DO NOT upgrade to this new version. It is a disaster...

Unbelievably crap new software. I spent 25 years running major national and corporate IT systems programmes so I know how to release important major software. If my Development and Test Managers had released this rubbish I would have sacked them both on the spot.

I know how difficult it is to release complex software against multiple target users - and this is not the way.

Where the hell has my Music Library gone? My major way of using the Sonos system just disappeared overnight. The library is sitting on a Sonos-compliant dedicated Zen Mini music server. I have no options in Manage settings to set up a source and have no Your Sources choice on the main screen.

FYI I run three Sonos systems in different locations. Two S2 and one S1.

WAKE UP SONOS! THIS IS THE SECOND TIME YOU HAVE TREATED YOUR USER BASE AS LESS IMPORTANT THAN NEW SALES (after the S2 vs S1 debacle). Three strikes and you're out and your valuable user base will go somewhere else

HEOS here we come.  Sonos speakers might sound great but their platform and software is just not trustworthy or reliable.  They may class this as a ‘courageous’ from the ground rewrite of the app, but honestly I would start ALL over again with a new team and direction.

Anyone want to buy a Sonos Home Cinema (Arc, Sub Mini, Era 100 Surrounds) and Era 100 Stereo Pair

What are peoples thoughts on the Denon 150s, Sound Bar 550 and Sub?  Had a lot of Denon kit previously and its sounded pretty good to me?

Thank you Sonos for taking a perfectly functioning app and “upgrading” it to one that is counter-intuitive, clunky, and has removed countless functions and abilities. 
No longer can I access, upload, and play music from my personal library (unless I pay for an additional service to be able to play music that I already own). The ability to create and add to Sonos playlists, which I added to constantly for my kids, is gone. Looking for related artists in programs like Spotify (a great way to doscover new music), is gone. If my Roam drops off my system, which it does frequently, I now have to do a factory reset on the device rather than use “Find Missing Device” function, because that is also gone. And if I want to revert back to the previous app, because this one is absolutely terrible? Nope, can’t do that either. 
I’ve spent thousands of dollars on Sonos products through the years, and was about to spend sever thousand more for new products, but now I’m trying to figure out if I should (and can afford to) ditch this system completely and start over with something else completely. This is hands down the worst app “upgrade” I’ve ever encountered.

Sonos should apologize to it’s users for screwing up so badly and revert back to the program that worked perfectly fine, because this is complete *. 
 

*Moderator Note: Modified in accordance with the Community Code of Conduct.*

Fire whoever managed this app redesign. I am on 80.00.04 on my iPhone now. There is a lot of functionality missing from the previous versions. I am constantly having to go back to the desktop app to do things like add music to the end of a queue, or to reorder music in a queue. All I can do is replace a queue now. There is more missing, but honestly, did no one at Sonos realize this? My Sonos stuff is aging and I will likely look elsewhere in the future for a replacement system. It’s just getting worse and worse over time.

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.

hi sonos team. we are a platinum dealer from latin america. 250+ systems deployed. 

some feedback about the new app, that I honestly think you’ve released too soon, and/or without properly beta testing….

this is with last ios firmware

-sonos icon when minimized still remains gold icon, instead of black as the big icon 

-can’t find the timer function

-users that have more than 2 systems (office and home for example), is a pain in the neck that the app doesn’t recognize that you are at the last system (wifi connection) and you have to close and open the app again.. and with this app, yo uhave to log in with the account each time.. so frustrating and really bad UX. it is really common that you operate sonos in different systems (my mom has sonos, my father in law has sonos, my home, my country home, my office) ->you need to get this thing solved guys, is it really annoying and it looks like the app or system is not working

-the search button is not easytofind

-add to queue, and other add functions are not there 

-please add an admin password to adavanced settings. sometimes it is a good thing to limit the volume of some products, as the teenagers of the family can go crazy at the party and forget about taking care of the equipment. parents (actually who pays for the system) ask for this. 

I think you made a really disrupting change, we’ll see how the users get along with this.

regards

nico freda - head of custom control

Right - after my rant earlier and having read the further views of others since, I am officially kicking off a poll on this Forum

QUESTION ;

SHOULD SONOS OFFICIALLY AND IMMEDIATELY OFFER THEIR USERS THE OPTION TO UNINSTALL/ROLLBACK THE UPDATE? VOTE:-

Option 1 YES SONOS should officially and immediately offer their users an option to roll back the update

Option 2 NO SONOS should continue on the current path and persist with this compulsory update

Option 1, of course - this lastest update does not even qualify as a beta version! And using sonos primarily to play my own music library i am getting really fed up at Sonos and the way they keep on make it more and more difficult to use one's own collection (and no people, not everything can be found in the streaming world!). It really looks like they are earning money from the streaming folks

I share pour pain, litterally, and feel it my my wallet too having quite a number of sonos components, however I am afraid the time has come to move on. Sonos has been consistently degrading its product and increasingly showing how little its cares

Same here (not too mention there is no way to get back to the former app on IOS...)

Sonos’ Team silence is deafening…. This seems to be yet another inceasingly occuring Sonos feature….

We should dedicate all topics in the community to discuss and exchange experiences on alternative multiroom systems as, clearly, Sonos doesn not make any use of the community's reaction and comments AND I don't think we should expect any (app or attitude) improvement by sonos anymore.

no mute button

search doesn’t work right - so hard to find anything 

can’t add to queue 

please update this soon- experience is a bummer 

Again, it is *

*Moderator Note: Modified in accordance with the Community Code of Conduct.*

I’m reading countless entries from upset consumers like myself, who have lost functionality or have thousands of dollars worth of Sonos equipment that isn’t working, because Sonos leadership pushed out a launch way too early.  I’m not seeing any formal or informal responses from Sonos leadership however, so it will be really interesting to see how this plays out and the impact on the company, stock price and maybe some necessary Board action.  If you can’t fix the vast majority of these issues immediately, you need to roll back the update.  Do the right thing, and that includes coming out of the shadows during this firestorm you’ve created, be present, own your mistake and fix it.  

What an absolutely accurate and well penned response to the *  that SONOS expects us to endure. To the author, I thank you.

*Moderator Note: Modified in accordance with the Community Code of Conduct.*