Sonos Welcomes the Google Assistant

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Sonos Welcomes the Google Assistant
Sonos 10.2 brings the Google Assistant to Sonos. Your Sonos One and Sonos Beam, once updated, will have the Google Assistant built-in, bringing a new voice to your home. With this update, you can now link your Google Assistant enabled devices to control Sonos hands free with the Google Assistant.



Control your music, get answers to questions, manage everyday tasks, and more— simply by using your voice. Find out more about the Google Assistant with Sonos on our website here and on our blog, “12 Ways the Google Assistant Will Enhance Your Sonos Listening Experience”..



The Google Assistant is available on Sonos starting with the US only, with expanded availability this year. As of July 2nd, 2019, Australia, Canada, Germany, France, the Netherlands, and the United Kingdom now have support for Google Assistant on Sonos.



To get started, check out our setup pages for controlling Sonos with Google Home devices or adding the Google Assistant to a Beam or One. The directions are below as well.



Once you’ve got it set up, try out some basic commands with “Hey Google…” or “Ok Google…”



“Hey Google, play my morning news.”



“Hey Google, play some music in the Living Room.”



“Hey Google, turn it up.”



The Google Assistant can control basic playback, such as skipping or pausing music on Sonos, and can start music from Deezer, Google Play Music, Pandora, Spotify, and YouTube Music.



With the Google Assistant on Sonos you can play music, find answers courtesy of Google Search, plan your day, set timers, and easily control smart devices around your home. You’ll also be able to use features specific to Google Assistant, like continued conversation, meaning you can ask the Google Assistant a series of questions without having to say “Hey Google” every time.



We’ll continue to bring more actions and functionality to the experience over time through software updates.



We have a pretty comprehensive list here of basic commands, but there are always more to discover.



Setting Up Google Assistant

Enhance your Sonos experience with the Google Assistant by adding it to the Sonos One and Beam or by linking your Google Home devices to Sonos.



Adding the Google Assistant to Sonos One and Beam

To add the Google Assistant to the Sonos One or Beam, go into your Sonos App (on iOS or Android) and tap on More > Room Settings > Voice Services and you can select the Google Assistant to be added. Please note that you can only have one voice service added to a Sonos player at one time, however multiple voice services can be used on the same household if you have more than one compatible device.



Set up Google Home to control Sonos

If you don’t have any voice-enabled Sonos speakers in your system, you can still set up Google Assistant to control Sonos through a Google Home or other Google Assistant-enabled device.



In the Sonos app for iOS or Android, tap the More tab at the bottom, then tap Voice Services. Choose Google Assistant from the list. This will take you to the Google Assistant app, where you’ll sign in to your Sonos account.



Once you’ve connected your Sonos account, check to make sure you’ve added your music service accounts in the Google Assistant app by tapping your profile icon at the top right, then choosing Services > Music. You can also set your default service from this menu.



To learn more about how you can control Sonos with Google Assistant, see our article, Sonos with Google Assistant.



If you run into any trouble, there are some helpful tips and tricks here and on our community here to start with.

Can we control Play:1 and Play:5 Gen 1 devices through Google Home?
No Chromecast for audio built-in yet 😞
No grouping with other Google speakers is disappointing. Seems like this should be core Google Assistant device functionality. How is this not part of the rollout after 18 months? Sonos should show up in the Google Assistant app just like my home minis and budget low end Insignia do and be added to speaker groups.
I would like to see Sonos speakers show up as other speakers do in the Google Assistant, but I think that is just a matter of time.





As for grouping Sonos speakers to non-Sonos speakers, I doubt it could be done, as the Google Home speakers don't have the same capabilities in terms of hardware and software to make the on-the-fly, seamless, while streaming anything, grouping and ungrouping possible that Sonos has perfected over the last decade. If I'm not mistaken, you can currently only group other non-Sonos Assistant powered speakers in a semi-permanent way. I wouldn't want to see my Sonos system locked down like that.





What I would like to see, is the ability to group Sonos speakers together by voice.
Grouping by voice has been on the list for Amazon voice control as well. I suspect it's harder than not, possibly due to the fact that Sonos allows you to rename your speakers, but that's just a guess.
SW just doesn't work.
I live in South Africa, and changed the voice service to Amazon to Google, now they work as they should. 😎
This suxx.


"...with expanded availability this year."


With Sonos previous ability to reach deadlines, I'll have this next year, at best.
Is there a way to specify a group of Sonos speakers when starting to play using Google Assistant? I'd like to be able to say "Play Mark Knopfler in the kitchen and living room". If there were a way of creating multiple named groups (either with Google Assistant or within Sonos), that would be ideal. Then you could use the group name as a target for operations. Not asking (yet) to mix Sonos and Google Home speakers into groups, but it would be nice to specify more than one Sonos room as a target without having to open the Sonos app and group/ungroup.
This suxx.


"...with expanded availability this year."


With Sonos previous ability to reach deadlines, I'll have this next year, at best.






Google integration was absolutely late, and I'm not sure you can place all the blame on Sonos for that since it obviously involved Google as well (which surely was less concerned about a deadline). However, I'm not sure Sonos has ever missed a deadline nearly that badly before, and they typically hit deadlines when the give a specific month of release. Of course, it's easier to keep deadlines when you rarely announce your deadlines to the public.





Is there a way to specify a group of Sonos speakers when starting to play using Google Assistant? I'd like to be able to say "Play Mark Knopfler in the kitchen and living room".





Not currently, but I don't think there is any doubt that customers want this and similar features.
Not currently, but I don't think there is any doubt that customers want this and similar features.


So misery loves company?



Not currently, but I don't think there is any doubt that customers want this and similar features.So misery loves company?









So you can be fairly confidently this feature is up there on Sonos priority list.






Not currently, but I don't think there is any doubt that customers want this and similar features.So misery loves company?



So you can be fairly confidently this feature is up there on Sonos priority list.



I would say the fact that they've been working on GA for 2 years and didn't do this means it's not a priority.
Or, perhaps it isn’t an easy task to do. It’s been a request on Alexa as well, and as I recall, a comment from Sonos indicated they wanted to do it. The fact that it hasn’t occurred yet suggests to me that it is more complex to do in the code than it seems to be in our minds.
Don’t believe that support in other countries are that far away, partly it is already there today.





When you add Google Assistant to a speaker you are requested to put in a address where the speaker is located, I have tested with an address in Sweden which is accepted and then the Assistant start to reply in Swedish and act on Swedish commands.





The feature that don’t work is Spotify integration, regardless of which location address (even if address is in US) I choose for the speaker it only reply’s something like “Can’t do that here, can start it on some of your other devices.”





So until the Spotify integration work it is useless for me and I will revert to Alexa
Is there any list of countries, where GA should be available in this year?
As the people above, I am similarly disappointing from the Google Assistant integration into the Sonos ecosystem, especially after waiting for so long. I think it is crucial requirement that users will be able to:







  1. Group Sonos speaker with other speakers for multiroom playback (not necessarily with Sonos in all rooms)

  2. Set Sonos speaker as a default music speaker

  3. Cast from Google Assistant/Google Home to a Sonos speaker from within apps (i.e. for the Sonos speaker to show up as one of the casting destinations).



Essentially, all this functionality would be possible if Sonos implemented Chromcast into the system. For me, it is not so important to use the Sonos speaker itself as a Google Home device - I have google Home devices for that. I just want to use Sonos as a network speaker (I only have Sonos Play:5)





Can anyone comment if those functionalities will be coming to Sonos in the near future (I am hoping for an official Sonos response)? It will be nice to know because if it is not coming soon I think it will be time to sell my Sonos and invest in other solutions.
As evidenced by their almost total silence until the beginning of last week, Sonos doesn't comment on upcoming changes, nor do they publish a roadmap for features.





It's only the biggest announcements that they message, such as the fact that they were integrating Google Assistant, or Apple Music. For the other things, we just have to wait until they get released.





While it's a pain for us as users, there's some wisdom in the policy. It saves them from having to meet dates on software releases that end up being unrealistic. One really doesn't know how many bugs/issues will be exposed when you're adding features to such a complex system as Sonos. So they try to make it perfect, then beta test it, fix any issues the beta testers find, and then release it to the rest of us in the public.





The best opportunity to find out what they're working on for the next release is probably to join their Beta program, in which you would get the opportunity to test things in advance of the rest of us. But I'd be surprised if even in the Beta program, they provided anything like a roadmap, and instead just say "this is what we want to test for the next release". And then once they work out all the bugs, they release it.
Don’t believe that support in other countries are that far away, partly it is already there today.





When you add Google Assistant to a speaker you are requested to put in a address where the speaker is located, I have tested with an address in Sweden which is accepted and then the Assistant start to reply in Swedish and act on Swedish commands.





The feature that don’t work is Spotify integration, regardless of which location address (even if address is in US) I choose for the speaker it only reply’s something like “Can’t do that here, can start it on some of your other devices.”





So until the Spotify integration work it is useless for me and I will revert to Alexa






Mine did the same - But there is a fix 🙂


Just change your languge settings, so the first languge is English (US), and then add what ever languge you want afterwards.


This will make your Sonos work with Spotify, and you can start music via Google Assistent.
Or, perhaps it isn’t an easy task to do. It’s been a request on Alexa as well, and as I recall, a comment from Sonos indicated they wanted to do it. The fact that it hasn’t occurred yet suggests to me that it is more complex to do in the code than it seems to be in our minds.





Most likely, it's not even up to Sonos to develop the feature, but is on Google's side to implement. This was the case with Alexa, and I think it's safe to assume the same with GA. Preferred/default speakers are set in the Alexa app, and the Alexa cloud tells Sonos what to play on what speakers. Once Amazon developed this, it was in place for Sonos. I honestly don't even think there was even any testing involved on the Sonos side. With GA, this is already in place in their Home app. That makes me think that the work that needs to be done can happen a lot sooner than it did with Alexa.





But I only speculate.



Don’t believe that support in other countries are that far away, partly it is already there today.





When you add Google Assistant to a speaker you are requested to put in a address where the speaker is located, I have tested with an address in Sweden which is accepted and then the Assistant start to reply in Swedish and act on Swedish commands.





The feature that don’t work is Spotify integration, regardless of which location address (even if address is in US) I choose for the speaker it only reply’s something like “Can’t do that here, can start it on some of your other devices.”





So until the Spotify integration work it is useless for me and I will revert to Alexa
Mine did the same - But there is a fix :)


Just change your languge settings, so the first languge is English (US), and then add what ever languge you want afterwards.


This will make your Sonos work with Spotify, and you can start music via Google Assistent.



Thanks a lot mate
Is it possible to get the assistant on 2 speakers ?


I can hear it only on one of my 2 sonos one....





Thanks
Is it possible to get the assistant on 2 speakers ?


I can hear it only on one of my 2 sonos one....





Thanks









Sounds like you have your speakers setup as a stereo pair, a single room. In that situation, no, only one (the left I think) will have the Google Assistant. If you separated the speakers into 2 separate rooms in the Sonos app, then you would be able to have both assistants working. Of course, they speakers will no longer play in stereo.
Yes , You are right, it is a pair in stereo.


I asked because with Alexa she can speak in both speakers.


But with one it is OK , I just wanted to be sure it wasn’t a bug.


Thanks
Why is this not available in the UK yet?