I don't care about voice control and I dig the new interface. Could it be darker? I dunno... I don't care about stuff like that. I like the functionality much better than what it was (once I figured it out).
I’m all for the option of a colour themed interface and smaller icons on some devices like the iPad, but for me the browse tab is similar to the old interface without all the clutter (which they have moved to the 'more' tab). We then have the added bonus of a new separate area for the Sonos Rooms and a Search Facility, but the real UI winner is the functionality and potential contained in the new 'My Sonos' tab. That can provides links and shortcuts to many key areas within the different supported music services and I am really looking forward to seeing how that area of the app continues to be developed.
I think for now though, I would like to see Sonos prioritise the voice control of other music services like Spotify and Google Play.
As a footnote. I have just added some Philips hue colour bulbs to parts of my home, also controlled via an Alexa Skill and a variety of different apps and being able to generate the different customisable lighting scenes in conjunction with excellent quality Sonos audio has added another incredible dimension to listening to my favourite playlists. These things are truly changing the way I like to listen and relax to music, so the user interface colours, for me, is quickly becoming a relatively minor matter.... and I too was someone who once thought that voice control and smart-home products would never ever feature in my home.
The family all love these new things too.
When will You do some much needed work on the Windows PC controller?
Ill second this! I use a few old touchscreen PCs in areas as a kind of jukebox touchscreen for my Sonos Music.
Some nice grouping options like saved groups would be cool also. Currently use Macronis and Lurton Scenes for this, but would love to have this in my PC touchscreens. Voice wasn't much of an interest, but the Sonos One had me thinking of trying, but without grouping options, pretty pointless to me if I have to use the app for grouping might as well set the music while there. For simple play/pause I use Lutron Pico remotes.
How do I go back to the old one it was much more intuitive
You don't - Sonos don't do 'choice' - unless you count not pressing the 'upgrade' button :8
Love the voice control although i found some issues which i will post on the appropriate topic.
however regarding the new app for iOS (have not looked at the new android app in play store on my chromebook yet).
I really hate the opening page... who thought that LARGE icons on a small iPhone screen is something ANYONE would want.
your previous app was GORGEOUS .. and at least you didnt screw with the BROWSe where all the original icons are..
HATE HATE HATE the opening screen. ... and why show so few favorites? really? if i have 20 favorites , then i should be able to see them all.
Dont understand the NEED to change what was NOT broken.
Same thing with the iPad app. same issues.
Also give us the choice to have white or black background. too much white.
you can always post screen shots here and we can comment on the app design - i mean we ARE your loyal fans! Let us have a say!
On an iPad i used to be able to select and play a song, and have controls on the same page.
(volume especially, but also the scroll)
Now i can only "pause", and i have to click to another screen if i want to have a volume slider.
Also not a fan of the huge icons.
Way to much white! In one Sonos reply, "We hear you, a night mode is a good idea for the future". How about just setting the app color scheme back to the way is was for years. EASY fix. Btw, white IS the single biggest complaint so far and easiest to resolve. Get on it.
Much worse interface, at least on an iPad. Especially bad are the very large icons arrayed in a single horizontal row at the top of the screen. This requires horizontal scrolling to see more than a few, when with a different display they'd all be visible at a glance.
I don't like the white and I don't like the enormous icons which means that my favourite radio stations only show a few, even on my iPad. It then takes more clicks to go to all my favourite radio stations.
I preferred the previous version, I wish I hadn't updated. I assume I'll have to get used to it because Sonos has never been great at producing software with a good UI (in my opinion)
Sorry Sonos .... the new app is not an improvement in my mind. Don’t like it I’m afraid. Bring back the black background
Updated to v.8 today.
Funky app but appalling lack of colour......did the developer run out of paint?
Any chance of a darker option or themes, please?
Still no 'Next track' either.
I have already said I don't like the new app but there's something that really pisses me off with it...
By far the biggest problem for me is that it always starts up on the My Sonos page. This causes my NAS drive to spin up every time it goes to that page because it starts looking for the artwork for the Sonos Playlists that I have. I don't have an option to not display those and I don't have an option to get rid of the crappy My Sonos page. (I've searched for options to turn off these things but couldn't find them).
So every time I start up the app, it slows down because it's looking for the artwork. It also causes wear and tear on my NAS drive which would normally not happen so often and also costs me the electricity for the NAS drive continously spinning up.
This never happened before because I mostly listen to radio stations and only occasionally at weekends will I go into my music library and have a session playing my FLAC files.
This needs to be sorted. This is poor design. This is just not good enough.
Hey folks the new app and controller on my Apple devices are very glitchy, didn't show all rooms, struggle to connect and when you want to turn down the volume it didn't do anything for ever.
This is of very poor quality / testing old app was much better in basic operation...there is still a lot of work necessary
Hey folks the new app and controller on my Apple devices are very glitchy, didn't show all rooms, struggle to connect and when you want to turn down the volume it didn't do anything for ever.
This is of very poor quality / testing old app was much better in basic operation...there is still a lot of work necessary
Stuff like this is usually due to network problems, not Sonos problems. The typical cause is duplicate IP addresses. These often show up after a Sonos update or a power outage because a reboot requires the device to request a new IP, and the router, having lost track of current IP assignments, issues a new IP that is in use by another device. To cure this, do the following:
Reboot/power cycle your devices in the following order:
Modem
Router
Switches or hubs
Wired Sonos units
Wireless Sonos units
Computers/printers
Wireless devices - phones/tablets etc.
Allow each device to come back up before proceeding to the next. Note that you can permanently prevent duplicate IP addresses by assigning an IP to each device's MAC address in the router setup. See your router manual for details.
Absolutely awful update. What's with the bright white background? Need sunglasses to view this!! Please bring back the dark background or at least an option to choose. Icons too large need more scrolling for the same options. Looks as if a 3 year old designed this. :(:(
The new UI is complete failure. The designers demonstrate a complete lack of understanding about consistency and standards in UI design. The interface elements jump all over the screen, and it takes several more clicks to perform the same functions as before. Nothing performs as expected. The updated interface is frustrating to the point of being unusable, and I am using my PC to control my Sonos system in order to save my sanity.
Pro-tip: If you are on Android, you can download and install the 7.4 version from Apkmirror.com. Just uninstall the crappy new version and turn off auto-updates. Google for "android install apk" and "keep specific android apps from updating" if you need help. Good luck.
OK...long long time Sonos fan.
Question - I have many rooms with Sonos devices...how do I something as simple as change the station in a room? An activity Sonos users probably do thousands if not millions of times a day across your user base?
Do I have this right, I need to: 1) Click Rooms (first click) 2) Pick the room (second click) 3) click the header banner to move the screen out of view to get to the bottom navigation bar (third click) 4) move to the "my Sonos" tab (fourth click) 5) click "see all" to get the full list of stations (fifth click) 6) click the channel (sixth click).
Seriously? I'm in the Room view, and need to do SIX clicks - navigating AWAY from the room view, go through three different screens to change the CHANNEL?!?!?
Who DESIGNED this? When in the room view in the old app, changing the channel/station was right there - you never left the room screen to do this. WHY WHY WHY is there no way to change the channel in the room view??!?!?
What a mess!
Poor design, unstructured flattened navigation, more clicks than before to do the same, looks quite unsophisticated and immature.
Classic case of "if it ain't broke, don't fix it"
I would add a vote with the folks that dislike the new app.
And not because "I don't like change" and some people just don't like change.
Specifically, the dark version of the old app was "better", and the layout and flow of the old app was more intuitive. Of course I will eventually get used to this new flow, but I do believe that it was a downgrade in terms of usability, layout, and overall feel of the app. Earlier tonight I was playing music in the garage, and then went into the basement home gym. Getting music to stop in the garage, then select music to play in the Home Gym zone was cumbersome. Took me a few times to get it all right, and not accidently start grouping things. In the end, it seemed like more steps and cumbersome just to select the zone I want to play music. I tried this several more times with different zones and still don't really get how to properly stop music in one zone and play music in another.
As others have noted, typical app design by someone who is a "designer" and not a "user", with no input taken from users. As you see in this thread, MANY of the same complaints are repeated. How did that pass quality control, beta testing, and user input to end up like this? I'm sure there many of us who don't understand the true difficulty in coding and app design and might not "get it"...but ultimately since Sonos already had a good app, and downgraded...I think maybe this isn't about users "not getting it"...and more so about the company "not getting" it's users.
Wow, this is a hot mess. Another vote for the "way too many inconsistent ui elements" comment. Additionally, the simple act of switching a room and playing some music is now a laborious multipage activity. Minimize ui elements to get the tab to appear, to switch a room, to get the tab to appear again, to switch to the music picker, etc. why make it so difficult?
I was a beta tester and under NDA cannot comment about any feedback they may have had on the app.
I can say that Sonos generally don't respond to negative feedback very well.
Sonos knows best?
I was a beta tester and under NDA cannot comment about any feedback they may have had on the app.
Sonos knows best?
ah, but you already violated the NDA with that admission ;-)
Suffice to say that there are lovers and haters and some in the middle.
Before any line of code is written, a proper UI/UX design should look at typical/ common 'scenarios' that a USER will want to perform and run though how well these scenarios 'flow' according to different designs and tweak accordingly. There should never be a situation where a scenario, which is performed regularly, is more cumbersome than in a prior design.
As mentioned earlier, it really seems like this design did not take the needs of a typical user into account for their most typical scenarios. Either that or Im just not a typical user !
I was a beta tester and under NDA cannot comment about any feedback they may have had on the app.
I can say that Sonos generally don't respond to negative feedback very well.
Sonos knows best?
That's the reason I stopped being in the beta program because I also brought to their attention serious (in my opinion) design faults and they just weren't interested. They are only interested in hearing about bugs.
In all my years in the IT industry I've never come across such an arrogant company as Sonos. I used to think Apple was arrogant but even they seem to treat loyal customers better than Sonos do.
I think they got away with ignoring customer feedback when there was little in the way of credible competition.
Unfortunately the competition are now very real....
From CNET this morning...
Sonos executives must be looking at vast tech companies making smart speakers and resisting the urge to hum a dirge.
Amazon launched its latest Echos last week. Google on Wednesday presented its new Homes -- including a charmingly unattractive Max that claims to offer quite a boom. Then there's Apple, whose music-based HomePod comes to market in December.
It could be time to start listening.....
Hi - Can you clarify something for me please.
The App Store says iOS 8+
The Release notes say iOS9+ with limited support on iOS8.
I know I can't install this new version, but can you tell me if the old App on an iOS 7 device will still be able to do anything on a system that has been updated to version 8?
Horrible New layout (on IPad)
or is it because the app is optimised for a phone.
I would like to be able to see all my Radio stations on the main screen
It is just as bad on a phone. Ridiculously huge icons and unnecessary side swipes to see anything.
