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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

Vitor Madeira
Trending Lyricist I
November 6, 2017
Where is the line in?

After this recent update, I can't seem to figure out how do I choose the line in on my Sonos P90 connect...

Where in this new Android app is the option for me to tap on and listen the sound that goes in the P90 line in on my living room so I can listen to the music on my bedroom?
(please, excuse my English, as I'm a foreign English speaker...)
November 6, 2017
Where is the line in?

After this recent update, I can't seem to figure out how do I choose the line in on my Sonos P90 connect...

Where in this new Android app is the option for me to tap on and listen the sound that goes in the P90 line in on my living room so I can listen to the music on my bedroom?
'Browse' on the Navigation bar takes you to all your music sources, including line in
November 6, 2017
Much of the time these days, I am at my desk where I use the Mac controller so it is taking me longer to get used to the Android app. But the more I use it, the less I understand the fuss. And the sorting of favourites into playlists, stations, albums and so on is quite useful, once it sinks in.
Contributor I
November 6, 2017
I find the new app quite easy to use. There are issues to be addressed but it gives me no real problems.John, I am sorry but I do not see how you can say it's not bad. It is worse than horrible. Perhaps you are new to Sonos and had not used the old Apps. They were extremely intuitive and pleasant to use. That is why so many, presumably previously-happy-customers, have responded with such fervor. What a colossal mistake Sonos has made, and right before the Christmas season.
Contributor I
November 6, 2017
I have already come out and expressed my ABSOLUTE HATRED for the new App in terms of it GUI being so unintuitive and ugly. However, I am now sure that the new app (Android) is also less stable. Sure, the older (cherished) versions would occasionally not find my Sonos systems. I would usually just completely close and re-open the App and it would find them. However, this new App is losing my systems quite frequently. Furthermore, getting it to re-find them is also a lot harder.

What an incredible screw-up by the "Un-develop team"
Lyricist II
November 6, 2017
This new app, makes music 8-10 times more difficult to control for me at home...

Why?

Because my kids and girlfriend dont know how to use Sonos anymore, and the ask me everytime.

Intuitive? Nope, after a month, functions are still confusing.

Simple? Nope, what used to take 2 clicks, now takes 10.
If this is your new direction, I will change direction too, away from Sonos.

Its simply not useful in our home anymore.
November 6, 2017

Simple? Nope, what used to take 2 clicks, now takes 10.

Give one example of this please.
Chromatic Producer I
November 6, 2017
The Windows App is the last bastion of a decent, usable piece of software. For goodness sake don't "update" that.
busy trying to edit the queue
Contributor I
November 6, 2017
Kumar,

You must be working for Sonos's Development Team... Have you noticed that you are the only one trying to look for positives about the new App. Look, I am sure you very hard on it and that you thought that it would be well received by the public. But it wasn't. WE (and I think I can safely say that I can speak for 98% of Sonos's customers from reading the other reviews) do not like it at all. I am sorry. Sometimes these things happen. The question is ... now that You and Sonos have heard us (are you hearing us?), what are you going to do? And how quickly can you do it?

Kumar, Sonos Devel Team, & Sonos Inc get up off the floor. Dust yourselves off and admit you made a big mistake. That is the first and only way to salvage this mess. The reason your clients are so upset with you now is that you had a great hardware & software technology. And because of that, we bought more and more hardware. Now we feel betrayed; we do not like using your product anymore. But there is good news here, we loved you once we could love you again. Just roll into a GUI that is as close to what you had before in both its layout, functionality, and color scheme.

I was so excited about the promised integration with Amazon Alexa and, like many, I waited all year for it to be released. We haven't said much about that because of the disappointment with the App itself, but that is also quite clunky and unintuitive. I would gladly give voice control back to go back to the old app. I can wait until you make the voice controls a little more robust. I hope you realize how critical it is to your companies future that you roll back (i.e. "forward") to the old App asap. You have never had competition before, but now you do. I have three Echos already and while I much prefer the true stereo, sound quality, and the (old) browsing experience to the hype and ease of listening to music on Echo, I really meant what I said on a previous post. I will be selling all my Sonos equipment (15 components) on Ebay if I do not see either a rollback or an announcement of a rollback to the old GUI. This App is going to bring down Sonos if it isn't fixed and I would rather cash out with a loss than be holding onto 15 worthless unsupported stereo components in 5 years.
Contributor I
November 6, 2017
The Windows App is the last bastion of a decent, usable piece of software. For goodness sake don't "update" that.AMEN BROTHER!