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Groups within Google Home App

  • 21 August 2019
  • 33 replies
  • 23890 views

Userlevel 2
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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Best answer by UKMedia 4 November 2019, 12:58

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33 replies

I understand and appreciate that Sonos rarely mention their development roadmap, but I too would like to see both default speaker(s) and grouping with the Sonos/Google integration, in a similar way to how those things currently work in the Sonos/Alexa integration. I guess we will have to see what comes next in their development cycle.
Userlevel 1
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!

Also interested!!!
Userlevel 1
Badge +1

"... I would love for it to include my top of the line Sonos speakers. Any help is appreciated. Thanks!Also interested!!!



+ one more
Userlevel 1

+1 Adding support for being able to include Sonos devices within Google groups.

+1 desperately needed

Userlevel 7
Badge +20

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.

 

Further to UKMedia’s most helpful post above, which is fine for grouping all Sonos rooms and playing a favourite, there is a slightly better way to do this, if you have either a Logitech Harmony Hub or one of their remotes that work with the Harmony App. This will allow you to create an 'activity’ to group any combination of Sonos rooms, so you could group together speakers in the same physical room, or a combination of rooms etc. and when the setup takes through the option to 'play a favourite', you can skip this feature and save the activity with a name, such as ‘Group all downstairs speakers’ (just as an example).

Next, Link the Harmony Hub/Remote to your Google Home using the Harmony device/skill and you can then say “Hey Google, Group all downstairs speakers” and the Sonos speakers will group together without playing anything… then when you instruct Google to play music to any speaker in the group, or play to it’s (set) ‘default’ speaker, the music will play to the entire group.

So that’s another option if you can get your hands on one of the Logitech Harmony devices. You may perhaps find their devices cheaper online this Black Friday, 29th November 2019.

Agreed that Sonos should be more transparent with their goals. I spent $1400 on just one room and wanted to integrate this in my Google infrastructure, expecting they could do better than something like a cheap Insignia speaker. Assumptions... Sigh... 

My workaround is with Chromecast and a Beam+2Ones+Sub.  This requires me to turn on my TV before hand for best results. 

This works without something like harmony or IFTTT or harmony. 

Ken's option is interesting too.. I might give that a try. 

 

 

Userlevel 1

This is preventing people like me from buying more Sonos speakers even though I want to.  Instead I'm probably buying other Google speakers for other areas since they can be grouped.

Userlevel 1

This is for sure preventing me from buying more. In fact I bought two of this to replace 2x Google Home units and when I found out they cannot be grouped or cannot be set to be the default music source I was shocked - especially since it's been like this for months. Unfortunately I have to return them as the convenience of having Google Assitants in every room (I have 4 between the 2x Home, Mini, and Display) with seamless audio as I walk around the house. Sonos this is a massive miss! 

Jumping on the bandwagon. This is a dealbreaker for expanding into the Sonos lineup, which I would love to do. 2,400+ views on this thread alone… 

+1

 

This is definitely a functionality that I would like to see. As sonos already integrated the Google Assistant, I assumed this was possible… This was the main reason I bought Sonos speakers.

 

Badge

Indeed really sad grouping isn't working - I thought about adding a couple of these to my home but without the grouping, there is no point for me in doing that - I’ll return the one I just purchased.

What a major disappointment. Speakers sound awesome, but I am going back to speakers that will be part of a home group. That was the whole point for me. I guess (works with Google assistant” does not mean “works with Google”. Looks like the legal battle Sonos is having with Google may be part of the problem.

Agree with this. For me to expand my Sonos portfolio I would need the speaker group integration with Google Home. It’s frustrating to have google assistant on my Sonos speaker but no real collaboration between the Google Home or Google Home Mini. 

I’d love to be able to group Sonos speakers with my google speakers but ALSO, I’d like to have control of my Sonos speaker groups via google assistant. This is very frustrating!

For real? I bought the Sonos One for one single reason – to be able to group my Sonos speakers that I already owned since December and make them available in my Google Home speaker groups. I have now spent ridiculous money on Sonos speakers in just two months and STILL can't play music across my house. Please tell me this will be remedied in an update and I won't have to sell all my new speakers and start over!

For real?

 

 

For real.

 

I bought the Sonos One for one single reason – to be able to group my Sonos speakers that I already owned since December and make them available in my Google Home speaker groups.

 

 

If that is the only reason for your Sonos One purchase, you definitely need to return it.  Not only can Sonos and Google speakers not play in sync, but if in the unlikely chance they ever do, it would be rather surprising if you need a voice enabled Sonos product to enable the feature.  You can control Sonos with Google assistant already without a Sonos One.

 

I have now spent ridiculous money on Sonos speakers in just two months and STILL can't play music across my house. Please tell me this will be remedied in an update and I won't have to sell all my new speakers and start over!

It’s unlikely to happen any time soon.  Not sure what your setup currently looks like, but you may want to consider using all Sonos for whole home, or splitting to your house in to Sonos and Google systems if it makes sense, rather starting over.

For real? I bought the Sonos One for one single reason – to be able to group my Sonos speakers that I already owned since December and make them available in my Google Home speaker groups. I have now spent ridiculous money on Sonos speakers in just two months and STILL can't play music across my house. Please tell me this will be remedied in an update and I won't have to sell all my new speakers and start over!

If you are still within your return period, definitely return them. I know I would if I was still within mine. Especially since we don’t know if this will ever be a function of Sonos speakers with google. 

Google speaker groups barely work… better off going all Sonos speakers cause they actually work. I started a Google system and ended up selling my speakers cause Google has a lot of sync issues when using multiple speakers. If Google can barely get their own products to work together, I’m not sure why people think Sonos would work with them.

I kept one Google speaker and use it for Assistant only. I have my Sonos speakers set to use Alexa, but can still control them using Assistant which is nice.

 

I can control the Sonos system volume on groups without interrupting the music or TV when I send commands to my Google Home… best of both worlds.

For real? I bought the Sonos One for one single reason – to be able to group my Sonos speakers that I already owned since December and make them available in my Google Home speaker groups. I have now spent ridiculous money on Sonos speakers in just two months and STILL can't play music across my house. Please tell me this will be remedied in an update and I won't have to sell all my new speakers and start over!

This is a Google issue…. grouping Sonos Speakers with Apple HomePod works great. Just sell your Google stuff… doesn’t work as well or sound as good anyway so just wasting time waiting for them to improve it. Only thing I miss from Google was ability to see song name playing on Home Hub, but everything else was worse

This is very disappointing.

I will have to return the two speakers that I have bought, I simply cannot afford to buy Sonos speakers for the whole house and therefore require integration with google home. The marketing is misleading.

What a shame. 

Super frustrating not having the option to group within the Google home app.  Sonos is an incredible speaker company.  The voice war is on between the giant's.  They obviously can embrace both and win on both sides both from Amazon and Google yet I still can't group them within the Google home app?  This is political and not technical.  If they fix this they'll easily get another $3k from me completing my home with Sonos speakers for their kick-ass sound quality and convenience.  I don't buy Sonos for their app.... I buy them for the sound and wireless connectivity.. embrace what they are good at and stop fighting the political wars between the tech Titans

@Snarley, It’s not on Sonos to ‘fix’. As you’ve stated yourself “[...] yet I still can't group them within the Google home app?” The Google Home App is Google’s territory. As the rights holder it’s on Google to unlock and permit Sonos access to every feature related to Google Assistant.

Can we get a confirmation from Sonos in this? If I'm barking up the wrong tree I'd love to know.