How do I go back to previous version? THAT version worked!

Bose and Audio Pro might be contenders

Sonos is a company that has earned trust our lives and homes, our most intimate spaces and moments. The reason this is so shocking, so upsetting to is that for your own reasons, you snuck in under the cover of a routine update… and entered our homes and deliberately violated that trust, breaking those spaces. You did this without warning, without consent, without an opt out plan or strategy. When we objected, you said that you were being “courageous” which is just indefensible. This situation went from being bad but fixable with a rollback, to a fundamental violation of personal safety in our homes. 

It feels like you broke into my house and stole all the audio equipment I have painstakingly purchased, configured, and maintained. You replaced it with some broken knockoff gear, and left me a smug little note expecting me to thank you… and that you will maybe fix what you did in the coming months. 

In order for you to begin to recover from what you have done, if it is even possible, you should start by imagining a similar situation with other daily appliances. Your appliance company calls you and says “we have a small routine update we need to make to your home appliances, we can apply the fix remotely. We’ll come by tonight”. 

You come home and the the dishwasher looks the same, but doesn’t actually wash dishes correctly anymore, it is missing the cycles you use every day, and no longer has a timer function so it can run at night. Your family don’t know how to operate it and it is messing up your home routines and schedules.  The oven only now cooks with some of the modes, and has completely removed the timer feature you use every day to cook meals with your family. The refrigerator / freezer temperatures are wrong, you can’t change them, and you are spoiling food and the freezer is thawing and no longer makes ice. When you call to find out what is going on, you are told how great the new experience is. That this was deliberate. There is no way to go back, but that these features will probably come back in the coming months. Until then, there is nothing you can do about it - although feel free to post on our support forums.

Now ask yourself “How would I personally feel if someone did this to me, in my own home, with my own things, without my consent, and then refuses to immediately fix it?” 

If you are like most people, you will probably find yourself saying “I would be very angry. I would want the people that did that to be very sorry, to really mean it, for them to fix it and make amends if they could. Even still, I’d want for there to be consequences.” 

To be clear, this is far far worse than the S1/S2 debacle. People had time to react, and so you were able to recover - but it made your long time customers doubt you. Unfortunately, Patrick already promised that you wouldn’t do anything like it again. He said “If we run into something core to the experience that can’t be addressed, we’ll work to offer an alternative solution and let you know about any changes you’ll see in your experience.” You broke your promise. 

I am going to hope that this is not a mortal self-inflicted wound to your company. It may be, depending on each of your ability to accept responsibility what you did, for how you behaved after the harm was evident, and what you do now.

For me, I am going to delay a multi thousand dollar upgrade to my home system I had planned until at least next quarter. I will not be buying your headphones this year, although I planned to along with replacing all my old Play:1’s with Era 300’s this month. I hope that, by the time Q2 earnings come out, you have begun to recover. I wouldn’t be surprised if your sales are depressed for a while as a result of this, you lose considerable goodwill and support from high-end users. You have made me go from a NPS of 10 to an active detractor. 
 

Maybe it’s time to move on forever. I hadn’t evaluated that seriously until now. Last night I started looking a the many alternatives to your products and ecosystem. A lot of really great competitors have emerged in the 20 years I have been a loyal Sonos customer. That’s completely and entirely because of what you did to me, to us, without consent. After you promised you wouldn’t do it again.

How to roll back from Sonos 80 to 16.1 (Android)

From a fellow Sonos forum user, use the steps below. It worked for me and I am back to the previous version. This is for Android users. First remember to uninstall the existing Sonos app from your phone. 

“Went to apkmirror.com on my phone browser, and downloaded Sonos 16.1 (arm64 v8a). Then opened the download folder and ran the install. (You may have to select the permissions on your phone to allow you to do that). Following install I turned off wi-fi and mobile data, then went to play store and selected do not automatically update apps. Then turned wi-fi and mobile data back on, then ran the app and signed in.”

UPDATE: You can keep auto updates for all apps except Sonos. Enable auto updates in the settings of the Play Store. Then search for Sonos app inside the Play Store, tap on the three dots in the top right corner, and uncheck the box for "Enable auto updates". Now just the Sonos app won't update automatically. If in the future you'll see multiple app updates available in the Play Store for the apps on your phone, remember to update them individually, and do not tap "Update All". If you update all, that will include the Sonos app, even if you disabled auto app updates for the Sonos app only.

This. ^^^^^^^^^

They explicitly lied and said it wouldn't change things then destroyed the functionality of millions of systems.

Then had the arrogance to say they were being brave.

If you have the Sonos app on a Fire tablet you can do the same, even if your tablet isn't “jailbroken” to use Google Play. Just download and install the APK (remove the updated Sonos app first) and the Sonos icon and app will appear. If you have not modded your Fire tablet to use the Google Play store, the APK you install not auto update.

take it easy, Karen, it’s just speakers

Thank you, that works. However, I must consciously choose NOT to update all in Google Play Store, and in the Sonos app NOT to update. You did state that in your post, but the update now is persistent and I must deny. They are forcing the update on me and I must choose NOT to update. But the old app is back and I have features that I like that work as before. Thanks.

Tried to update yesterday on iOS before I saw the comments on this disaster. Update never works. Get “There was a problem checking for updates” then retry and “We couldn’t update your products. Check your network connection and try again.”  Total process failure even after rebooting router, iPhone and all SONOS products (Beam, Sub and Sonos One). Can’t even see my products in the iOS app at all and the update is just a vicious cycle.   

My money is that the AMA for early next week will be cancelled.  After these thousands of angry customers have made their feelings well known in these posts, there’s actually no reason for an AMA.  Unless at the AMA the so-called management of Sonos announces that they are making version 16.1 available to everybody again via the various app download platforms.  I’ve already downgraded back go 16.1.  However, for all users to be able to go to their normal app sites and download the 16.1 version officially is the only way that Sonos will have said “sorry” to its hundreds of thousands of annoyed customers.

If somebody arranged that everybody who was annoyed with their Sonos speakers took them to the Sonos offices in whichever country they lived and left them in the Sonos entrances, it’d be great to see the resultant photos from around the world of the Sonos office car parks piled high with the now-junk-kit that their customers used to own.