The New Sonos App and Future Feature Updates

App is a disaster, which is a shame because the speakers themselves are quite nice.

Today, I cannot:

• Set an alarm… the “search” feature does not work… why not allow the user to browse their library?
• Play/pause music without opening the app… I’m not sure there’s another music application in either app store that doesn’t have quick controls.
• Use permanent groups for things like alarms or shared volume control… requests that were open 10 years ago. I’d like to set a shared volume/playlist for my whole house without having to configure every time.

Please please PLEASE remove whoever is in charge of this disaster. It’s unacceptable that the app is worse than hundreds of other music apps. It is painfully clear whomever is driving feature development isn’t an active user of these speakers.

Why are private apps with single developers better than the official app? Please, start over.

Unfortunately, Sonos and Onkyo don't play well together. Made the mistake of relying on Sonos for a New Year's party. At one am the system settings changed and the volume suddenly bursted and almost blew my speakers. (not to mention my guest ears) Using a port to run through the Onlyo and connect the rest of the house. I quickly switched to Bluetooth but that meant interruptions when a text or phone call came in. Very disappointing, lead me to consider getting a more reliable system to replace Sonos. This could be an Onkyo issue as well. My Onkyo automatically switches zone one whenever I turn on Sonos in zone 2. But this never happened with my very capable  Denon. 

A quick question please? After today’s app update has anyone else found their system particularly unstable? 
Working with the IOS app here, found things were nearly back to ‘normal’ for the past few weeks. However today, and after the request to update, my system had almost reverted back to its worst. Up and working again now - for the moment - but what a tedious pain it’s been getting there - hence the question. Thanks. 

Not an issue here, using iOS, but since that’s merely a ‘remote control’ to show what the speakers are doing, and not a player on its own, it’s a good indicator of network issues. Based on the scant information, I’m going to suggest a simple network refresh, by unplugging all Sonos devices from power, then rebooting your router. Give the router a couple of minutes to reload before plugging back in your Sonos devices. 

With all due respect to Sonos product managers and the fan-base here who often blame the user’s network, why can’t you just address the 800 pound gorilla in the room!  It’s the new way the Sonos app and servers interact that are causing many of these issues that were not as present prior to May 7th!

To quote a commenter on the recent The Verge articles about this debacle:

they also said they wouldn’t release new hardware until the app was fixed. 
 

I agree sending folks to Support is a horrible thing to do these days but Sonos never gave us a lot of information on system internal activity in the past, and it was even further reduced in the name of security.

So if you need to read an internal log the only way to do so is to call Support.

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Many of the issues Sonos has are due to networking, some Sonos’ fault and some external, either the local networking hardware or RF environment.

Folks on both sides, the folks with the problem and the folks trying to help could be a bit more sensitive as the “it is your network” offends many while also being accurate. Typing a longer explanation many times a day does get old though.

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The new “send things up to the cloud” idea isn’t making me happy either.

Yes Bruce. Was going to post in more comprehensive detail but then such a post becomes another tedious diatribe.

In brief - yes I had enacted the simple network refresh on a regular basis followed by a hard refresh of the IOS app and a power reset of the units that required it though recently I hadn’t  needed to enact such extreme measures as all appeared much more stable. That was until today’s app update which resulted in a backward, negative performance and was a nightmare to eradicate using all the tricks learnt over this past miserable debacle. Hence my question in my first post!

As an aside - now watching the TV and listening via the arc and sub mini. Could swear that the long standing dialogue issue has been tweaked. It now appears much more clear and - no I haven’t touched a thing!  

I have found the latest update, using iOS to be a lot better and faster to load. It still has its moments but they are less frequent. 
 

Still a LOT of functionality missing from the same time last year. I am hoping that the new re-write allows for faster development, but it does not appear to be the case….yet. 

For what it’s worth, the power cycle I mentioned (which requires exact following, can not just be the Sonos speakers) can easily be replaced, and more permanently (if such a thing truly exists in networks) by setting up reserved IP addresses in your router’s software, by following the instructions for your individual router. That way, you don’t need to do the power cycle every time Sonos updates the firmware on your speaker(s), and gets a faulty IP addresses from your router on reboot.