have built the new app to be able to update independently of the speaker firmware. As we go forward, you can expect us to bring out new features with smaller, less intrusive, updates.
“On the morning of the app launch, it was evident that the app still had major problems. In order to save face, we avoided the difficult decision to pull the launch until it was ready. Instead, we sacrificed your user experience and kicked it out the door anyway.”
There, I fixed it for ya!
I noticed that the re-introduction of alarms actually required an update to Sonos devices as well as the app today. Does this mean that the new UI revamp was in fact much more than just a revamp to the UI? Are there currently bigger changes happening on the device side as well?
@Aleksander H
The app is definitely a revamp, but it’s not just the UI that changed! This new app is using new features on the speaker firmware and new cloud services as well. Let me share a bit more about what happened with alarm settings.
On the morning of the app launch, we discovered a data corruption error around the new Alarms APIs. The corruption could cause alarms to go off in the wrong room at the wrong volume with the wrong content! In order to save your alarms, we made the difficult decision to remotely disable the alarm settings feature and then completely lock it out. It allowed us to make sure your alarms stayed as they were - but at the steep cost of taking away your ability to change them yourself.
The team rallied to make sure we could turn this feature back on safely - and today we are so delighted to say that we have re-enabled alarm settings. To get this feature, you must do a full system update.
But that’s not how we expect to introduce features every time. We have built the new app to be able to update independently of the speaker firmware. As we go forward, you can expect us to bring out new features with smaller, less intrusive, updates.
Diane,
What Cloud Services are being used, and do they increase vulnerability to our local networks?
Thanks
Rolling back to the previous version of the Sonos app is likely to cause issues. As Sonos continues to advance forward with new updates to the firmware, the old apps will fall out of compatibility quickly. Our priority is to release improvements to the Sonos app rapidly to address your needs.
Yes, I can imagine.
However, rolling forward to the new app also proved to have tons of issues. Of which the most serious one is the lack of accessibility. (I should point out that I am a normal seeing person, and I have no need for features myself.)
I like the style of the new app, but it is not ready for prime time.
Rolling back can cause problems, but you can make the old app available. You could even time-bomb it so that people don’t stick to it forever.
Will you offer a new macOS App with full Functionality - after you removed lots of Functions in S2 (!) the WebUI Version is way too Basic - particularly for larger Setups with 10+ Devices.
