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Mike H
Retired Sonos Staff
May 14, 2024
Interview

Sonos App Redesign AMA

  • May 14, 2024
  • 770 replies
  • 65989 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

Contributor I
May 14, 2024

Hi @DianeRobertsApps can you confirm the reasoning behind the decision to “upgrade” S2 app rather than create a new S3 app with the new design and put S2 into maintenance mode as you did with S1 app?

Hi @KateW the UX of the new app is very laggy and unresponsive, frequently displaying error messages, please explain why it was released like this and what you are doing to resolve it.

Hi @DianeRobertsApps are you able to explain why Sonos decided to make the app cloud-based, what are the advantages apart from extra latency making the app seem slow?

 

Hi @Absolute40 ,

Regarding the idea of a separate app, the problem with this approach is that the functionality between these apps would diverge over time, leaving a large group of users with an out of date and potentially not fully supported experience.

Regarding responsiveness, I am sorry to hear you are having a bad experience. There are many factors that can contribute to this. We built the app to gather telemetry and data around these error states so we can continue to resolve issues for all users.

There are many advantages to using the cloud, but I’ll highlight one. With our new content services, we are able to provide a richer experience for discovering music to listen to. Our previous app was built on APIs that did not provide enough metadata to make that rich experience. 

It’s also important to note that the app is not exclusively cloud-based. We still interact with the speakers on the local network, similar to the old app. We will be continuing to fine tune when we use cloud or local APIs. And we are already working on performance enhancements across the stack.

One thing there, having some fonctionality ( NAS playback) in the event my internet goes down is cool. Please make sure it fallback as gracefully as possible in that case. 

 

Also eine Cloudnutzung. Wie steht es hier mit dem Thema Datenschutz? Was wird wie erhoben, welche Daten fließen ab, was wird analysiert? Ich weiß nicht wie es in den USA ist, aber in Europa ist das ein Thema der Aufsicht. Ich möchte einfach nur eine funktionierdne App, die mir den Dienst zur Verfügung stellt für den ich bezahlt habe. Ich möchte keine Analyse von meinen Daten über diese Funktionen hinaus. 

Ich sehe das gerade so als würden sie ein neues Geschäftsmodell installieren und das alte Geschäftsmodel abrupt einstellen. Die Frage ist nur wohin sich die Wertschöpfung verlagert, hin zu meinen privaten Daten? 

Sicher ist das eine Entwicklung, aber die Kommunikation und vorallem der Zwang zu einer Alpha oder Betaversion ist nicht zielführend, egal welches Unternehmen das betrifft. 

 

Enthusiast I
May 14, 2024

I am very concerned with the lack of security. Specially since 90% of Sonos products have microphones built-in. All these speakers are now exposed to the web https://play.sonos.com. At minimum add 2FA before someone gets any funny ideas.

So, if the Sonos web app, and the devices behind it aren’t secure, we’re looking at a massive vulnerability. 

Wondering if Sonos informed their insurers before they exposed all their customers (without warning or consent) to whatever their cybersecurity measurers are. 

Given we know what Sonos’s software engineering practices are… (rushes to unplug everything)

It’s probably like your Amazon Alexa where everything is done on device and nothing is shared wi the cloud.  

Majo133
Renowned Enthusiast I
May 14, 2024

Are u going to add PRESETS? This is a must have feature if u’re switching sources.

Every audio format e.g. PCM 2.0, Dolby Atmos, Dolby Digital 5.1. etc has different sensitivity regarding the “Volume level”, sometimes it also affects “Bass” level etc.

So this feature is at least for me a crucial part, because otherwise i have to always manually adjust everything and if i said it just annoys me, that would be an understatement.

SO PLEASE, ADD PRESETS TO YOUR APP, ITS THE YEAR 2024, NOT 1991.

Yesterday, is not today.
Lyricist III
May 14, 2024

@DianeRobertsApps can you confirm the new app is built using Flutter rather than native apps to make a one-size-fits-all app?
What was the reasoning behind this? To save development costs?
I’m failing to see the advantage to the user, it’s slower to open and laggy, missing widgets, when installed on a large screen like a tablet it doesn't make good use of the extra screen real estate. 

@Absolute40

The app is not exclusively built with Flutter, but does make use of Flutter for certain portions of the setup experience. We’ve actually been using Flutter for those experiences for many years, and ported that forward to the new app.

The majority of the app is in fact native. On iOS that means Swift, using SwiftUI. On Android that means Kotlin, using Jetpack Compose. These are the best in class layout engines offered on their respective platforms, and we’re excited to be able to use these modern technologies.

We are aware that there is work ahead for the tablet experience, and look forward to iterating on that as we go forward.

I’m...not crazy about the fact that you’re using Flutter from an accessibility perspective, however I am aware of at least one accessible Flutter app, although it clearly required a lot of bolting on. It’s called Aira Explorer. I encourage you to give it a look if you want to know what is possible with the toolchain you have chosen. Thank you.

garfieldairlines
May 14, 2024

Once again asking here :

 

Can I please get a ETA for users of Airsonic / Subsonic / Bonob who lost their ability to see their library in Sonos please ?

 

Or you just silently dropped the opportunity to run your own service at home. Please at least answer us on that topic.

https://garfieldairlines.net
May 14, 2024

Shame for sonos if they don't get it sorted soon will be alot up for sale cant believe it is not tried and tested before release date some people have invested alot off money in this system. 

Lyricist II
May 14, 2024

You’ve made our speakers open to the internet via the new web app without our consent and without two-factor authentication for security.
You’ve demoted local library music so much that it’s practically impossible to find our music (no search, poor A-Z scrolling) plus there is no way to update the index of the library.

 

Is this legitimate? Can you provide more info on how this is happening? Highly concerning.

Go to play.sonos.com, log in. See your speakers. Do it from outside your network, still see your speakers. 
There is no tfa or mfa options, only password. This is not good security practice. 

I just tried this, and my speakers really are accessible from outside my network. That's it Sonos I’m done!!!!!

What are you doing? 

 

Mod Edit: removed the profanity

Dear Sonos Team,

Could you explain the underlying mechanism. I am highly concerned.

Best Regards

FinkenMusic

rvk
Lyricist III
May 14, 2024

I want to downgrade to S1. But that isn't possible with the latest version and when trying with 16.1 it says I need the latest version. 

At least S1 including its app worked (and isn't accessible via the internet ;) ).

 

Hopefully downgrading back to S1 is added soon.

 

I think (and hope) you mean S2. S1 is the old original app now used by owners of legacy products. Because Sonos loves creating legacy products.

No, I really mean S1. That app and OS works fine for me. Plus you can't use the newer (now old 16.1) S2 app. But that doesn't matter as long as everything works (and they don't dare touch the legacy S1 OS, with the upside that it can't work online with the web app).

Better the legacy S1 then to deal with wanting Sonos to upgrade my system against my will (while everything works correctly).

I won't be buying any newer Sonos products anyways.

 

Enthusiast II
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.


I think I’ll be upgrading my speakers to the S1 app and when they fail I’ll be moving to a different music system. There is nothing useful for me in the new app and I’ve lost trust in Sonos as a brand.

Bring back the old Sonos app. It was clunky, but it actually worked!
Enthusiast I
May 14, 2024

Could you please keep the option for the boost going as many people don't receive a strong wi fi signal and extenders and boosters just interfere with the signal and having paided out for a booster cant afford to buy speakers to act as a receiver and don't want the look off speakers everywhere. 

Hear, hear!!  While I recognize you’re moving away from Boost in the newer speaker lines, please don’t kill it for our older, SonosNet products.  Taking all that traffic off the main WiFi has been a valuable benefit of Sonos that doesn’t exist elsewhere.