Configuring Sonos & Google Assistant & Google Home

You were never going to be able to play Sonos speakers in sync with Google home speakers. It's the same with Amazon. You can't sync Sonos with echos. These different systems use their own proprietary multi-room protocols.


View: Marshall multi room speakers

Sonos could. They just don't want to.

My point was slightly different: the purpose of default speaker mapping isn't to synchronize music across Google Cast and Sonos devices. Rather, it is to simplify your voice commands.

For example, I have two Google Minis in the garage, where they are excellent microphones but lousy speakers. I also have two passive speakers connected to a Sonos Amp. So, what I want to do is map requests for music playback on those two Minis to the Sonos Amp. So, I could then play music in the garage without having to say "in the garage".

Not a good comparison really. Those state that you play audio through "Chromecast built-in, Spotify connect, airplay or Bluetooth, or go wired with a 3.5mm jack or RCA cord". They don't stream on their own the way Sonos does, you must stream from another source and send it to the speaker. I'm not sure exactly how the multiroom works for this setup, but I wouldn't be surprised if it only works with chromecast or airplay. The scope of these products and Sonos is very different.

But it does look like the marshall speakers fits what you're looking for much better.

My point was slightly different: the purpose of default speaker mapping isn't to synchronize music across Google Cast and Sonos devices. Rather, it is to simplify your voice commands.

For example, I have two Google Minis in the garage, where they are excellent microphones but lousy speakers. I also have two passive speakers connected to a Sonos Amp. So, what I want to do is map requests for music playback on those two Minis to the Sonos Amp. So, I could then play music in the garage without having to say "in the garage".


That feature didn't come to the Alexa integration until a few months ago. I believe it will come to GA integration as well, much sooner, probably still some months off I'd guess.

+1 for the “default speaker” feature. Google Home already shows the Sonos in the same room as the assistant device. It’s puzzling why it doesn’t allow you to select it as the default speaker like Alexa does.

One clarification, the failure appears to be associated with having a Google Home Hub in the same room as a Sonos Beam.
That should not matter as long as each of the devices in the same room are not similarly named to the room, or each other, so as to cause confusion to the GA.

If I ask a Google Home Hub in a room without a Beam or Ones to play [artist] on a [Sonos room or group of rooms], that command works with both Beam+Ones or Amps. Also, visual controls appear on the Home Hub.

You can only target a single Sonos Room at the moment, but you can go onto Group that room with others, either beforehand, or afterwards.

Where it consistently fails for me is when the Home Hub is in the same room as either a Sonos One or Beam. In that case, the Sonos Beam answers as described above.

Its presumably down to whichever device hears your utterances... it’s usually the nearest device or the one towards which the utterance is directed.

Also, I cannot control a Sonos room from a Google Mini even when there is not Beam or Ones in that room. ("I can't do that yet").

You should be able to do this, that’s from the things I have read about these new features.

P.S. my Sonos rooms didn't appear in my Google Home earlier today but now do. However, the appear as smart home devices with a settings icon. They still cannot be selected as default speakers.

i don’t think there is the option yet to set Sonos devices as a Google Home device default speaker. Maybe this will be available in a future updated version.

After several hours of investigation, I think I have made progress:

I found that I could play music on my Sonos system using Google Assistant but only issuing the voice command to Google Home Hubs. If a Google Home Hub is in the same room as a Sonos speaker with a microphone, I must first mute the Sonos mike. Else, GA will answer on the Sonos Beam (as it should) but then the command to play fails. If I use the same command in a room with a Google Mini and no Sonos microphones, the command fails. So there’s a difference between voice commands initiated by Home Hubs v Minis too.

Un-pairing Google Assistant with all Sonos rooms works similar to muting the Sonos microphone. You must specify the room name in the voice command on the Hub. And the Mini doesn’t work.

Interestingly, GA on Sonos has no issues recognizing the command to “stop” playing music on the Sonos device after it has been started by the Hub. Visual controls only appear on the Hub if the voice command was recognized by the Hub (while the Sonos microphone was muted).

The root cause of my issues playing Google Music appears to be the languages that you speak. Our home is multi-lingual. It appears that you need to have English (United States) as your first language preference. I suspect that Google is assigning a country (and assuming GA or Google Play Music availability) based on your specified language. However, there is no explanation to the user as to why that’s the issue (e.g "Sorry wrong [country/language]").

I still can’t explain why the Hub handles this differently than the Mini. But, Google Play Music appears to be working as expected now.

For me setting a Sonos speaker as a "default speaker" for a Google assistant device is what I am really waiting for. I have no speaker enabled Sonos devices, voice commands to play music on my Sonos speakers works fine (as long as I add where to play it, naming the speaker), but yeah the true convenience feature of this integration is not having to say where to play it at all. I will keep waiting...

For me setting a Sonos speaker as a "default speaker" for a Google assistant device is what I am really waiting for. I have no speaker enabled Sonos devices, voice commands to play music on my Sonos speakers works fine (as long as I add where to play it, naming the speaker), but yeah the true convenience feature of this integration is not having to say where to play it at all. I will keep waiting...

This would solve my problem too. By being able to set up my Sonos Play:1 to be the "default speaker" for my Google Mini, then I can group the Google Mini in my Home Group while having the music I'm casting come out through Sonos.

Like others said, this feature came out later for Alexa; so I'm hoping we see it soon on Google.

It's however frustrating to have to keep waiting for those of us who thought as soon as they released this integration all problems would be solved.

It looks like the Sonos / GA integration is fundamentally different from Chromecast. All my Chromecast devices can be connected to from any GA device via the local WiFi, whereas the Sonos speakers are connected in the cloud.

Amazon solved this with Alexa Cast, which also connects via the cloud (prove this by connecting to your Sonos speakers from the Amazon Music app on your phone with only a 4G connection).

Will Google come up with something similar to Alexa Cast? If Sonos speakers don't become first-class Chromecast devices, I'm not sure they can become default speakers, without some new Google protocol. Or, Google will need to make cloud-connected speakers default-able, which is something they are likely looking to do. Either way, I'm afraid it's up to Google to enable this, and they have a ton of other things on their plate, so...

Pure speculation on my part...