Feedback on New App

I can’t believe a reputable company of this size would put out an app with so many issues, and such terrible planning and communication.  If they are event a half-way decently run company, anyone involved in the app decisions, planning, project management and sponsorship should not have a job anymore.

Look at the string I was heavily involved with on this site, called “The Latest Sonos Update”.  Maybe this link will work, too.  I listed a bunch of steps and seems to have worked for most from what I can tell.

https://en.community.sonos.com/topic/show?tid=6893475&postid=16728703&utm_source=community-care&utm_medium=systememail&utm_campaign=en-new-reply

@gmbardman,
You’ve mentioned a number of things with the new Sonos App, many of which are working for some users (myself included). I think you’re saying that your streaming services are working, but you have issues accessing your local music library.

The new Sonos App now supports local libraries that are shared from your MAC using the SMBv2 (or higher) protocol. So you may need to change your library share to comply with those new requirements.

I ‘suspect’ that the MAC shared library is ‘perhaps’ currently using either the SMB v1, or ‘http’ protocol at the moment and if that is the case, you need to change that.

I’m not personally familiar with MacOS to walk you through the necessary steps for setting up the SMBv2 (or higher) share, but hopefully you can find the answers to that via an online search/youtube etc. 

A similar problem exists for some Windows users too and here is a link to assist those users…

Adding a Windows SMB v2 Share

I haven’t really mentioned much about the apps functionality.  I hardly use it.  I use spotify so I don’t really need any of those things from Sonos.  I was helping people to get titheir systems connected with the new app. I am not, nor have a really ever been, familiar with the “non-core” functionalities of Sonos.  I also am only an apple person in that I use their phones and iPads.  Never had a mac book and never liked apple music.  

I have been a loyal and expansive Sonos customer for well over 10 years spread over a myriad of Sonos products over two separate systems in two different homes.   While I love the quality of the products and the flexibility of the services that Sonos offers, my experience has not been without more than my share of frustrations, the most recent of which is the new Sonos iPhone app.    The cardinal rule of updates/upgrades is they should never be a step backwards which unfortunately is the case for the most recent Sonos iPhone app update.   This I believe is particularly true for users that play music from their personal music library (in my case nearly 12k songs) rather than from a streaming service.    My list of grievances includes, but is not likely limited to the following (from the standpoint of someone that only plays music from their personal music library located on an NAS):

1. The app is not nearly as user friendly - Capabilities are hard to find and at times not available as best as I can tell;
2. No bar at the bottom of the screen where you can access your music, system, setting, etc.;
3. Can no longer mute an active speaker other than by sliding the volume bar on the speaker selection screen;
4. Can longer see music queue (message that it is empty);
5. Can no longer concatenate genres, artists, etc. (i.e. adding to end of queue when creating a playlist on the fly);
6. iPhone app does not pick up selections (e.g. speakers) made on other IOS devices;
7. When going to a second home/system, you have to reset up the system manually rather than having it happen automatically; and
8. Higher level of system glitches than previously experienced.    

I am sure more issues will crop up, but to some degree I am relying more heavily on my other IOS devices which I have not updated and don’t plan to anytime soon.    I will admit some of these issues are inconveniences or annoyances, but there are still way too many of them and in some cases are true steps backwards.    Hopefully these issues can be addressed sooner rather than later.   That said, I am disappointed that Sonos did not think this update through more carefully.   

Excellent summary!  Thank you for putting this together.

I have been reading these threads- my library never appeared so I am basically without playlists and access to my 4,000+ songs.  I usually play only my playlists every day, all day.

This is very frustrating but to make matters worse, there has been nothing but silence from SONOS.  

That’s to bad.   I can still access my library including playlists.   On the Your System Home Screen.   Just have to scroll down to Your Sources.   My library is on an NAS.   

I believe the Sonos engineers are making an incredible product, that the Sonos software team are screwing up every chance they get. 
Software updates every week prove my point. 

Also just noticed that there is no a-z on the right hand side of the Artist, Song, etc. listings when you are accessing your music library to assist in navigating your music library which is a pain when you thousands of songs and hundreds of artists.   

I’m in total agreement. The app update is a disaster. 

Like many on this post I have thousands of songs in my music library stored on the drive on my iMac that also houses the Sonos app for MacOS.  Unlike some of you, I do not understand the SMB protocol issues nor how to determine what protocol is used on my iMac nor how to change it to comply with the New Sonos App requirements.  As I (ignorantly) updated my app to the New Sonos App I now have no access to my music library, only subscription and other services in the new app.  I have 13 Sonos devices/speakers in my home and the New Sonos App has made them worthless unless I want to listen to add supported Sonos channel selections.  I hope others will complain to Sonos about this incredibly poor upgrade process on the Sonos side!

My sub and speakers stopped working. What is the Sonos process for filing a warranty claim. The components are less than a year old.

Another issue with new Sonos iPhone app when listening to personal music library.  When coming to the end of a playlist you can’t just restart.  In fact you have to restart the app and reselect the speakers you want to be active.  

Why is no-one from SONOS responding to these threads?

Accessing and using music folders in the new app is significantly worse with the new version.  An example below, image one is taken with the old App (on my wife’s phone, thank goodness she hasn’t updated yet):

You can see a ‘play’ button to play the whole playlist.  On the new version of the App:

There is no ‘play’ button anymore, so you can only play tracks individually.

This is a community forum, if you look at the header at the top of the page. It isn’t, unfortunately, the direct communication with Sonos support, or even Sonos management. 

To my knowledge, the only Sonos folks who are in these boards are Sonos moderators, and I suspect they’re having trouble keeping up with the volume of posts at this moment. 

This is only partially accurate.

Sonos appears to support local libraries (via the NAS workaround) _IF_ the library is being shared via a specific version of MacOS. I have a Mac running Catalina that was, until this update, accessible from an S2 system comprising two Sonos Ray devices and a larger S1 system that I intentionally downgraded to S1 last month to avoid this sort of drama). MacOS is, as it always has been, sharing the library via File Sharing and SMB 3.0.2 - verified via Terminal.

Since the latest update, the S2 Rays cannot connect to the library. I know how to specify a machine name and file sharing path in MacOS, so I’m not doing it incorrectly. Attempting to configure the library via the S2 app now results in an error message claiming the Mac is no longer running (despite the fact it very much is) after 10-15 minutes of supposed ‘indexing’.

I suspect that Sonos haven’t tested against Catlina, or have done a poor job with their new SMB implementation. In either case, something that was working perfectly is now unusable, and if not resolved in the forthcoming update, I’ll be selling my S2 kit and moving over to Denon or others. Forced removal of product functionality is completely unacceptable, and it’s laughable that Sonos feel their approach to this update or their response to the fallout are in anyway appropriate. I’ve tolerated a lot of issues with Sonos over the years, but this is entirely without precedent and, if unresolved, I’ll be pursuing them for resolution via every possible avenue.

Notwithstanding the universal sentiment that the new Sonos app update is a disaster, Sonos just upped the ante.   A week or two ago I was pinged by Sonos to update to the “new and improved” version of the sonos app for my iPhone which i unfortunately dutifully did.   Big mistake as many of you have found out.    The only saving grace is I have 3 other IOS devices that still ran with the old version of the Sonos app.  Unfortunately when I fired up my iPad today the “new and degraded” version of the app had been automatically downloaded much to my dismay.    You would think that as much negative feedback Sonos has received about the new app that they would not be force feeding it to its loyal customer base (at least before this update) by pushing it through in a manner that gets picked through IOS’s automatic update process.   As a result I felt compelled to turn off automatic updates on my other IOS devices which is a pain.   What are you thinking Sonos?    It is time for you to do something to resolve this situation before you lose all you loyal customers.   

App updates (or not updating an app) are a function of iOS, not Sonos or any other app vendor.  Sonos cannot “push” an app out to a device, that is done by Apple via the App Store.  You can set your apps to not update automatically in the settings for the App Store.

I agree with Dave Steely.  No response from Sonos.  So disappointed.  My library is still misbehaving but thanks to Salami at least I have the library.  The functionality is nothing like it was prior to update.  I want the old version back- please!

I’ve spent many thousands of dollars on SONOS systems across two homes with over 40 components. The latest app was advertised as an upgrade. If I were a new buyer, I would run away from SONOS as fast as I could. I’ve never seen an “updated” app take a journey back to Version 0.1. It happened once at a very large and famous technology company and the VP got fired. The same should happen here. Why would you take a good functioning app, remove many of the features, make the remaining features difficult to find, and often not working, and put it on the market? Deception or incompetence? It tells me that SONOS doesn’t have a formal QA team. Or if they do, they should all be fired. I’ve spent 15 years with SONOS, and it’ll take 15 years for SONOS to regain my trust. It’ll be years before I spend another dollar on SONOS!

IF SONOS wants to save their reputation and not lose customers, give users the opportunity to use the previous well-functioning app until SONOS actually has an enhanced & functioning new app.