The new Sonos Mobile App & Web App

No. That’s not true. At least for me. In the Favorites section are only my playlists made by Apple. However all my individual playlists have disappeared. It’s a disaster. 

What a nightmare the new app. I am serious think about ditching the whole system. It is deadslow radio channels have disappeared. Figuring out how to tweak the eq base and treble requires highschool experience. It did not solve the intermittent problem of playing music. @sonos please fix this rapidly or accept losing customers.

Sorry, @Ken_Griffiths, they're not there. I admit, they were there yesterday, for a brief period, but they disappeared all of a sudden and they're gone since.

The playlists are stored on the Speakers themselves - see if changing the associated speaker for your controller device brings them back.

Guys….I hope it’s a joke… they can’t be so stupid to have erased one of the best service offered…the possibility to stream a local library…again…It should be a joke… otherwise I sell everything!!

Does someone in charge at Sonos not understand what makes Sonos great? I love music, have loved Sonos as the best way to play it, and am actually sad/confused/angry over exactly how bad this update is. I would have thought Sonos would have learned something from previous poorly messaged and poorly managed update debacles; you lost a lot of brand goodwill over the S1/S2 thing; however in that situation it was still possible to get a good music listening experience. As far as I can tell in this update (v10 for iOS at least), it’s not at all possible to get a good music listening experience.

What’s so bad that I noticed just in the first few minutes of using the new app?

• search doesn’t work well
• no queue management
• significant lag just starting playback

Please roll back immediately.

I guess not because a users local library is still there for many users - see screenshots attached from my Sonos App, just as an example, to show the new App definitely has that feature.

Guys….I hope it’s a joke… they can’t be so stupid to have erased one of the best service offered…the possibility to stream a local library…again…It should be a joke… otherwise I sell everything!!

I guess not because a users local library is still there for many users - see screenshots attached from my Sonos App, just as an example, to show the new App definitely has that feature.

 

Yeah it’s there for sure, just sometimes it inexplicably doesn’t show up. It shows up in Sonophone and other third party apps I’m using, just not always in the official Sonos app … because its a buggy POS imo.

Have reset the app. To no avail. Have logged out and back in. To no avail.

Guys….I hope it’s a joke… they can’t be so stupid to have erased one of the best service offered…the possibility to stream a local library…again…It should be a joke… otherwise I sell everything!!

I guess not because a users local library is still there for many users - see screenshots attached from my Sonos App, just as an example, to show the new App definitely has that feature.

 

Yeah it’s there for sure, just sometimes it inexplicably doesn’t show up. It shows up in Sonophone and other third party apps I’m using, just not always in the official Sonos app … because its a buggy POS imo.

and (also / or?) because it takes ages for the app to react / scan whatever it has to scan to function - see for instrance how incredibly slowly it reacts to attempts at changing the volume of one (or more) speakers. You may want to wait a bit when on the m,ain screen and see if your libray finally shows up.

Yes the library is there…

…just can’t browse or search it.

making it impossible to use in practice.

when we invested in Sonos 10+ years ago it was all about making streaming music from NAS simple and straightforward to one or many speakers.

New stuff is potentially great but not at the expense of the basics. Fortunately Sonopad IOS app works great for us.

Which is just the final straw for me. 

I am at least grateful that I know this now, so I have time to research alternate systems to SONOS. Thanks to this non-functional app, and planned future "updates" deleting more features,  I'm ready to start over and shell out some money for products that won't get bricked by an all-powerful overlord.

Suggestions? Something with open-source controls maybe?

It is disappointing that Sonos slashed my unwavering 100% confidence over a decade of passionate use, loyalty and promotion of your system. 

Bravo, you set your app back to the 1990s. It now has the functionality and flexibility of my once innovative Sony100 disc CD player. I can no longer instantly customize what is being played, besides switching discs, shuffling it all, or skipping.  

The inability to edit by adding, removing, reordering or combining the Sonos queue and Spotify playlists is an insult because this was a critical feature I loved most about your platform. I no longer see the value in your platform or system.  

You can earn your phenomenal reputation back by allowing users the option to install the prior version ASAP while you clean up this senselessly self-inflicted mess. We all make mistakes, you had a good run. Now show some humility and you’re certain to get back on-track with your most loyal customers. 

Thank you for allowing feedback and your attempts to correct course.  

that will be fun 🤣

Quote: “(...)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.

We are therefore happy to announce our first live Community AMA!

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.

If you look at the right side of this page, you can see the when the AMA happens, in your local time.”

I’m not seeing the local library not show-up on my iOS controllers, but I agree with the lag on the ‘grouped’ volume sliders - but the sliders work.

It’s perhaps just a case of further optimisation is needed in this area, but these things can come later (for me, at least) as I think getting the ‘missing’ playback/queue-editing features put back in the new App is more of a priority, that’s from my own perspective.

What is clearly more important than my own ‘wants’, is for the screen-reader voice-over accessibility features to work well for those that are visually impaired. I’d really like that to be ‘top of the pile’ for the next App update as it is clear that some have highlighted that issue too.

OMG YES,  can't wait 🍿👀🍿

They say May 21 for Voiceover support. About the same priority as alarms. It’s still 14 days too long. 

Personally I want to:

• Stream from a local file share
• Be able to add a custom stream URL, which i do with the old TuneIn app that actually works well for this purpose (unlike the “new” one)

The new app takes this functionality away from the product i paid significant money for. Going to another room to use the desktop app isn’t a solution (who knows how long that will be around now anyway).

Lots of other missing features that are important to others. I thought Sonos could be trusted more than the big tech companies with similar products. Shouldn’t have spent the extra and just got cheaper Amazon speakers, lesson learnt.

I installed the old Android app, i wont be updating it until I can use the product as I can now. I wont be updating my speakers in case it breaks compatibility with the old app.

To add insult to injury the app has suddenly decided that I do have a music library.

Fired up the controller on the iPhone and the library appeared phew thats good me thinks!

Fired up the Ipad and no music library, rebooted it, and just generally buggered around, cant add it as there is no option.

Was just about to give up and bingo it appeared!

There is nothing I hate more than software that is not consistent.!!

Thank you to those who recommended SonoPad / SonoPhone. 

Definitely worth $2 to get queue editing back. And it’s just a nice interface to use overall.

The new app is a disaster. On top of being less intuitive and easy to use than the prior version (which mostly worked great) there are terrible UI lag times, services randomly disappearing, and worst of all, zones changes and adjustments frequently don’t work at all, music stops playing or won’t start, speakers drop out of groups at random. After years of multi-zone whole home audio enjoyment, the product is unusable. I have $$$ upgraded amps and speakers throughout the house we currently can’t use. 
 

As a software development manager, would love to gain an understanding of what your QA process looks like. Please restore the previous app and support your customers until you guys fix it.

Yes, that’s just 10 days to wait now, by my reckoning, but I’m a fairly patient-sort anyway.

I’m not sure if the accessibility features can perhaps be incorporated/pushed from the server-side on a rolling basis either, but that gets my priority. As for Sonos Alarms, I don’t use those, I just use Alexa Alarms on Sonos instead.

Why do some of those who have spent 1000s on Sonos think they are more deserving than than the 1 speaker punter, and demand an immediate definitive response, otherwise they'll sell their investment immediately?  Don't they realise that at the moment the resale value will be miniscule - a good investment for anybody prepared to employ one of the simple workarounds! 🤣😁

If you are indeed a software manager, then you are actually missing/not understanding something here.

The Sonos App is merely a ‘remote’ for Sonos products. It is not a music player and if it initiates playback on a group of speakers, then that playback is between the audio source and the group-coordinating speaker/product, which in turn distributes the music to the secondary devices in a timely manner and keeps all in perfect sync.

You could at that point in time having started the audio stream, close the App and power-down the controller device. So if your speakers are stopping playback, or dropping from the group, it’s not going to be anything to do with the new Sonos App, it’s far more likely an end-to-end network issue.

It is a disaster.  Why did you change something that looked and worked beautifully, and make it absolutely horrible?  

First, when I open up the app, I do not want to see what services I do or could subscribe to, I do not want to see recently played, and I do not want to see what is trending now.  I want to see my system, and what is playing in each zone.  

The interface (app) used to be architecturally pleasing so it was no problem leaving it displayed on the home controllers (Samsung pads).  Now it looks like another cheap phone application and definitely not appealing.  

You can no longer add your own music.  I have an extensive library that I used to play from and where all my playlists reside, but with the new application, those are inaccessible.  

The sleep timers and alarms are gone.  Why?  Oh right, because you wanted to reduce functionality!

It is time to ditch Sonos for a product that works and looks like it fits in a luxury home.  

I have 3 Amps, 1 Move, 1 Five, and one Port, so it is not a trivial investment.