Retired Sonos Staff

'On this iPhone or iPad' No Longer Available

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Starting today, the ‘On this iPhone or iPad’ feature will no longer be available in the Sonos app. There are still many ways to play your locally saved music library to Sonos and control it from your iOS device, including some good free options.

We first launched ‘On this iPhone or iPad’ in 2012 as an option to play locally saved content from your iOS device before Apple AirPlay was available on Sonos. The way this feature was originally designed has become unreliable with newer versions of iOS and Sonos.

The best way to play the music stored on your phone to Sonos is now by using Apple AirPlay 2 on compatible Sonos speakers (Sonos One, Amp, Beam, Play:5 (Gen 2), Playbase, and SYMFONISK WiFi Speakers). Using AirPlay 2, you can send the audio to one of these products and use the Sonos app to group it with any other Sonos rooms to have them all playing in sync. You can find more information about using AirPlay 2 with Sonos here.

For people who don’t have AirPlay 2 capable Sonos products, additional options to play tracks that are stored on your phone to Sonos include:

Uploading your tracks to a music service with a storage feature, such as Apple Music or Google Play Music. These services will store your library and allow you to stream it anywhere. This is a great option if you have songs that aren’t available on a subscription based streaming service. Also, Google Play Music has a free account option that allows you to upload 50,000 tracks and play them which works with Sonos.
Setting up a Music Library share on a Computer or Network Attached Storage drive. You’d need to have the computer or local drive available when you want to play music, but your library would be easy to transfer to these devices, if it isn’t already on them.
Streaming the catalog from a music service. There are more than 100 music services available on Sonos, many with several millions of songs.
Android mobile devices will continue to have access to the ‘On this device’ feature. If you have an Android phone or tablet, ‘Playing music stored on your Android device’ to Sonos is a great option.
If you have a Sonos Play:5, Connect, Connect:Amp, or Amp, you'll have a Sonos player with a Line-In connection. Using that Line-In, you can play music directly from any device connected to it, to any player around the house. You could even look into connecting a Bluetooth or AirPlay receiving device to that line in to use your mobile device without needing to wire it in to the line-in. See more about 'Using the Line-In on Sonos' here.

With the first three options, your phone doesn’t need to be turned on to listen to your music, and the music will keep on playing even if your phone is off or leaves the house. There are also alarm and Sonos playlist features that are available for most music sources that aren't available from 'On this iPhone'.

More about how to ‘Play music stored on your iPhone, iPad, or iPod touch’ is on our support pages.

We'll continue to support everyone through this change, and will help them set up the necessary workarounds to keep listening to their favorite tracks on Sonos.

This topic has been closed for further comments. You can use the search bar to find a similar topic, or create a new one by clicking Create Topic at the top of the page.

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J

jhduckw

Lyricist II

Thanks all for the thoughtful replies. It’s a breath of fresh air to have a discussion on a public forum that is polite and engaging.

I actually had considered the NAS solution, and it looked like a good option, but it is not so simple to set up with my router (or at least for me to understand how to do it). So again - more work for me to make something work that was working fine before.

However, I also think there is a catch here. Won’t this only work with non-DRM music files? I have a mix of my own ripped MP3s and quite a lot of M4A music purchased from iTunes. The iTunes files played fine when streamed from my phone, but I don’t believe they will play directly on Sonos. Or am I missing something? I definitely don’t want to waste the effort if it can play only half my music collection.

Airgetlam

While there are some DRM files that still exist from iTunes, the great majority of them are no longer DRM encoded….unless you’ve got an Apple subscription, and haven’t purchased the files themselves. I’ve got dozens of files that I’ve purchased from Apple over the years that are stored on my NAS, and while at one point, when Apple decided to drop the DRM encoding feature, I needed to delete the copy I had, and download a fresh copy, everything I’ve purchased since then has not had DRM in them.

I would be willing to bet that if you do have a file that has DRM, if you delete your local copy, and re-download it from iTunes, you’d get a non-DRM copy downloaded.

It’s a pain in the neck for about 15 minutes, but once it’s done, it’s done, and you never have to worry about it again. And that’s only if the files actually have DRM in them. 90% of my purchased files didn’t, since I’d bought them after Apple stopped using DRM.

Bruce

Airgetlam

For what it’s worth, it looks like Apple dropped DRM in January of 2009.

Bruce

J

John B

I think DRM files are M4P. M4A should be OK. I am not 100% sure on that but a quick Google should settle it.

There is no question that this is hassle that you could have done without. No reasonable person could deny that. But it is worth doing, in my view..

J

John B

I am an idiot. If your files were DRM protected you would not have been able to play them on Sonos using 'on this iPhone'. it's where the music is played that counts, not where it's stored.

Airgetlam

If I understand the system properly, it’s the player that counts. If whatever player is playing the music is set up to reach out and authorize with the Apple servers, then it would play any iTunes purchased music. I don’t think Apple allowed any non-Apple players to do that. I also don’t think Sonos did that for “on this device” playback, but does when playing from Apple Music directly, which of course is directly from Apple’s servers anyway.

Bruce

T

The Electric Vendetta

Lyricist I

Hello,

I just updated my Solons app on my iphone and now in “Browse” it no longer gives me the option of playing songs on my phone. Pandora works fine though.

Help!

N

nik9669a

Senior Virtuoso

Hello,

I just updated my Solons app on my iphone and now in “Browse” it no longer gives me the option of playing songs on my phone. Pandora works fine though.

Help!

I’m not sure what help you want. It appears, from what you’ve said, that your system is working with the features available to you when using an iPhone.

Ken_Griffiths

Hello,

I just updated my Solons app on my iphone and now in “Browse” it no longer gives me the option of playing songs on my phone. Pandora works fine though.

Help!

Perhaps just use the Apple iPhone Airplay feature to play your locally stored music to your Sonos One speaker. There’s plenty of information both on the Apple website and many other online resources of how to do that.

N

nik9669a

Senior Virtuoso

Hello,

I just updated my Solons app on my iphone and now in “Browse” it no longer gives me the option of playing songs on my phone. Pandora works fine though.

Help!

Perhaps just use the Apple iPhone Airplay feature to play your locally stored music to your Sonos One speaker. There’s plenty of information both on the Apple website and many other online resources of how to do that.

I was going to suggest that… eventually! 😀

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