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Mike H
Retired Sonos Staff
May 14, 2024
Interview

Sonos App Redesign AMA

  • May 14, 2024
  • 770 replies
  • 65992 views
Sonos App Redesign AMA

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.
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770 replies

Lyricist III
May 14, 2024

As someone who was about spend a not inconsiderable amount of money to replace my NAS please can Sonos please provide some clarity on future functionality in the near future.
 

Specifically is SMB v1 gone (confused as my very old NAS seems to be working still)? Are the SMB v2 bugs I heard people using SMB v1 to avoid fixed? Will search and navigation in the app be fixed to make using a NAS and local library worthwhile again? 
 

Thanks

SMB v1 is gone. I can confirm SMB v2 works just fine. Keep in mind though, once you approach 65,000 tracks it can get dicey.

Same. Been running SMB 3 for almost a year. My NAS is a Synology.

Interestingly, my NAS has been set for SMB v3 exclusively (server and client) and Sonos wouldn’t connect from the Windows controller. Bumped the NAS back to SMB v2 and Sonos immediately connected. This was for a new connection.

 

I use(d) Navidrome and Bonob for Subsonic connection to Sonos and that’s broken as of this update.

Chris Lizard
Lyricist I
May 14, 2024

How did you approach the difficult decision to exclude blind customers with this update, and was there extra consideration to doing this without pre-warning them? 

Lyricist I
May 14, 2024

I find it interesting that a premium speaker company released an obviously unfinished app after gloating about it for months, aren’t addressing the issues, aren’t acknowledging them, is gaslighting us into thinking it’s some marvel, and is wanting some pat on the back for starting from scratch.

Insult to injury is this AMA that is going terribly.

I’m your customer, not your colleague. I don’t care what you did when what you released isn’t functional or even remotely close to what I was using before. Thankfully, I have Android so I was able to go back to the old app, but I want you to know my very serious additions to my eco system is now on hold because of this. Repeating the same positive things about the app to get us to be quiet about the glaring issues is only making matters worse. READ THE ROOM!

Contributor I
May 14, 2024

I have huge problems with adjusting volume between devices and unbelievable delays on track recognition - up to 30 seconds! 
I’ve tried adjusting group volume, it just does one device, then I just do that device and the whole system crashes and no music plays. What the actual have you done to my listening experience? Absolutely destroyed it, that’s what. You need to fix this very quickly or those buying new products will be getting their money back and going to Bose. 
this is a bigger than the transition From S1 to S2 and the lack of support for older products. 

 

Mod Edit: Removed the swear words. Keep it civil.

Lyricist III
May 14, 2024

I find it interesting that a premium speaker company released an obviously unfinished app after gloating about it for months, aren’t addressing the issues, aren’t acknowledging them, gaslighting us into thinking it’s some marvel, and is wanting some pat on the back for starting from scratch.

Insult to injury is this AMA that is going terribly.

I’m your customer, not your colleague. I don’t care what you did when what you released isn’t functional or even remotely close to what I was using before. Thankfully, I have Android so I was able to go back to the old app, but I want you to know my very serious additions to my eco system is now on hold because of this. Repeating the same positive things about the app to get us to be quiet about the glaring issues is only making matters worse. READ THE ROOM!

To read the room they would have to read our questions….

webmink
Prominent Collaborator I
May 14, 2024

Please upvote this post: Can you please provide an immediate easy way to rollback the mobile app to the prior version for those who can’t make the current version meet their needs.

Thanks @bkk. Also, @nelliott and others had similar questions.

Rolling back to the previous version of the Sonos app is likely to cause issues. As Sonos continues to advance forward with new updates to the firmware, the old apps will fall out of compatibility quickly. Our priority is to release improvements to the Sonos app rapidly to address your needs.

@tuckerseverson But rolling forward to a new release is certain to cause even more issues. So why not just package the v16.1 app as a seperate legacy release and leave us all to decide for ourselves?

Support musicians by buying music instead of streaming.
Lyricist II
May 14, 2024

I noticed that the re-introduction of alarms actually required an update to Sonos devices as well as the app today. Does this mean that the new UI revamp was in fact much more than just a revamp to the UI? Are there currently bigger changes happening on the device side as well?

@Aleksander H

The app is definitely a revamp, but it’s not just the UI that changed! This new app is using new features on the speaker firmware and new cloud services as well. Let me share a bit more about what happened with alarm settings. 

On the morning of the app launch, we discovered a data corruption error around the new Alarms APIs. The corruption could cause alarms to go off in the wrong room at the wrong volume with the wrong content! In order to save your alarms, we made the difficult decision to remotely disable the alarm settings feature and then completely lock it out. It allowed us to make sure your alarms stayed as they were - but at the steep cost of taking away your ability to change them yourself.

The team rallied to make sure we could turn this feature back on safely - and today we are so delighted to say that we have re-enabled alarm settings. To get this feature, you must do a full system update. 

But that’s not how we expect to introduce features every time. We have built the new app to be able to update independently of the speaker firmware. As we go forward, you can expect us to bring out new features with smaller, less intrusive, updates.

“On the morning of the app launch, it was evident that the app still had major problems. In order to save face, we avoided the difficult decision to pull the launch until it was ready. Instead, we sacrificed your user experience and kicked it out the door anyway.” 

There, I fixed it for ya!

May 14, 2024

I noticed that the re-introduction of alarms actually required an update to Sonos devices as well as the app today. Does this mean that the new UI revamp was in fact much more than just a revamp to the UI? Are there currently bigger changes happening on the device side as well?

@Aleksander H

The app is definitely a revamp, but it’s not just the UI that changed! This new app is using new features on the speaker firmware and new cloud services as well. Let me share a bit more about what happened with alarm settings. 

On the morning of the app launch, we discovered a data corruption error around the new Alarms APIs. The corruption could cause alarms to go off in the wrong room at the wrong volume with the wrong content! In order to save your alarms, we made the difficult decision to remotely disable the alarm settings feature and then completely lock it out. It allowed us to make sure your alarms stayed as they were - but at the steep cost of taking away your ability to change them yourself.

The team rallied to make sure we could turn this feature back on safely - and today we are so delighted to say that we have re-enabled alarm settings. To get this feature, you must do a full system update. 

But that’s not how we expect to introduce features every time. We have built the new app to be able to update independently of the speaker firmware. As we go forward, you can expect us to bring out new features with smaller, less intrusive, updates.

Diane,

What Cloud Services are being used, and do they increase vulnerability to our local networks?

Thanks

Enthusiast II
May 14, 2024

 

 

Rolling back to the previous version of the Sonos app is likely to cause issues. As Sonos continues to advance forward with new updates to the firmware, the old apps will fall out of compatibility quickly. Our priority is to release improvements to the Sonos app rapidly to address your needs.

Yes, I can imagine.

However, rolling forward to the new app also proved to have tons of issues. Of which the most serious one is the lack of accessibility. (I should point out that I am a normal seeing person, and I have no need for features myself.)

I like the style of the new app, but it is not ready for prime time.

Rolling back can cause problems, but you can make the old app available. You could even time-bomb it so that people don’t stick to it forever.

Lyricist II
May 14, 2024

Will you offer a new macOS App with full Functionality - after you removed lots of Functions in S2 (!) the WebUI Version is way too Basic - particularly for larger Setups with 10+ Devices.