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Ryan S
Ryan S
Retired Sonos Staff
October 2, 2017

Now Available, the New Sonos App

Related content:Software



Sonos version 8.0 is introducing a brand new controller for iOS and Android. The new Sonos app makes it even easier to navigate, access, and control your music throughout your home. This new app comes side by side with voice control through Alexa devices, more about that here.

Check out our blog for the Remastered Sonos App. Full details on the new apps can be found here on their respective product guide pages. Let’s take a look at the new app:



Introducing Navigation with Tabs:


The Sonos app now has five tabs visible at the bottom when not in the full playing screen. The tabs are My Sonos, Browse, Rooms, Search, and More. See here:



Now your most used options are available with just one click, and Now Playing is always just one tap away.

My Sonos
We’ve consolidated all your personally curated Sonos Playlists, music service playlists, and Sonos Favorites into one, easy to use page on the Sonos app. You can edit fields to move around the order, or delete them entirely. You can now have up to 40 favorites total, up from 32.

Browse
Browsing your music is even easier as it no longer hides your other options. You can browse and move to different rooms all while keeping your place in the browsing menu. There’s also a dock on the bottom of the app that gives you easy access to the navigation tabs. You can swipe it up to reveal it at any time, then back down. We’ve separated browsing your music and the menu for Settings, so it’s even easier to find what you’re looking for.

Rooms
The menu starts highlighted on the active room, featured right on the app so that it’s even easier to see what’s playing in each room. There’s now an icon on that screen to show you where the music is coming from too. That includes if it was started by Alexa. The active room has a Group button to have it add others to the party.

Search
It hasn’t changed, just moved to an easy to find spot.

More...
All the settings and options are in here. You can add services, make alarms, get some help, and access all your settings. We think this will make it a lot easier to find what you’re looking for. And speaking of settings…


Explicit Language Filtering


Within Settings > Parental Controls, you can set a system-wide setting to filter songs with explicit content. Right now, this is working for Apple Music, and we’re hoping to add it for more services soon. Once the setting is on, Apple Music songs with the explicit tag will no longer play on your system.

Long Press to Group


Making it even easier to play music. With 8.0, you can press and hold the Play/Pause button (or mute on older players) to have your player join the most recently active player as a group. First, you have to start playing music on a player, (it can be from an alarm or any other source), and then just hold the button for a few seconds on another player. That second player will join the first one’s group and start playing the same music in sync.

There's another function of the long press, and that's being able to move recently stopped music to another room. First, stop playing music in any of your rooms. Then, press and hold the play/pause on another player for a few seconds. (Make sure that you don't start playing music anywhere else.) The queue or source will move to the unit you held the button for and start playing. The players won't group together and any existing queue will get whiped out in place of the new one.

iOS 11 and Android O Support


Lastly, version 8.0 has support for the latest operating systems from Android and iOS. This includes iOS 11 support for Trueplay on Sonos. Trueplay isn’t available on Android at this time.
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    527 replies

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    cisko213
    Lyricist I
    October 24, 2017
    this update is horrible, switching between rooms is awful. Please fix..........
      ryan2
      Lyricist III
      October 24, 2017
      How do I 'Downgrade' back to the old App?

      If only it was possible. I would pay good money to be able to go back to the old app. The old app got an A in my book, the new app gets an F. If there was a worse grade than an F, I'd give that.
        ryan2
        Lyricist III
        October 24, 2017
        this update is horrible, switching between rooms is awful. Please fix..........

        Everything about the new app is awful. I honestly can't thing of one thing that I like better than the old app. I could make very long list of things things they made worse... essentially everything.
          cisko213
          Lyricist I
          October 24, 2017
          Sonos could you communicate with us and let us know what is going on or maybe what is in the works? Can we email somebody? Does anybody have Patrick Spence email?
            ryan2
            Lyricist III
            October 24, 2017
            I am very, very dissatisfied with the latest Sonos controller update for iOS devices.

            Let me be clear that I use the Sonos controller exclusively with my iPad – almost always in “landscape” (rather than “portrait”) mode. As a result my chief concern is how poorly the new Sonos controller uses the available screen resource.

            1. The white controller background is far too bright. I see from the tread Sonos has been getting an earful (eyeful?) on this from a lot of its users. Compares very poorly to the former black background with subtle variation provided by the “halo-ed” thumbnail icon (station name, album cover, etc) – which I thought was classy/sophisticated.

            2. I badly miss the command menu on the left edge of the screen. At a glance, everything you needed (favorites, playlists, library, device, line-in, app services, etc. ) was in one place. The menu only took up a column of one-quarter/one-third my available screen real estate – it did not crowd the display of sub-menus and media browsing.

            3. I greatly dislike having to toggle between “My Songs” (why is this not called “Favorites”) and “Browse” (why is this not called “My Library”). And these new icons are small, little, ill-defined shadows on a “Navigation” bar at the bottom edge of the controller. Why? In the prior Sonos controller all was on one handy menu (see above). Why make users take extra steps?

            4. Why are icons in “My Sonos” so darn big? The prior Sonos controller could show me 12-15 “Favourite” album thumbnails at a glance on one screen. Now I see only 4 album thumbnails (more about which below). Why? A waste of screen real estate…

            5. In “My Sonos”, when you “See All” stations or albums, why does the controller insist on listing (for example) the albums at the left edge of the screen? Why can’t the album thumbnails be tiled across all available screen real estate, as it was before, giving you 12-15 album thumbnails at a glance and thus more information? As it is, at least two-thirds of my screen real estate is wasted.

            5. When you “Browse” “Albums” in your “Music Library”, the thumbnail icons are ridiculously large (see like complaint above). Only 8 album thumbnails a creen? C’mon, there should be at least 12-15. More waste of screen real estate…

            Finally, I have contacted Sonos several times on this: the controller absolutely needs to support a “Date” tag. For anyone with a decades deep music collection, I think this is a must. You should be able to sort Albums within a single Artist by Date (of the album), not just Album title alpha-sort. The Music Library should have a Date (of the album) sort alongside Artist, Album, Composer, Genre and Song. Plus you should be able to see Date (of the album) in “Now Playing”. This used to be my only complaint about an otherwise solid Sonos controller … until all the new issues (above) since the controller was overhauled (for the worse).

            BTW I say this as a supportive 6+ year Sonos customer, who has convinced at least half-a-dozen friends and acquaintances to start using your product – all of them enthusiastically.

            Hope the Sonos controller will change (revert?) for the better soonest.

            M. W.
            Ottawa, Canada

            I couldn't agree more with all of your specific feedback. Good job. I'm too lazy to write all of my specific complaints. Unfortunately, mine would be several pages longer than yours.

            I'm also a big supporter and fan of Sonos. I actually purchased about 15 Sonos Play 3s for colleagues of mine. I alo have two sound bars, a sub, and speakers all over my house.

            I really want to keep being one of Sonos's biggest fans. I want to keep recommending Sonos to everyone and even buying them their first speaker.

            But I can't, and won't in good conscious recommend it to anyone else unless the software gets repaired. I consider it badly broken. It's like I was driving a new Porche or Tesla, and now I'm driving a 1970 Volkswagen bug with a horrible stick shift.

            I don't need to give a list of all the repairs I would make because all Sonos needs to do look at how the old software was designed. There's a clear road map right there.
              Toolio
              Prodigy II
              October 24, 2017
              After living with the new app for three weeks, I’m now firmly in the camp who find it to be a giant step backwards. In the beginning I was hesitant to rush to judgement, and I thought there were a few things about the concept that would grow in me. That hasn’t been the case. There is nothing intuitive about it, it wastes real estate, blinds me in a dark room at night and ... well, you, know, it’s all been said above. I’d class this as an epic failure, particularly on iPads and Android tablets (my favourite controllers). It’s the “new Coke’ of the Sonos world. I want the old flavour back, perhaps with a slightly tweaked label.
                SonosUser45
                Lyricist I
                October 25, 2017
                New UI is terrible. The previous interface was easy to use. Who was your UX designer on this? Please go back to the old interface, or give users the option to roll back.
                  ryan2
                  Lyricist III
                  October 25, 2017
                  Does the feedback posted here make it's way back to the management at Sonos? I sure hope so. The current app is painful at best for your customers to tolerate. This current app isn't just hurting the Sonos customers. It will also cut into Sonos profits big time. Sonos will lose customers, and they'll stop referring. I've stopped referring, and won't start again until this is fixed. In fact, I'll be warning people to stay away.
                    somemoore
                    Lyricist I
                    October 25, 2017
                    I’ve been using Sonos products for 12 years and have always loved the end-end experience. The past few weeks have been torture. I’m actually using my system significantly less because I hate the app so much.
                      John B
                      October 25, 2017
                      I’ve been using Sonos products for 12 years and have always loved the end-end experience. The past few weeks have been torture. I’m actually using my system significantly less because I hate the app so much.
                      https://en.community.sonos.com/controllers-software-228995/user-guide-for-v8-app-6792817/index1.html#post16158856
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