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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.
I agree this app update is horrible. Navigating it is a pain a frustrating. Clearly didn't beta test it.





Two thumbs down on the new app. I've got a large multipurpose room with 5 sonos devices, and it's a nightmare trying to make adjustments. I can get all of the speakers to play the same song, but can't get them all in the same group. So I'm having to manually select each speaker, adjust volume, manually select next speaker, adjust volume. Then when I change the song, it's only changed on one of the speakers with the other 4 all playing a different song. So I have to tell all the other 4 speakers to play the new song too. Such a pain.





With the old app, I'd group all the speakers, make sure the volume levels looked good throughout the group, then just play songs. Setup took 8 seconds.





Granted, a lot of my problems with the new app is I don't know where to click to make things happen, but it seems very glitchy in that when I do click something, nothing happens. I'm not sure how this thing passed quality control. The old app was fine --- wish we could go back to that while they beta test this new interface.





Grouping is one of the things that I think is a LOT easier with the new GUI.


At the bottom of the "now playing" screen (that shows the album art), in red, you have the room name you are watching. If you click that, it pops up a box where you can group any speakers, or a slider switch to choose "Everywhere".
Also disappointed as a user with 6 zones. More clicks than previous layout to group, ungroup, switch rooms. Too much white. Extra click required now to see all my favorite stations.





I left the beta programs a while back because feedback was typically ignored. Seems others have had the same experience. I'll get used to the new app because I'm forced to, as usual.
Sorry Sonos, give me the old app back, don’t like this one at all, it’s all over the place, when I have to waste time searching for stuff I had all on 1 page before this will certainly put me off a product.
I was actually forced to update last night, no choice, sonos would not do anything apart from update to v8.


Now sonophone app does not see GPM home page, but the favorites still work for GPM albums and radio stations I have set.
Plus one for being able to order lists, especially Stations. I have a lot of stations which I then have to press See All, then scroll down to find my favourite Radio Paradise. I'd like to be able it move it up so I can see it on the My Sonos screen in Stations without further multiple key presses.
Rather than flying into full whine mode, I found everything I wanted to know by looking at the screen and tapping everything in sight to see what it does, just as I do when using any new app.


I think it is generally a step in the right direction. New things need getting used to and the decluttering of screens does that.


Some things need improvement...but then again lots of these seem bad until you use them and realise that this way is actually better.


A few weeks use will reveal the true irritations rather than being annoyed at your own.
Plus one for being able to order lists, especially Stations. I have a lot of stations which I then have to press See All, then scroll down to find my favourite Radio Paradise. I'd like to be able it move it up so I can see it on the My Sonos screen in Stations without further multiple key presses.


SteveM,


Me too, re-ordering of all icons within each one of the 'My Sonos' sections would be good, plus make the icons a lot smaller so that more of them fit into the controller device window display... a touch of colour, to dull down the white background areas and I’d be happy.
Rather than flying into full whine mode, I found everything I wanted to know by looking at the screen and tapping everything in sight to see what it does, just as I do when using any new app.


I think it is generally a step in the right direction. New things need getting used to and the decluttering of screens does that.


Some things need improvement...but then again lots of these seem bad until you use them and realise that this way is actually better.


A few weeks use will reveal the true irritations rather than being annoyed at your own.





I have used them and they are not better, and having to use multiple screens to find what you had on 1 is not an improvement, in fact completely the opposite, fortunately I did not update my PC
Really like the new look. The app is far more intuitive now and looks current. The old app was definitely dated. Best of all my wife will find this a lot more user friendly. Good work Sonos!
Sorry this app isn't great. Actually it sucks. There's no way to access My Library remotely, only from the computer app. What's up with that!? Plus the controls are way more confusing than before. PLUS the damn white background is blindingly atrocious!
Sorry this app isn't great. Actually it sucks. There's no way to access My Library remotely, only from the computer app. What's up with that!? Plus the controls are way more confusing than before. PLUS the damn white background is blindingly atrocious!





Huh? The Browse tab gives you direct access to your library and any other sources you have, just as before.
Plus one for being able to order lists, especially Stations. I have a lot of stations which I then have to press See All, then scroll down to find my favourite Radio Paradise. I'd like to be able it move it up so I can see it on the My Sonos screen in Stations without further multiple key presses.





If you long press the name of the station you get the option to rename it. I then just prefixed the station using a number ie. 1.Radio One, 2. Radio Two. They then jump to the top of your list 🙂
The new app is not connecting to the existing sonos system. It drops in and out. Occasionally connect if I kill the app and restart. Anyone else having problems? Am I able to load he old app? I think this may be a bug with the new app.
Why are the icons in ‘my sonos’ so big on the iPad. Surely you should make use of the bigger screen and give us more quick links without having to scroll through all the time.





Agree with johncanter. Lists that I can view on one page are much easier to navigate than oversized icons that I have to scroll endlessly through. Preferred the old version on this.
8.0 is horrible. It is counterintuitive and requires many more steps to group rooms and select playlists. It also keeps crashing and dropping rooms. Everytime Sonos goes for "an upgrade" it really takes a step backwards. At least they didn't mess with the MAC controller.
Thanks for the new app and features. I like the new navigation via tabs. But, I would give it up to roll back to the old app with the darker theme. Some kind of nite mode or dark theme is an absolute MUST. I updated my Sonos app ... turned it on ... and, literally, got an instant migraine. Could not even look at it after turning down the brightness. And this was during the daytime. I can't imagine how painful it will be at night. I'll actually need to use the app with medium dark sunglasses on. Please pass this on: For some of us a dark mode is more than a preference, it's as absolute necessity.
I am really struggling to find my way round this new update. It seems a lot less intuitive than the previous version. Sorry, Sonos, but I think it’s back to the drawing board with this one.
And then you open the Sonos controller app on your iPad and notice that it has changed completely. Not for the good I'm afraid. ?





The Sonos controller app was perfect on the iPad. But now it's a white slab with icons that looks more like Apple Music. Furthermore, the iPad app looks like an iPhone app that has been stretched to fit the iPad's screen. Gone are the side menus and options, where you could instantly navigate to main options and settings.





And gone are the subtle background color changes that change according to the cover art of the song that is playing. I always liked that.





Well, let's hope that Sonos will add a Dark Mode or Night Mode option to the controller app. That would make it a bit more tolerable.
Just wanted to add my voice to the general feedback. The workflow will probably improve after using the new app for a while, but I would agree it's "too bright", "too counter-intuitive" and not using the screen space of an iPad in an economic way (I have not updated the iPhone yet so that I can keep the old UI for the moment). A lot of the screen stays white, and there's much more scrolling now.





Obviously, with zillions of users, there will be a lot of opinions what is "good" or "bad" UI design. But that's where I would expect a company like Sonos to allow their customers to customize the UI so that it fits their preferences and priorities, such as options to set a dark or white mode, or the ability to have larger or smaller icons / stations / album covers.





The "My Sonos" screen might be a good idea - but why are the few playlists I got forced to show up there? Why can't they show up under "Browse"? Ah, I see - the icons are so big that there is no screen space left for icon number nine on the Browse tab. Sigh... But then I only see 4 radio stations, so I need to scroll in order to see just a few more. Maybe I could put my 4 favorites at the beginning? Nope. Can't. Stations cannot have a custom order and always show alphabetically...





Browse albums now only shows 8 albums on the iPAD (was at least 12 before). For many artists, the albums don't fit one one screen anymore, you need to scroll. Why not let the user decide how big the covers should be? And then it takes quite a while to load the covers while browsing. Doesn't look like any caching is happening. Many users might not be bothered, I am. Solution once again - let the user customize. No caching, caching on device or you might also cache previews on the home server, which should still be faster than down-sizing them every single time.





And while I'm sure that there will be a lot of hipsters that get all excited about Alexa integration - I (and most likely some others) would much more welcome a little bit more love and attention on the core features of a music system. Just a few things that come to my mind, which I've seen from other users as well:





- Volume control is still very fiddly. In most rooms, I never pull to more than 20% or so; changing the volume up or down a bit is hit and miss. Easy solution: Add a setting to the room settings where you can set the maximum volume of a room. If I set this at 25%, I get much more granular control on the slider, without changing the UI


- You can change the way how songs are sorted - by name, number or file name. Why can't I change the order that albums are sorted within an artist? Call me old-fashioned - but why on earth is alphabetical the only option? Looking at my shelves with records and CDs, they are chronologically within an artist. When I got 30 albums for one artist, would I rather look for "the newest one which should be on top of the list" or am I expected to remember what the album name was, to find it in an alphabetical list?


- And then there is the tagging of files. Maybe there is a hidden solution to this, which I just haven't found yet. Many songs have multiple composers, or multiple artists, which I tried to tag (with dbPoweramp or Foobar). Do they show up in the Sonos search results? No, they just seem to get ignored. What's the point of search if all multi-values are ignored?





I've been customer for a while, but signed up to forum today to voice my "unhappyness". As I haven't experienced the frustrations of many others here, I'm still hopeful that Sonos will listen and improve the user experience soon!
You actually can edit the My Sonos page and arrange it as you wish. 'Edit' in the upper right corner.
You actually can edit the My Sonos page and arrange it as you wish. 'Edit' in the upper right corner.





I don't think so? I can change the order of "Stations" and "Sonos playlists" but that's it. I can't make the playlist section disappear (i.e. move it to "Browse") to give the radio stations more screen space, and I can't change the order of radio stations by re-arranging them, can I?
You actually can edit the My Sonos page and arrange it as you wish. 'Edit' in the upper right corner.





I don't think so? I can change the order of "Stations" and "Sonos playlists" but that's it. I can't make the playlist section disappear (i.e. move it to "Browse") to give the radio stations more screen space, and I can't change the order of radio stations by re-arranging them, can I?





Individual order, no. But you can do as you stated.
You actually can edit the My Sonos page and arrange it as you wish. 'Edit' in the upper right corner.





I don't think so? I can change the order of "Stations" and "Sonos playlists" but that's it. I can't make the playlist section disappear (i.e. move it to "Browse") to give the radio stations more screen space, and I can't change the order of radio stations by re-arranging them, can I?And could you in the previous app?
You actually can edit the My Sonos page and arrange it as you wish. 'Edit' in the upper right corner.





I don't think so? I can change the order of "Stations" and "Sonos playlists" but that's it. I can't make the playlist section disappear (i.e. move it to "Browse") to give the radio stations more screen space, and I can't change the order of radio stations by re-arranging them, can I?And could you in the previous app?





No, I could not change the order of radio stations (which still doesn't make this lack of customization any better) but at least, I could decide what goes into my "Favorites". And without "Playlists" being mandated and the radio station icons being smaller in v7, I could at least get 12 stations on ONE screen, without scrolling.
I also can’t change the order of radio stations with either the Android or iOS Sonos apps. Am I missing a trick? I just edited the names and stuck 1(space), 2(space) etc. in front. They then follow the number ordering.
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