‘On this Device’ for Android controller no longer supported

benym - you appear to be either a troll or a SONOS chatbot, as it seems are the other 'users' who instantly respond to every criticism of SONOS by either blaming someone else or fatuously saying "go on tell us the technical solution then." Not really worth engaging with.

The idea that it is not possible to resolve this relatively straightforward technical and legal issue is palpable nonsense. Tech companies are everyday solving much much more complex ones. It is a lack of will on the part of  SONOS, plain and simple. And it is the suckers who bought your product precisely because it did something that it no longer does who are paying the price for SONOS's flagrant disregard for its customers.

I don’t know all of the details here, but with Apple there will be a demand for developers to change an App or the App will be dropped from the App store. In many cases the “new improved” will not work on older phone/pads. The App developer has hard choices. Abandon some users of older phone/pads or abandon their App. In some cases it might be possible for the developer to remove the feature requiring the incompatible new API.

Nobody stated that. You on the other hand stated the opposite. Hence my reaction.

I understand your anger, but you'd do better to stick to the facts. And you just can't know anything about what Sonos wants to do or can do.

The fact that so many people only found out about the sudden removal of the functionality and having to search on the Internet to find out what is happening shows Sonos has some work to do in their communications department.

It's also one of the reasons i have auto updates off in every app possible. I can still use the - On this Device- function but i assume i will be forced to update soon. 

@SleepyRobot That is of course your choice. Just remember some updates are for security reasons. Also the Sonos app and the updates on your system are related - you need to also stop updates to the app. As far as I know there are no forced updates on Sonos.

@anyotherbizniz Of course this is an unwelcome surprise and it would have been nice if Sonos had announced the end of this feature with a pop up on the app for example. As I said, Sonos might also be a little early stopping the feature.

But you stating things as facts an reneging when called out on your statements, calling people that might disagree with you names is just childish.

As with the same point on Apple devices in 2019: this will not go away. You need to take action if you want to keep playing your music. The choices are mentioned above.

"an reneging"? 

Not worth saying anymore because your SONOS chums would probably delete it again.

It is not the end of being able to play your music through Sonos.   Youtube Music, Apple Music, Deezer, Plex, and iBroadcast are cloud storage services that work with Sonos.  Youtube Music and iBroadcast are free and you can upload an unlimited amount of songs. However, Youtube Music can only import 999 songs to the Sonos Queue. I have a larger library than 999 so I’ve been using iBroadcast and find it to be excellent and easy to navigate.  

A friend of mine called to inform me that SONOS had sent him an email announcing the change -- several weeks before the change. I did not receive the email because I don’t use the feature.

Just seen that SONOS have two and a half thousand reviews on Trustpilot and they are 81% one star, the lowest possible rating. And quite a few of the recent ones are quoting this issue.

Cue the response from the SONOS chatbot saying all those reviews are the fault of Google ...

I've personally never heard of Trustpilot.  However, those who buy Sonos via the world's largest online retailer (which actually verifies a purchase) rate Sonos an average of 4.5 stars, with multiple thousands of reviews.  Just another example of why one should take online reviews with a grain of salt.

I'm surprised nobody mentions the Android app “Hi-Fi Cast”. It works with Sonos. Someone on Reddit mentioned it.

https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.findhdmusic.app.upnpcast&hl=en

I regularly have merchants contact me offering perks if I file a very positive review after a purchase.  I’ve also had perks offered for me to revise or retract a negative review of a horrible product.

Thank you for this suggestion. This app works on my Android phone and my Android HiFi music player. I am now easily able to cast local device music to my Sonos speakers again. There is one quirk. The app, it casts fine to all of my speakers in my home theater setup - Arc, 2 Fives, and Sub Gen 3. It also casts fine to a single Play Five. However, when I cast to my Play Five stereo pair, the app plays music only on the one I choose in the list of renderers and not to the stereo pair. Thanks again for your suggestion. 

So is that a thing now?  If a you don’t like what another user is saying, just declare them to be a bot to invalidate whatever they said?

Here’s the link to the reviews I believe your talking about.  There are a few Sonos company profiles, but this is the one with 81% 1 star

https://www.trustpilot.com/review/www.sonos.com

I sorted by most recent an only see 2 reviews specifically about this issue.  Most complaints appear to be about connectivity issues.  There are 5 reviews in the last 30 days.  There are 108 reviews in the past year. 

This change is user hostile.

Instead of investing in making this work (local Android music library is the only way I use my Sonos gear), Sonos yanks the feature.

Very hostile.

According to Sonos (and I have no reason not to believe them) this is caused by Google not allowing outside acces to the relevant part of your phone anymore. This is not going to change.

So at the risk of being perceived as hostile: you need to find a new way to play your files. There are some mentioned above.

Which ones, please?

I'm sorry, but you have a fundamental misunderstanding of just how Sonos works.  For one, the Sonos app is not a music player.  It is a controller only, all the music capabilities are in the Sonos devices themselves.  Therefore, your comparison to other music apps is moot.  As such, when Sonos accesses the music on your device, it does so as an outside entity, not an app local to the device, and thus is subject to any outside access rules Google has in place.

So ends your lesson in Sonos' architecture. You can apologize for your insulting behavior now.

Just give Sonos 1 star on google play store…

https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.sonos.acr2&hl=en

Enough of those… stuff will move….

Yeah, becaase that really stopped the dropping of this function from iOS a few years back.  Not.  Turns out, the vast majority of Sonos users don't even use this feature and thus the very few who do don't even leave a dent with their one star reviews.  Nice try, though.

This is pretty gutting, as that’s the only reason I went for Sonos. I don’t use any streaming services and certainly am not about to pay for one when I have 32GB of music sitting on my device(s)!

I have installed an earlier version of the app, but assume it will be obsolete at some point, so I’ve also uploaded my music to iBroadcast. Stupid question but do I need to have a computer (or whatever) on to use it? I tried using it when I dabbled with Alexa but it was very glitchy (Alexa’s fault rather than theirs).

How does Hi-Fi Cast work please? I don’t quite understand (I’m a tech dunce).

I have 2 x bookshelf Symfonisks and a table lamp as well as a Roam. I understand that I can stream via bluetooth to the Roam and connect it to all the other speakers (I have all my speakers in a group) but it doesn’t seem to work - what am I missing please? Thank you. :)

The Hi Fi Cast app works… it just replaces the Sonos app… and does what the Sonos app _can do_ but chooses not to do.

I am running it now. Installs like cake and just works.

How do you get it to play on your system, as in several speakers at the same time, please?

»  How do you get it to play on your system, as in several speakers at the same time, please?

I only have two speakers, and only use one at a time, so I can’t speak to that.

It may well not support “zones” like the Sonos app.

I am just happy to have something working!

Ah, that wouldn't work for me as I always use my speakers throughout the house. I've tried iBroadcast but it keeps saying there's a connection error. :(