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Your feedback on the new Sonos App

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M

The app is incredibly unresponsive. Changing volume takes forever. I often can't stop music. The app sees the devices and music plays, but the app thinks nothing is playing. I can start something else to play and then stop that. I just want to throw it all out of the window. This upgrade is a prime example of why some people hate technology. 

J
Userlevel 4
Badge +1

With each day that goes by and I have to use this POS new app, I'm seriously debating selling all of it and starting over. WTF @Sonos My biggest issue is that THERE WAS NOTHING WRONG WITH THE OLD APP!! Not sure what drove this horrible decision.

K
Userlevel 7
Badge +4

With each day that goes by and I have to use this POS new app, I'm seriously debating selling all of it and starting over. WTF @Sonos My biggest issue is that THERE WAS NOTHING WRONG WITH THE OLD APP!! Not sure what drove this horrible decision.

See comment 6-7 prior to this. 

D
Userlevel 3
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Well, it appears that Sonos support has decided to take a nap on my ticket or that I am not important enough to respond to. After rebooting literally every device in my home because the new app is not capable, I was able to update all of my devices. Be careful thinking that the app tells you they are all updated, it lies. I got on a support call and they watched me do it, the app said all devices are up to date and the tech said, well they aren’t. After manually unplugging and plugging back in every device including my wifi and modem they were able to get all devices updated and the app working with the exception of one amp which they warrantied. Now the new amp arrives today and neither I nor their support can get it to join my system…! Two wasted hours later I have a feeling that this new wonderful app is the cause of this as well as I had no issue setting up this system with multiple amps, many speakers as well as an ARC and sub. Congratulations Sonos, you have lost yet another faithful customer as I now must wait until Monday and call back in when advanced support can theoretically help me. I can’t wait to see how long that wait queue is going to be.

C

Interesting how the mobile app has an Edit button on the home screen so you can move the sources up and down, but the web app doesn’t - this would be useful to have too

C
Userlevel 7
Badge +18

Interesting how the mobile app has an Edit button on the home screen so you can move the sources up and down, but the web app doesn’t - this would be useful to have too

Sort of like re-arranging the deckchairs on the Titanic. 🧊🧊🚢

It's the courageous bee's knees - all 6 🐝🐝🐝🐝🐝🐝. - - - - - Make Sonos Great Again - - - - -
V
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We are a direct dealer for Sonos and have been involved with selling, installing, upgrading and setting  a very broad range of their product lineup since 2007 so we been through the wringer in all those years. But the latest iteration of the UI is to put it kindly, abysmal, awkward and Byzantine.   We are bracing for the calls from our residential clients where they have Sonos products installed and are forced to upgrade the controller in order to play their music only to be totally confused and have to reach out to get help to to now navigate a totally foreign and unfriendly platform to hear their beloved music favorites.  As bad as it is for regular consumers its definitely not a picnic for those in the integration business. 

Just yesterday drove down to Monterey to setup in an Arc and Sub-Mini which took much longer than usual to provision on the client’s account but when trying to run True Play to eq the new setup, found that it would not advance past Continue.  Tried closing and restarting App as well as deleting and starting over several times but wound up empty.  This is on an iPhone15 Plus with iOS 17.4.1.  Had to give up after wasting more than an hour on the deal.   

The team that QC’d this better get back in lab and bring in some fresh faces as this is not the way it should be by a long shot and its back to the drawing board to start over. 

 

S

On songs that repeat the song doesn’t finish playing before it starts repeating there is 5 - 8 seconds of overplay; this issues does happen on albums as well on occasion coming from apple music.  Add the mute button to music play not to just all sources or have the ability to mute just by hitting the speaker on the low end as on previous app.  There are so many holes in this process of dropping the new app.  
 

*Moderator Note: Modified in accordance with the Community Code of Conduct.(removed advertising link)

S
Userlevel 5
Badge +6

The calendar for updates was in this post, a week ago, and this FAQ article

  • Screen reader for visually impaired customers: May 21
  • Adding and editing alarms: May 21
  • Adding to queue and playing next: early June
  • Sleep timer: mid-June
  • Local music library search and playback: mid-June 
  • Update Wi-Fi settings: mid-June

My understanding is that both that post, and the FAQ article, will be updated as needed.

 

Hi, Bruce… Thanks for posting. You’ve been extremely helpful to many of us in here in the past. My concern about their timeline is that, considering the mess they’ve created, they can’t afford to adhere to their timeline. My bullet item is #5 out of 6. The previous four bullets I don’t give two * about. Hopefully they’re burning the midnight oil to correct the mess before owners use the midnight oil to burn their speakers.  Thanks again for posting.  I appreciate it.

*Moderator Note: Modified in accordance with the Community Code of Conduct.*

C
Userlevel 4
Badge

We are a direct dealer for Sonos and have been involved with selling, installing, upgrading and setting  a very broad range of their product lineup since 2007 so we been through the wringer in all those years. But the latest iteration of the UI is to put it kindly, abysmal, awkward and Byzantine.   We are bracing for the calls from our residential clients where they have Sonos products installed and are forced to upgrade the controller in order to play their music only to be totally confused and have to reach out to get help to to now navigate a totally foreign and unfriendly platform to hear their beloved music favorites.  As bad as it is for regular consumers its definitely not a picnic for those in the integration business. 

Just yesterday drove down to Monterey to setup in an Arc and Sub-Mini which took much longer than usual to provision on the client’s account but when trying to run True Play to eq the new setup, found that it would not advance past Continue.  Tried closing and restarting App as well as deleting and starting over several times but wound up empty.  This is on an iPhone15 Plus with iOS 17.4.1.  Had to give up after wasting more than an hour on the deal.   

The team that QC’d this better get back in lab and bring in some fresh faces as this is not the way it should be by a long shot and its back to the drawing board to start over. 

 

Some people have found that Trueplay starts working if you restart your phone before doing it.

Also people have mentioned playing loud music just before attempting to do the Trueplay, and/or turning the mic on on the Arc if it's switched off kicks it into action. 

I’m using Sonopad now and it's great, but we're still stuck with the Sonos app for Trueplay, pairing speakers, setting local music source etc.

HTH

R

I have used and loved Sonos for years. This new app is absolutely horrible. It is hard to use, buggy, laggy and overall not user-friendly. Things that used to be intuitive and one step are now hard to find and take several steps. Combining zones, adjusting the volume and selecting what audio source you want are a pain to do now. In addition, many features are missing. This app was clearly released prematurely.  Why take something that works well and throw it out?! Minor tweaks would be fine. I have always been impressed with Sonos, but not sure what they're thinking on releasing this update. Did anyone even beta test it or get user feedback before rolling it out?! Very disappointed. I think you should roll back to the previous version immediately and then go back to the drawing board on any new updates.

C
Userlevel 3
Badge

Now I get an email "Coming Soon .. Our most requested product is comingbsoon .. May 21, 11am" 

Does this explain the reason why Sonos rushed out an obviously untested & incomplete App update (to support the 'most requested' nee product)

Personally, I didn't 'request' any new product and (perhaps foolishly) just wanted my existing products to continue to work .. I was contemplating some SONOS upgrades to my existing setup, but now I'm contemplating alternatives 

S
Userlevel 5
Badge +9

My feedback is the android app is useless today, no library. Thank goodness I was able to decline the update on my iPad.

 

 

 

"I saw the Stooges and the MC5"
S
Userlevel 5
Badge +9

The board has a duty of care to their shareholders. Someone's head should roll. Now we have to worry about the company going broke.

"I saw the Stooges and the MC5"
M
Userlevel 4
Badge +2

Well, I guess this is confirmation that the Sonos strategy is to forge ahead and hope this all blows over.  Headphones being released in less than 2 days time.

Not that I could really see the CEO coming out with a mea culpa for the second time in 4 years, tbh.  He probably wants to keep his job.  I used to be a blackberry user btw - I think I'll now be saying the same thing about Sonos.

As an aside, can someone explain the compelling case for Sonos headphones?  I get that it's a big market, but it's super competitive, and (particularly with local library functionality missing or lacking), why would I buy Sonos headphones that are tied to an app, to listen to streaming services, when I can continue to use my excellent headphones from the already full functional streaming service apps?
 

 

M
Userlevel 4
Badge +2

(I was excited for a sec when I got this email, because I thought their most requested product might be a functional app)

R
Userlevel 5
Badge +9

getting back the ability to play from a local library is critical to me. I’ve been using Sonos for about 12 years and I like it. It’s true it’s gotten a little worse over the years as new features seem to be more important that basic playback and queue manipulation. These are why I got Sonos in the first place. If this actually goes away…. I don’t know what I will do. I guess look at something else. 

W
Userlevel 2

I’d like to be able to get my money back 😩

H

My issues with the new app is that it comes with major bugs on my system. Changing volume for the group makes the lever go up and down in the app, and unfortunately the sounds does the same. There are serious delays in controlling volume of individual rooms. 
 

Another main issue is that playing from Spotify is often seriously broken. It will not register any change whatsoever or interpret any attempt to change songs as a wish to restart the first song in playlist. The only thing that is reasonably stable is starting a new playlist. I am now forced to use the Spotify app as main means to control. 
 

Finally, I experience more problem when first playing music after a long time. Performance is extra unstable for the first minute or so. 
 

Sonos’s poor testing of the new app is unfortunate as it comes with problems for its customers. 

T
Userlevel 3
Badge

I think the Board of Directors must have been on  a special course on how to wreck your business !

I am not interested in an online curated business - I just need to play my own library of FLAC music without hassle. This crude and useless update simply prevents proper use of the expensive (and very good) speakers. Remember Sonos -- we bought these speakers at considerable cost for that reason.

 

T
Userlevel 3
Badge

I have been forced to delete this unfinished and hopeless 80 update and reload 16.1 from apkmirror.com       --  The system works again !

Give every one this option Sonos.

 

C
Userlevel 4
Badge

Well, I guess this is confirmation that the Sonos strategy is to forge ahead and hope this all blows over.  Headphones being released in less than 2 days time.

Not that I could really see the CEO coming out with a mea culpa for the second time in 4 years, tbh.  He probably wants to keep his job.  I used to be a blackberry user btw - I think I'll now be saying the same thing about Sonos.

As an aside, can someone explain the compelling case for Sonos headphones?  I get that it's a big market, but it's super competitive, and (particularly with local library functionality missing or lacking), why would I buy Sonos headphones that are tied to an app, to listen to streaming services, when I can continue to use my excellent headphones from the already full functional streaming service apps?
 

 

 

Looking at the email address, it just about sums them up.

‘no-reply' - they have not replied to our requests for a working app NOW, ie roll back to v16. They don't want to know.

‘con.sonos.com’ - their action is a real confidence trick; we had confidence in them to treat us professionally and we’ve been duped big time. 

A

This is new App is not an upgrade it's a downgrade of good perfectly working product, issues I am facing since the new App:

- Unable to connect by One SLs and Sub mini to home theater system

- Unlike previous App this doesn't even show device connected status and there is no option to fix connectivity issue as well

- I tried factory reset of One SLs multiple times and the App just Made it so painfull to add them back to my current system, it took me hours and multiple attempts before I could register and add them to the system

C
Userlevel 4
Badge

I think the Board of Directors must have been on  a special course on how to wreck your business !

I am not interested in an online curated business - I just need to play my own library of FLAC music without hassle. This crude and useless update simply prevents proper use of the expensive (and very good) speakers. Remember Sonos -- we bought these speakers at considerable cost for that reason.

 

 

And that's the thing - they are brilliantly engineered speakers and the best-sounding (to my ears) of the lot in the price range, especially after Trueplay. The apps have always been inferior to the hardware since they came out (ironically the CR200 hardware controller had a good interface but poor hardware) but at least they worked once you had worked out the quirks and limitations. 

If you're on iOS I’ve found Sonopad (there's also Sonophone) to do everything I want, but it can only work on an already set up system, ie you still need the Sonos app to tell the system where your local library is, do Trueplay and to set up pairs, groups etc. Also no voice control or alarms, but you do get a clear, simple interface which is quick and clear to navigate.

The SMB1 issue is a real thing, I encountered it myself a few years back with the Mac and we all need to move to SMB2/3, but I do wonder if Sonos are disingenuously using SMB1 as the reason some people can't connect to their own music, rather than the truth which is Sonos don't want local access?

This is from the Wikipedia page on Sonos:

In March 2016, CEO John McFarlane announced the company's shift to focus on streaming music services and voice control instead of local playback, and laid off some employees.

So maybe it's just taken them eight years to get to the disaster of an app that they’ve unleashed on us this month...

B

Hi Everyone

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:

 

Please note that there is an official statement that can be read here.

 

I'm using four devices all samsung with android. Android 11 works, android 14 sucks, does't work very well. Bug after bug and app cant be used. Android 12 works most of the time, but I had it reinstalled a couple of time yet. Previous app worked perfect, so please dont tell me it is samsung, android or my internetprovider or modem to blame. I spent a couple of 1000 euro on sonos equipment, so a working app is not too much to ask for. Reinstall previous app asap or make the new one working for all of us.

 

Bobbieoo

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