Player / Controller Versions - Why Update?

We have seen a few posts with people talking about firmware versions and being at different places within the last few updates. While this isn’t new to the recent Sonos app update, there are more and more conversations about it and I thought I’d try to help give some context to what we’re seeing.

One thing that may not be widely known is that by turning off Auto-Updates in the app store, it only addresses the updating of your controller app and not necessarily the firmware of the players. This means that while you may be blocking your controller from updating, the speakers may still update their firmware if someone else updates the system from their controller. Different people end up in different parts of the updating pipeline and while all the problems look different, they can usually be traced to this mismatch. You can check your speaker firmware by going to: Settings (Gear in top-right) > Manage > About My System

Here are a few compatibility scenarios that you may find yourself in: 

Old Player Firmware (78.1-52020)  + Old Sonos S2 App

• In-app notification that an update is available.

• Alarm Settings are available.

• Any attempt to add a player to the system will require an app update, which will be followed by a player update before you can add a player.

Old Player Firmware (78.1-52020) + New Sonos App (Pre-Alarms Fix)

• No indication about an app update being available.

• Alarm Settings remain disabled.

• Any attempt to add a player to the system will require an app update, which will be followed by a player update before you can add a player.

Old Player Firmware (78.1-52020) + New Sonos App (Alarms Fix)

• No indication in the app about a system update being available unless you seek it out in Settings > Manage > System Updates > Check for Updates

• Alarm Settings remain disabled.

• Any attempt to add a player to the system will require a player update 

New Player Firmware (79.0-52294) + Old Sonos S2 App

• In-app notification that an update is available.

• Cross-version compatibility mode will block out access to all of Settings and Setup.

• Will be encouraged within the app to go to the app store to update their app.

New Player Firmware (79.0-52294) + New Sonos App (Pre-Alarms Fix)

• No indication in the app about an update being available.

• Alarm Settings remain disabled.

• Any attempt to add a player to the system will require an app update, which will be followed by a player update before you can add a player.

New Player Firmware (79.0-52294) + New Sonos App (Alarms Fix) 

• Everything is up to date.

  • Improved playback settings including “Play next,” “add to end of queue,” and on iOS, the mute button

  • Improved product setup, Bluetooth discovery and WiFi settings

  • Added sleep timer settings

  • Improved Trueplay setup on iOS

  • Introduced distance settings for home theater surrounds

  • Improved navigation for users who are blind or visually-impaired 

  • Added VoiceOver support for toast messages on iOS

Hope this provides a little bit of context into what you might be experiencing and why you might be seeing it. Yes, the official guidance is to keep your devices updated - but more importantly we wanted to explicitly show what it looks like depending on the current state of your system. Hope you find this useful!