Retired Sonos Staff

Interview

Sonos App Redesign AMA

Forum|Forum|2 years ago
May 14, 2024
770 replies
65996 views

The New Sonos App - Community AMA Recap post is now live!

Today is the day of the AMA!

The new app design has been out for a week, and most of you have had a chance to get used to the new UI.

Some of you might have questions when you have had a week to get to know the new Sonos App interface. Because of that, we want to give you all a chance to ask some of the people who were integral in its creation and design, the questions that have come to mind while you have used the app.

As we mentioned in the event.

Our panelists will be:

Diane Roberts, Senior Director of Software Development
Kate Wojogbe, Senior Director of User Experience
Tucker Severson, Director of Product Management

It will be hosted on the 14th of May from 11:00 until 14:00 GMT -07.

But instead of me telling you what they do and what their role with the app update has been, here are their own introductions:

Diane

Diane Roberts is the Senior Director of Software Engineering and Product Management at Sonos responsible for the Sonos Apps. Her group of cross-disciplinary teams build Configuration, Control, and Content experiences on a foundation of Core mobile application technologies. She received dual Bachelors’ of Science in Computer Science and Music from WPI. Diane holds 6 granted patents as a co-inventor.

Kate

As Senior Director of User Experience, Kate leads the UX team responsible for Sonos’ home audio hardware, software, and app user experiences. This includes user interfaces on speakers and soundbars, setup for hardware and services, first and third party content experiences, and a variety of methods of control of the Sonos system. Kate graduated from the University of California Los Angeles with a Bachelor of Arts degree in Design.

Tucker

Tucker Severson is the Director of Product Management and leads the PM team responsible for the Sonos Apps. Tucker received his BA from Bates College and his MBA from the University of Vermont.

We will do our best to answer as many of your questions as possible within the 3-hour window, but we can’t promise to answer every question, especially those you know we can’t discuss.

But if we see a question repeated or a reply getting a lot of likes, don’t worry. We will prioritize those to ensure that many people get the answers they seek.

Remember, we can’t talk about things on the roadmap - but if you have questions or feedback about the app redesign, want to know more about our panelists, like their background or favorite band, then the sky is the (cough cough.. NDA) limit!

Thank you, everyone, for participating. We covered as many of the most asked questions as possible. We know tracking the responses wasn't as easy as we had hoped. But we wanted to let the community air frustrations and have their questions answered.

I got a lot of DMs during the AMA, and I will be sure to answer them when I can. Thanks for reaching out!

Keith and I will work on recapping all the questions and feedback we have responded to, and we will update the post here when that is complete. If we didn't get to your question, don't worry. Keith and I are grabbing all the feedback from this thread, even the things we didn't respond to, and ensuring the right people will see the message. This was the first time we created a live AMA in the community, and we learned a lot for future AMAs.

We appreciate all the feedback and questions you gave through this AMA. It helps us understand your most significant feedback and your reasoning. We hear you, and we will ensure the right teams get your feedback. They are listening.

We look forward to rolling out the updates with features (new and old) as soon as they are ready. Keith shared an overview of the timeline for expecting these features to return to the app. Today was the first update, reintroducing alarms and improving the iOS voiceover.

We look forward to seeing your reactions to our future app developments. We hope you all appreciate the work our developers are putting into making the app as fast and easy to use as possible for the general user.

This topic has been closed for further comments. You can use the search bar to find a similar topic, or create a new one by clicking Create Topic at the top of the page.

Show previous replies

V

VinylKolector

The two most important items for me.

I recently got the Port and the functionality of the Line-In has become very limited compared to what was previously available. For example, there’s no EQ available from the volume screen anymore and pass through is missing. Can all of the functionality please be added back?
User access creation and control for the Sonos system. My apartment has a single SSID for all tenants so anyone can see and connect to my system. I would like to have it secure and inaccessible by others on the same network. Can this functionality please be added?

Thank you!

O

osm

Probably this has already been asked, but just in case it hasn’t….

Why didn’t you inform users in advance of all the features that would be temporarily missing from the new app? Then they could have made an informed decision about whether to update their app or not.

I

Ingirum

Lyricist I

Will you fix the inability to add collection songs from linked services to the queue?

Particularly, the "top tracks" and "artist radio" for artists from Tidal, which currently have lost the "play" button (which they had before the update) and so now became useless (because they can't be played or added to the queue..)

Congrats to all of you that released this app with so many issues!

P

Panic_Attaché

Enthusiast I

Tbh, I actually thought this was going to be a livestream, not seeing a lot of courage in taking this approach

A

Absolute40

Enthusiast II

@tuckerseverson please can you explain why this app put into production before it was finished with so many features removed from the app it replaced?
I work in software development, I understand the concept of an MVP, but your old app had all of those features. By releasing this new app early without all the features your customers are used to and rely on you have managed to damage the trust your most loyal customers had in your brand and company.
Once someone loses trust it is very difficult to win back. This could have been rolled out in a much less impactful way such as a public beta.

Bring back the old Sonos app. It was clunky, but it actually worked!

Jacob ATX

Lyricist II

Can Sonos answer the top comments/concerns that were posted on X, Sonos Community, and Reddit that @Keith - Sonos said many times that they were monitoring? I upvoted those posts and now cant remember everything that was noted. At this point people are so frustrated with having to post on so many threads that we’re all just sick of it at this point.

When will the EQ be back on the volume bar

Truplay and distance for surround sounds for Android

individual volume option when speakers are grouped on the main volume bar

Fix lag

Move Speaker doesnt pop up as an option if turned off

There’s other’s Im forgetting

Bumper

Probably this has already been asked, but just in case it hasn’t….

Why didn’t you inform users in advance of all the features that would be missing from the new app. Then they could have made an informed decision about whether to update their app or not.

This is a really good question. Sonos hyped the new app, said everything would work as before, but better, but obviously this isn’t the case. Why didn’t you warn us Sonos?

U

Uniqueuser314

Lyricist II

Hi AMA team!
I almost always use my Sonos devices in groups, and with the new app, handling of group volumes is worse. Not only does it not change in real-time

@mdpeterman

A key part of this new app was using the newer Sonos APIs, which means we did indeed rewrite the volume experience entirely. Until this new update, our app was using an older set of technology based on UPnP and SOAP.

Can you make those APIs available to the community?

S

SonosSpotifyLover

Lyricist III

I just want to say there has been allot of negativity surrounding the new app launch. I just want to say the app is fantastic. I've been using it everyday since it came out last week. I know there is some future additions coming in the next weeks and will just be patient with the future roll out. Thank you Diane, Kate, Tucker, and the rest of the Sonos development team for everything you do.

This is a joke - correct? We should be patient while we wait to get back to where we were?

I suppose if you have one speaker and use Sonos Radio alone, it’s probably a great release.

When you have 20 speakers, a NAS, and multiple streaming services, it is...not so much.

First off you obviously have no idea how to click on a persons profile to see how many Sonos products a user has or you would of not made such a ridiculous statement. Also if you had clicked on my profile you would known I DON'T use Sonos Radio. So next time do your homework.

Second over 20 speakers? Bro you don't have 20 speakers so stop over exaggerating your circumstance. You ain't Peter Pee.

Third, no this not a joke. I've have multiple Sonos products also multiple streaming services. Apple Music, Spotify, Amazon Music, YouTube Music, Sirius XM, Home Theater setup, etc. All of them are working great since the 80.0 update.

Fourth, people are complaining about the missing features like the alarms, personal playlists, etc on the Sonos app. Who uses Sonos speakers for an alarm when we all have cell phones where we can customize what we wake up to in 2024? Many streaming services have personal playlists that you can customize for yourself. Why the heck would anyone want to take up tons of memory on their phone with music when it's available on streaming music services? Also who the heck buys music anymore? This isn't 1994 anymore. These features that are missing are for people that don't know it's the 21st century.

Alarms isn't just about waking up; its the ability to set radio programmes to start automaticity - particularly repetative ones.

Well alarms are back so no more complaining about that useless feature.

F

FinkenMusic

Lyricist II

Final nail in the coffin. I will be moving to Roon, so I am not tied down to a single manufacturer.

I will be flogging my equipment on ebay if any of you are interested. This shower of sh!t are a disgrace.

Actually roon (and MediaMonkey, USB Audio Player and others) will play through Sonos speakers. I almost never used the old Sonos app and have no plans to use this new dog's breakfast. Keep the speakers, ditch the app.

Maybe this is a solution.

I am rather disappointed by the app and also the release process. As others mentioned before, I fail to understand why roll out something on a specific date, when is not finished. Was there any technical or commercial necessity for this date?

And also why did you create the issue with auto update instead of releasing a new app as separate/standalone app (as you did with the last app update for the sonos S2 update). The auto update forces users, which limits there options and increases their grumpiness. Giving people some decision on when to swap would have made things a lot better. And you would have got early adopters and more feedback and the chance to improve things.

Also offering some “staling” option for the old app would have been great - I would have been happy with the features of the old app for the next few decades.

Just to have also said it here, I find the navigation a lot worse. not only the use of space and the layout, but my impression is, that I have to click or slide an additional 1, 2 or 3 times to do the same action on the old app, which is serious downgrade.

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Diane

Kate

Tucker

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