We moderators of the community - @Corry P, @Jamie A & @Sotiris C. - wanted to take an opportunity to explain some of what is currently happening on the community.
First of all, we value all the feedback you are providing about the new Sonos App. We hear you. Feedback is coming in fast and thick, however - for understandable reasons - and to be frank, we are having trouble just keeping up with it all. For this reason, some topics that have not yet been replied to will go unanswered. We will, however, do our best to amalgamate some of these separate threads into bigger, related threads (such as one big thread for Alarm complaints and another for Queue Management) to be answered en-mass. The threads that are feedback on other aspects of the new app will be merged with this post.
Threads that describe issues such as missing rooms and app crashes (those that are not just feedback, in other words) will be answered, as will threads not relating to the new app in anyway, but these will take a bit longer than normal.
Please be aware that we are reading every post, we are recording and collating all feedback, and all of it will be passed over to the app software development team. In addition, we are doing our best to identify previously unidentified issues and report them to our technical teams.
We know many of you are concerned about certain features going missing, so let us take this opportunity to say that the following features are coming back:
Alarms management
Sleep timers
Queue management
Playlist editing
In addition and contrary to some speculation, local Music Library is not going anywhere, though SMBv1 support has been permanently removed. Local Music Library searching is something that is still being worked on.
We’d also like to thank everyone who has taken it upon themselves to help others here with their questions and concerns - we appreciate you all!
Thanks for listening - take care of yourselves, and each other.
Combined threads:
General feedback (not relating specifically to those below):
Queue management:
Alarms:
Playlists:
Music Library:
Sleep Timers:
Please note that there is an official statement that can be read here.
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Wow. How can something that was previously functioning fine, albeit slow, have turned into such complete chaos in the form of a mostly unusable app? I have over a dozen Sonos products and have been a loyal user for over a decade. Did your developers not think to do widespread user testing? Do you even have developers? I'm having a really difficult time figuring out the workflow to select music to play, and the Amazon music app's streaming is almost non-functional. It has been bad for a long time, but now I can't stream to multiple speakers without it skipping tracks, breaking up, or not playing anything. I purchased access to a different streaming app (Pandora) so that I could at least use my speakers this weekend, but how sad is that? I'm beyond disappointed, but confident you will find some kind of solution for your loyal users.
I invested in Sonos speakers so I could listen to my extensive music library stored on my computer and my multiple playlists. Since the update I am unable to play either. I can play streaming services, but I could do that on my phone. If I will be unable to use my Sonos system for what I intended then you have rendered my Sonos system as nothing more than a commodity, or useless junk. While you are spending the next however many months "bringing back" what you took away I will be researching alternative solutions. Your "bold" move just may be sending this year's-long customer to Bose. They seem to be the best contender. Too bad, that investment could have been going into additional Sonos gear. That won't be happening after this disaster.
Bill Wyatt
Worst upgraded app EVER! I can’t get any music channels to play. Forever getting “something went wrong”. This message ALWAYS appears using this useless new app on my iPhone unless I start my music station from my iPad using the older app. Only then can I get my music (Sirius XM CHANNELS) to play. And this happens on all music platforms. Please Fix this mess.
The new app has made Sonos an undesirable product. Why would your engineers completely destroy a perfectly functioning app? This new app doesn’t allow shuffle feature, doesn’t allow adding to playlists, malfunctions constantly - no sound coming from zones added to name just a few. Someone should lose their job over this craven idiocy. I’m ready to dump Sonos. Pathetic.
TruePlay calibration doesn’t work on the Sonos Arc using the new app with my new iPad Air 5! Why would anyone buy a new Sonos product that is heavily reliant on an app that doesn’t even work?
I massively regret buying my Sonos Arc. It was fine in 2021, but it’s gradually got worse due to it’s various ‘updates’ in the app.
Layout better, but operationally horrible with many speakers. Delays when selecting music and pausing/starting make it unusable when using many at one time. I am seriously considering dumping the whole system frankly.
I’ve been an avid fan of Sonos from the beginning! It’s playing in our home every day. I have two Ports that replaced my Connect. I also have a pair of Play 1’s and a pair of Roam’s. This allows me to play music throughput the entire home, deck and patio. I’m very disappointed in the new app upgrade. 80.00.04. It feels like a solution in search of a problem. You relocated the EQ and now it’s not as handy to change a setting. The user interface is different, but I fail to see how it’s an improvement. On the Now Playing screen, there is no number to indicate what the volume setting is. See screenshots below. When you click on the room, it shows the volume level. This is a big miss by the developers. You would make a lot of your customers happy, especially me, if you would allow us to revert back to the previous app version. Please do that until you work out the bugs. I’m begging you! Thank you, Tim
I will be surprised if this fiasco doesn't impact negatively on your future sales. I hope it does because that's all that matters to you at the end of the day. Prospective buyers searching the internet in order to contrast and compare competing streaming systems will come across this chapter in the Sonos story and stay clear if they have any sense. I know I would.
I have managed to uninstall this latest version and load up the previous but for all those users who cannot do this you must make the previous version available.
I won't be adding to my Sonos setup in future because I no longer trust you.
Also, less of the green virtue signalling rubbish - I get enough of that elsewhere - and do more to look after your customers.
I am considering bluesound at this moment
Just be aware that the bluesound speakers are covered with soft touch plastic. This can go horribly sticky within 2 years! They can't be cleaned.
Thanks for the info
We have an old Play:3 in our kid’s room that we use every night for bedtime music. Most of our services work (mainly Spotify) but the new app is incredibly laggy and unresponsive. The app frequently displays the wrong song as playing, and the controls never work in a timely manner. There’s no feedback as to what’s happening -- no “we’re having trouble connecting” message, just nothing happens, or for volume, the slider indicator reverts back to the previous volume and the volume doesn’t change. I usually resort to adjusting the volume with the hardware controls on the speaker. Sometimes the tracks will change multiple seconds after pressing the next/previous button.
We have an old Play:3 in our kid’s room that we use every night for bedtime music. Most of our services work (mainly Spotify) but the new app is incredibly laggy and unresponsive. The app frequently displays the wrong song as playing, and the controls never work in a timely manner. There’s no feedback as to what’s happening -- no “we’re having trouble connecting” message, just nothing happens, or for volume, the slider indicator reverts back to the previous volume and the volume doesn’t change. I usually resort to adjusting the volume with the hardware controls on the speaker. Sometimes the tracks will change multiple seconds after pressing the next/previous button.
Same here. And now sometimes when using multiple speakers some drop off randomly when you skip tracks or music and one location plays what you just chose and others are still playing the previous choice. Really quite crazy. Very poorly beta tested.
Wow. How can something that was previously functioning fine, albeit slow, have turned into such complete chaos in the form of a mostly unusable app? I have over a dozen Sonos products and have been a loyal user for over a decade. Did your developers not think to do widespread user testing? Do you even have developers? I'm having a really difficult time figuring out the workflow to select music to play, and the Amazon music app's streaming is almost non-functional. It has been bad for a long time, but now I can't stream to multiple speakers without it skipping tracks, breaking up, or not playing anything. I purchased access to a different streaming app (Pandora) so that I could at least use my speakers this weekend, but how sad is that? I'm beyond disappointed, but confident you will find some kind of solution for your loyal users.
Couldn’t agree more. There’s no longer the A-z down the right to help scrolling through your Music library albums. They just want it to work for streaming . Thanks for the tip about Pandora
Gutted... I used to stream from Mytuner. Iv lost 2 of my fave stations, Radio Marbella and Deep house Radio. All I get is a pop up 'something went wrong'. Everything does not work as it was. If I could roll back I would.
I have 9 Sonos speakers in total. Spent 1000's. Some might think I'm soft but if this doesn't get fixed I'll be selling the lot and finding an alternative. I have Auto Update Un ticked but still it updated.
I hope this gets sorted soon.
SONOS ! LISTEN TO YOUR CUSTOMERS !!!!
Gutted... I used to stream from Mytuner. Iv lost 2 of my fave stations, Radio Marbella and Deep house Radio. All I get is a pop up 'something went wrong'. Everything does not work as it was. If I could roll back I would.
I have 9 Sonos speakers in total. Spent 1000's. Some might think I'm soft but if this doesn't get fixed I'll be selling the lot and finding an alternative. I have Auto Update Un ticked but still it updated.
I hope this gets sorted soon.
SONOS ! LISTEN TO YOUR CUSTOMERS !!!!
We all have the same issues. Sonos, you pissed us all off when older equipment stopped working - now you have given yourself a final nail in the coffin. No fix soon and I will flog the lot as well. Between my setup and family we have around 30 speakers - many thousands of wasted dollars.
Why was it shipped when it’s not accessible to the blind? There are international laws governing accessibility.
No, no, Sonos has nothing to worry about: its defence will simply be that they’ve treated both blind and seeing customers equally.
Like everyone else , I went back to previous version (Android ) there is too much missing options
I don't understand why you release an unfinished update ?
A simple question though, why wasn't there (and still isn't) ANY mention of the removal of these key pieces of functionality in any communication (in fact the communication said the opposite) and we should assume the App would allow users to continue as before?
Specifically, we were told:
“We've taken great care to ensure that this update only enhances your Sonos experience. Your products, features and services will work as they always have, and all your settings will be saved.”
This isn't true.
Honestly... Have they not heard of TESTING?
I've worked on software rollouts and we spent a hell of a lot of time testing, improving, retesting and so on.... That was for an internal company system where users couldn't shop elsewhere.... Good luck with keeping your business alive SONOS... You DON'T deserve loyal customers.... Am I wrong....?
What about the overall approach to software updates?
Why was such a huge update, that changed the user experience fundamentally and removed so much essential functionality rolled out to all users?
Why not launch it in a separate public beta channel for those who are eager to test new stuff and provide feedback? The decision to bring such a huge update to all users should be based on extensive assessment of user feedback and feature completeness versus the old version.
I would appreciate if Sonos could comment on this overall approach, and not just limit their response to specific features, as per the first post in this thread.
As for me continuing to expand my Sonos system, replacing older products with newer ones, or recommending others buying Sonos product? Definitely not for the foreseeable future, until trust is reestablished by Sonos.
I am really not liking the new app. There has been a regression in the functionality of the app and it is not at all intuitive. In fact it takes ages to find your own personal library and preferences. The Sonos Radio is not available despite saying it is. The App just didn’t work when I changed speaker location the app going back to the previous location.
A really really bad job here, Sonos you need to be embarrassed about releasing this app and destroying the customer experience. My advice is do not whatever you do update your app and if you do then download the old app.
one very unhappy customer.
The new app is awful. And that’s being VERY polite. Wish I’d been able to keep the old one.
I am really not liking the new app. There has been a regression in the functionality of the app and it is not at all intuitive. In fact it takes ages to find your own personal library and preferences. The Sonos Radio is not available despite saying it is. The App just didn’t work when I changed speaker location the app going back to the previous location.
A really really bad job here, Sonos you need to be embarrassed about releasing this app and destroying the customer experience. My advice is do not whatever you do update your app and if you do then download the old app.
one very unhappy customer.
It might by the case you’re still unfamiliar with the new App as Sonos Radio is there and the Home Page can be customised to help you quickly locate the local library - I’ve just adjusted my Apps layout here and taken a screenshot to show that things are there and can be altered to help you perhaps find what you’re looking for…
The latest App is a disaster!
This experience reminds me of a project, that I company I worked for some years ago, outsourced to an overseas development team. The developers, in that case, didn’t listen to the requirements of our project management and produced an application that missed the mark by a country mile. To be honest I thought those days were long gone but here we are, if I wasn’t so disappointed it would be funny.
I’m just glad that I am not the team lead for this mess.
I’m not going to bother listing the many problems with the App as I think others have covered all of this. I will say though, that this is the second time in recent history that Sonos have behaved poorly and in my opinion caused unnecessary damage to their brand.
This App was not was obviously not ready and should not have been released.
Poor show chaps…
I am not a software engineer or app specialist, but if this app redesign represents the best that Sonos has to offer, I am concerned about the future viability of Sonos as a company. It just doesn’t work in so many ways. Others have detailed this, but start with unstable volume controls, delay in response to app actions, unstable speaker selection, pop ups saying something has gone wrong regularly (I’ll say!), missing playlists and it goes on and on. The app redesign has caused all customers more cost in time, stress and aggravation than the value of the service.
I just wonder what kind of company releases this type of “redesign” that simply is not ready to be used. Who authorised this? What were they smoking?
The stock price is a “sell”. The company’s future is in doubt. We are all now looking for speaker alternatives, now that Sonos has become unreliable.
