Your feedback on the new Sonos App

Sonos considered having S2 as an option but recently stated they have passed the point of no return as far as rolling back or reviving S2.

“Spence clarifies that while he was considering bringing back S2 (the old Sonos app), it just really doesn’t make practical sense. The biggest issue, he suggests, is that Sonos hardware and the company’s cloud infrastructure have slowly been receiving updates that are targeted at the current app. And while S2 used to work great before all these changes, if the company were to roll back now it would likely break a lot of things. While the devs seem to have considered both paths forward, working to improve the current app ultimately made the most sense to them.”

https://www.androidauthority.com/sonos-app-old-version-return-3472308/

Why is it that Sonos says it is basically impossible to go back to the old S2 app, but a single thrid-party developer created SonoPhone which works great and seems to mimic the old S2 app in most way? Yes, SonoPhone has missing features for sure, but as for simply choosing a Sonos playlist, choosing which of your speakers to include, and adjusting volume it works perfectly.

Why have the firmware changes made the old S2 impossible but SonoPhone works like the old S2?

@mikewashburn 

As you already said by yourself, the Sonos app is more than just a player remote. It also includes all the tools to set up and configure the system. And that’s the point why the old S2 app can’t be used any longer. 

Likely due to the fact that SonoPhone doesn’t support setting up new devices, whereas the Sonos app does, so there is a whole set of additional complications that Sonos deals with, that others don’t. 

I got a question where is the dislike button? I see a bunch of like buttons, but not one dislike button. This app is crap. I dislike everything you said.

Mr Spence’s response on this was nonsense. If you take it completely literally, i.e. if you *only* rollback the app, then perhaps now it would be worse, after all they’ve screwed up local library indexing as It stands in the current speaker firmware.  

However, only a fool would attempt to run the old app against newer changing firmware, so if you gave customers the option for the ‘old S2’ you could easily also provide the matching firmware as *clearly* that works with the old app… you’d have a hard job claiming otherwise. The only downside is for Ace customers, and probably even more specifically Ace customers who want audio hand-off … However I suspect they are a small number and then Sonos could focus on them first to get rock solid reliability in the new ecosystem. 

Sonos just plain don’t want to do it as most of their customers would switch back and then be really reluctant to ever upgrade. I have little sympathy for Sonos there, you made your bed, you can jolly well lay in it. 

On the the 8th May Sonos decided the new App was a brave move and that they were not going to yield to the user requests for a rollback.

At that point they started, probably without realising, to dig the hole they are now in. By the time they realised that they were in a hole it was too deep so all they could do was keep digging.

That’s where were are today, Sonos in a hole still digging and customers still waiting. 

Light at the end of the tunnel being the headlight of an oncoming train on the same track comes to mind.

I'm still on the 16.1 app. But I have bought 2 play 1 speakers (2nd hand) for surround sound. 

But since I'm still on the old app, I can not add them to my system. Is the time almost there to update to the lastst versions?

For context, I have in my living room:

Playbar (wired)

First gen sub

2x Play 3

In the kitchen a single play 1

In the office:

A beam (gen2)

Sub mini (wired)

And here I want to add the play 1 speakers. 

Besides this I have mostly Android phones and use my Plex server for local music. Music service primarily YouTube Music. 

Any tips are welcome.

There is no easy answer to this question because there are a lot of different user experiences.

For me the new app is annoying, loses my system daily and is still has a lot of things missing.

For others it is worse than this, there systems are basically unusable.

A third group seem to be happy and have systems that function to their satisfaction.

The question that none of us can answer for you is if you upgrade which of these groups will you end up in.

As damning an indictment of Sonos as I have seen. And a fair one too, with that last sentence.

Yes, the last sentence is very fitting. I'll guess I'll have to wait a bit longer. I don't want to have to deal with systems disappearing.... My wife wil kill me...;)

So we now have some queue management functions - but still no way of going back the queue after playing a radio station - apart from that is using either the PC App (or even a 3rd party app like SonoPhone).  Please restore the queue button in the bottom left whilst playing a radio station.

Android app update today, don't see any useful change from my PoV as yet. Can now schedule updates and there is a home theatre sub-menu for the Port (which to be fair may not be totally new)...

No change to playlist or que handling, artist/album play (that is apparent to me), cover art/stream image and art display generally, consistent update of the recently played list or ability to 'pin to home' ect. but we can now schedule updates which is one major piece of functionality missing from May that was neither promised or particularly wanted  🙌

Well into month 5 and, yes, bugs have been fixed and issues addressed but there is still major functionality missing.

Like others I just want to use my local libraries, play albums, artists (folders?) and playlists and see graphics like I used to, please 🙏

Spoke too soon above... Actually seeing regressions, sluggish to load again, 50/50 if recently played populates at all, 40/60 if line in shows up in sources and regularly reporting system not found before springing to life - this has been NEARLY 5 MONTHS now and Spence sacked QA staff!!!

Oh, and STILL laggy app reflection and volume control of older Play:1 speakers... 

Maybe it'll settle down...

The new update is a disaster. It's a shame that it's so unstable, especially when switching between speaker sets. The alarm lives its own life. Stops when it suits, and not as it is set to. Sad. Will NEVER buy any more of your products.

I can’t speak for others, but for me, the CEO’s comments mean very little, as they’ve yet to come thru with those commitments.  If there’s a release every 2-3 weeks, my SONOS system isn’t seeing them.  As to the 913 error (access to my Mac’s music library, that was supposed to be done months ago, so app schedules and notes just aren’t ringing true with me.  I would LOVE to get back to loving my SONOS system, but I could have built a house with the time I’ve had to spend trying to find fixes for this SONOS-imposed mess.  So the bad taste remains, for sure.  And just for the record, I’m far from alone.  I won’t share some of what I’m hearing from an ex-SONOS employee, but as I say, I’m not alone...

Just did the IOS app update and of course, when exiting the Now Playing window, it still takes you the top of the playlist and you have to scroll all the way down to find your place. I guess this will never get fixed.  Read the release notes. Not impressed. 

I updated the app yesterday and it fix a problem I was having with adding Alexa (or Google or SVC) to a Beam or One. However, the setting the wake word chime for Alexa causes the app to crash. 

Full power outage all day today. On restoring power all speakers came on line with empty play selections as would be expected. All other network components on-line and settled with internet 👍 and steady.

Sonos app on Android phone and tablet(s) opened and found all speakers OK and let me play a thing (mix cloud stream) on one speaker. After that no volume control presented for any speaker and unable to play a thing or change the playing thing anywhere without 'something went wrong' being reported...

Force closed all app instances, deleted caches and reloaded apps and all was good again... Some more weird behaviour not seen before?

I’m not sure how Sonos was able to make something that worked perfectly before and make it ABSOLUTELY horrible. As a stock holder and someone who has several of their products I am at the point were I am selling everything and going with another system. I primarily use Apple music and it does not work at all. From just simply not playing the songs, to skipping songs in que, the problems with this service are unbearable.

Ask over at Apple. They are the ones who told Sonos to cease using the lock screen controls to control third party hardware or get banned from the App Store.  Apple strictly enforces their UI rules, and one of those rules is they only allow lock screen and hard button controls to control media originating on or passing through the phone itself.  Since the Sonos app is a remote control for third party hardware, not a media player, no media goes through the app/phone.

Unless it’s part of their ecosystem where a phone Lock Screen can control Apple TV content even though that content is not passing through the phone at all… 

If you use AirPlay 2, and the media player on the iPhone , rather than the Sonos app, you’ll get those controls you want. More challenging, since your source device is now tied to the speakers, but if you’re not leaving the WiFi, it should work, if those controls are paramount. But as @jgatie states, it was a decision forced by Apple. 

Hence the phrase “third party hardware”.