I know one can create a group of Sonos speakers within the Sonos app. What I am hoping to do is to create groups of speakers (Sonos and Google Home / Mini devices) using the Google Home app. I can see the Sonos speakers in the Google Home App as visible devices, but I can not seem to include any Sonos speaker as part of the groups. Am I missing something or is this not a possibility? If not, any plans to revise this?
The Sonos integration with the Google Voice system is great, but if the voice commands work to play on "Whole House"... I would love for it to include my top of the line Sonos speakers. Any help is appreciated. Thanks!
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Can we get a confirmation from Sonos in this? If I'm barking up the wrong tree I'd love to know.
Let me also clarify. I am looking to add Sonos speakers (or groups of Sonos speakers) to new or existing speaker groups in the Google home app. I don't want to use third party work arounds to get this done (though I very much appreciate the IFTTT work around outlined above).
It would be great to understand which side of the fence this is actually on. To me it's on the Sonos side that Google cannot access the speakers or speakers groups that exist.
There is a way of doing this for all rooms in your Sonos system via IFTTT. Just follow these steps (I’ve used the web browser version but it’s possible to use the app as well.)
1/ Log in to IFTTT and then click on your profile picture and select ‘Create’;
2/ Click on the ‘+’ symbol in the phrase, select ‘Google Assistant’ and then select ‘Say a specific phrase’;
3/ Type in your preferred phrase for Google Assistant to respond to. e.g. ‘group sonos’;
4/ Click on the newly located ‘+’ symbol and select ‘Sonos’
5/ Select ‘Play Favorite’ and then select the favorite, a default device and in the ‘Include grouped rooms’, select ‘include all rooms’. Followed by ‘Create Action
6/ Google Assistant will then respond to ‘Hey Google, group Sonos’ and will create a Sonos group containing all of your rooms and start playing the Favorite
If you want to play different music asking Google Assistant to ‘play xx on Sonos’ maintains the Sonos Grouping.
I know this isn’t as flexible as you are all requesting but it does provide some level of grouping by voice to GA.
When I try this my google assistant just runs a search for ‘Group Sonos’. Any idea why or what I’ve missed? - Updated; this worked when I configured in the web browser.
Deal breaker for me. This has limited me for over a year. I would love to buy more Sonos speakers if I could group them with my Google whole home music setup (3 Homes, 2 Minis and 1 Max) since I can't group my Sonos when want to play music "Everywhere" (the name of my group that contains all my Google speakers) I'll just have to buy more Google Max's. I would MUCH rather buy 3-4 more Sonos, but the lack of integration is frustrating. If it's a hardware limitation, so be it, but I'm fairly certain this is a failed attempt to pigeon hole people into buying more Sonos products, without realizing it's probably hindering sales.
If it's a hardware limitation, so be it, but I'm fairly certain this is a failed attempt to pigeon hole people into buying more Sonos products, without realizing it's probably hindering sales.
I don’t think either of those are the reason really. Both Sonos and Google have their own multiroom audio protocols, protected as IP. For whatever reason, they aren’t sharing or licensing out their technology. I don’t know that we can say that one party wanted better integration while the other did not, or if neither party was interested in it. The same situation exists between Amazon and Sonos. Apple has licensed out it’s airplay 2, taking a completely different strategy.
In my opinion, I don’t know that a hybrid system of half Sonos and half Google (or Amazon) to play music is the best way to go anyway. Sonos has capabilities to play aux input and TV, other features of their system that Google does not. At the same time, Google has some features that Sonos doesn’t do. By going with a hybrid, you aren’t really getting the best of both worlds, but the limited intersection where they meet. A better option is probably to pick one and stick with it, or have a setup where you use Google for voice services and Sonos for music/audio playback.
While I'm enjoying the sound of a Sonos, despite spending a lot of time researching online what was the best Google assistant enabled multiroom speaker, I'm feeling very frustrated. One would expect to be able to link up all speakers that work with Google home.
My bigger frustration was that I can't use voice activation to get my Google Play music library to play on Sonos. It was this very convenience that I wanted and had been enjoying with the Google minis I bought initially to see how I got along with them.
I just wanted to gradually improve the sound I had, so I will probably eventually buy more Sonos to link to the one I started with, and I'll have to subscribe to a streaming service to get the convenience I wanted. But this lack of functionality is very annoying.
My bigger frustration was that I can't use voice activation to get my Google Play music library to play on Sonos. It was this very convenience that I wanted and had been enjoying with the Google minis I bought initially to see how I got along with them.
You should be able to do this. If you’re speaking to a Sonos speaker that’s voice enabled, just make your request. If you’re speaking to a mini or some other speaker, you’ll need to add “on <room name> to your request. Of course, this is assuming you’ve done all the proper setups like adding your Google Play music service to Sonos and properly linking Sonos to Google voice services.
No, I've looked into it and it doesn't work unless I sign up to the streaming service. I just wanted to okay the huge amount of music on my own library that I've uploaded. Can do it through the app, bit not with speech.
Additionally, although the box to make it the default speaker is definitely not ticked, any speaker I speak to now tries to play through the Sonos rather than the speaker in question, unless I verbally request that speaker.
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