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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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    sjw
    Local Superstar
    October 5, 2017
    Still no 'Next track' either.
      JohnG666
      Enthusiast II
      October 5, 2017
      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.
        floraffus
        Lyricist I
        October 5, 2017
        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
          jgatie
          jgatie
          October 5, 2017
          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.
          JeffB
          Lyricist I
          October 5, 2017
          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. :(:(
            polarbearmusic
            polarbearmusic
            Trending Lyricist I
            October 5, 2017
            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.
              09tarheel
              Lyricist I
              October 5, 2017
              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??!?!?
                KSonos
                Avid Contributor I
                October 6, 2017
                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.
                  patmill
                  Lyricist II
                  October 6, 2017
                  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?
                    Lozboz
                    Chromatic Producer I
                    October 6, 2017
                    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?
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