Retired Sonos Staff

News

Update on the New Sonos App and Future Features - October 28, 2024

The latest on the Sonos App from Nick Millington

Please also see the latest statement from Nick Millington regarding the app updates.

October 28, 2024

This is Nick Millington, Chief Innovation Officer, with an update on the Sonos app.

As our CEO Patrick Spence has said, we know that too many of you have experienced significant problems with the new app we introduced in May. Over the past several months, I, together with hundreds of Sonos engineers, have been focused on a singular objective: to improve the Sonos app and overall software experience such that it not only meets, but exceeds the experience of our previous app.

We built the new app to improve our ability to drive innovation and make future updates and improvements when needed. Since its May launch, we have rolled out ongoing updates, and while we will never stop improving our software experience, today I am pleased to share that our new app now surpasses the old one across several important performance metrics:

Issue	Equal to or better than the old app?
“Add Product”/Setup Success rate	✓
“System not found” and “Products not found” errors	✓
Configuring stereo pairs and home theater	✓
App responsiveness	✓
Crash-free sessions	✓

The items above correspond to the top issues we heard from you upon release of the new app, as measured by the volume of customer support contacts driven by each. For new customers, the experience of setting up your Sonos system or a new product for the first time is critical, and I’m pleased to share that our success rate here is now the highest we have ever measured, significantly exceeding the previous app.

Other quality benchmarks – such as eliminating incidents prompting a “something went wrong” message– were not measurable in our previous app yet are today, thanks to improved monitoring capabilities. This means we can now better ensure we’ve not only reached, but will maintain a high quality experience. (Currently, fewer than one percent of app sessions result in a “something went wrong” message.)

Although we are working with urgency to improve the app, we are also mindful of our commitment to roll out change more gradually, and apply more stringent testing. For this reason, moving forward we’ll alternate between major and minor releases, maintaining our momentum of making improvements while also ensuring adequate beta testing.

For example, today’s update is a major one, including significant improvements to system setup and reliability of adding new products, as well as improvements to volume control and responsiveness, and Local Music Library search, sharing and stability. At the same time, some features are still missing. We know that these have devoted users as well, and we are eager to restore them. In November, we’ll roll out performance improvements to Trueplay, Add Product, and general system reliability, at the same time that we beta test missing features targeted for restoration in December. These include:

Improved volume control & responsiveness (Android)
Playlist editing
Album art for music library (Android)
Support for Android users moving between multiple systems
Improved music playback error handling
Snooze Alarms

As always, you can also view detailed updates on each new release, including today’s release as well as previous ones, on our Release Notes page.

Even with improvements made to date, we know that customers will at times still run into issues. That is why we have expanded our Customer Support capacity, adding dozens of trained agents as well as weekend support. If you are still experiencing issues with our app, know that we have a team standing by to help debug or troubleshoot any challenge you are currently facing.

Having recently marked my 21st anniversary at Sonos, I want to express my deep gratitude to you for being a Sonos customer, whether you’re a first-time or long-standing one, and personally commit to you that the next 20 years hold so much more. The ease, reliability, and magic of our products is the most important thing to me and everyone else at Sonos, and the best is yet to come.

You can expect to hear from me again soon with another update on our progress.

Looking for the original update on the Sonos app from CEO Patrick Spence? You can find this archived on the Sonos blog.

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.

K

klrmlr

Enthusiast I

I find this not to be true. Seems like with every update, something else goes bad. I truly wish you all would swallow your pride, admit you did wrong and go back to the old app and work on the new app without experimenting with paying loyal customers who have a lot of money invested in product that no longer works. I’m so bummed. LOVE(d) my SONOS system, with NO complaints up and until you forced us to use a new broken app that renders our systems un-usable. PLEASE fix this.

Danny Miller

G

GC3

Headliner I

It's all undelivered promise until you introduce TrueCinema for Ace.
I ain't buying the Arc Ultra until sonos sorts this out

A

Ashton123

Lyricist I

Are these people serious? This app has been one of the biggest failures that I have ever seen. It has not worked correctly since it became available, and only seems to get worse over time. It was once a functional app, but has now rendered thousands of dollars in speakers to be completely useless. I will never buy another Sonos product again. Almost six months after it’s release, I can never get the app to actually connect to anything, no matter what I do. I most certainly did not spend thousands of dollars to be treated like a test subject or lab rat. Completely unacceptable. I’m going back to Apple and Bose.

G

Gaham

Headliner I

The latest on the Sonos App from Nick Millington

This is Nick Millington, Chief Innovation Officer, with an update on the Sonos app.

As our CEO Patrick Spence has said, we know that too many of you have experienced significant problems with the new app we introduced in May. Over the past several months, I, together with hundreds of Sonos engineers, have been focused on a singular objective: to improve the Sonos app and overall software experience such that it not only meets, but exceeds the experience of our previous app.

We built the new app to improve our ability to drive innovation and make future updates and improvements when needed. Since its May launch, we have rolled out ongoing updates, and while we will never stop improving our software experience, today I am pleased to share that our new app now surpasses the old one across several important performance metrics:

Issue	Equal to or better than the old app?
“Add Product”/Setup Success rate	✓
“System not found” and “Products not found” errors	✓
Configuring stereo pairs and home theater	✓
App responsiveness	✓
Crash-free sessions	✓

The items above correspond to the top issues we heard from you upon release of the new app, as measured by the volume of customer support contacts driven by each. For new customers, the experience of setting up your Sonos system or a new product for the first time is critical, and I’m pleased to share that our success rate here is now the highest we have ever measured, significantly exceeding the previous app.

Other quality benchmarks – such as eliminating incidents prompting a “something went wrong” message– were not measurable in our previous app yet are today, thanks to improved monitoring capabilities. This means we can now better ensure we’ve not only reached, but will maintain a high quality experience. (Currently, fewer than one percent of app sessions result in a “something went wrong” message.)

Although we are working with urgency to improve the app, we are also mindful of our commitment to roll out change more gradually, and apply more stringent testing. For this reason, moving forward we’ll alternate between major and minor releases, maintaining our momentum of making improvements while also ensuring adequate beta testing.

For example, today’s update is a major one, including significant improvements to system setup and reliability of adding new products, as well as improvements to volume control and responsiveness, and Local Music Library search, sharing and stability. At the same time, some features are still missing. We know that these have devoted users as well, and we are eager to restore them. In November, we’ll roll out performance improvements to Trueplay, Add Product, and general system reliability, at the same time that we beta test missing features targeted for restoration in December. These include:

Improved volume control & responsiveness (Android)
Playlist editing
Album art for music library (Android)
Support for Android users moving between multiple systems
Improved music playback error handling
Snooze Alarms

As always, you can also view detailed updates on each new release, including today’s release as well as previous ones, on our Release Notes page.

Even with improvements made to date, we know that customers will at times still run into issues. That is why we have expanded our Customer Support capacity, adding dozens of trained agents as well as weekend support. If you are still experiencing issues with our app, know that we have a team standing by to help debug or troubleshoot any challenge you are currently facing.

Having recently marked my 21st anniversary at Sonos, I want to express my deep gratitude to you for being a Sonos customer, whether you’re a first-time or long-standing one, and personally commit to you that the next 20 years hold so much more. The ease, reliability, and magic of our products is the most important thing to me and everyone else at Sonos, and the best is yet to come.

You can expect to hear from me again soon with another update on our progress.

Looking for the original update on the Sonos app from CEO Patrick Spence? You can find this archived on the Sonos blog.

Who signed this off, my experience is as follows:

Issue	Equal to or better than the old app?
“Add Product”/Setup Success rate	✓ - I have not had to add a product so cannot confirm.
“System not found” and “Products not found” errors	Still see this message every day but I NEVER saw it before 7th May
Configuring stereo pairs and home theater	✓ - I have only had to reconfigure once since the 7th May when the App lost a room and it was a nightmare. I am not going to risk checking if this is any better today.
App responsiveness	Volume changes and grouping speakers still takes 30 seconds or more a good percentage of the time, this was instantaneous before 7th May
Crash-free sessions	Before 7th May I never saw the App crash the improvement for me is that this is happening weekly and not daily with the latest update.

G

Gaham

Headliner I

I’m guessing that the claims are based on today’s release.

80.11.32 (Android)

80.11.38 (iOS)

Release date: 28/10/2024

Which is not available to me yet.

Can someone please tell me when I will be able to test it?

F

Fortunity

Contributor I

I've been a Sonos user for many years with thousands of £s of kit. What an absolute disaster this new app has been and the protracted fixes that still haven't addressed fundamental issues like displaying album art. My confidence in Sonos has been destroyed and I have now bought a NAD streaming amp operated by BluOS. Perfect sound, easy set up and queue management with album art, will progressively move over to this streaming platform. Never again will I put all my faith and trust in Sonos. Sonos you have globally let down your once loyal users and you are not rectifying the problems that you created in an acceptable timeframe.

M

MmTt

Lyricist III

“Over the past several months, I, together with hundreds of Sonos engineers, have been focused on a singular objective: to improve the Sonos app and overall software experience such that it not only meets, but exceeds the experience of our previous app.”

Well, you haven’t succeeded yet...
You just keep on patting yourselves on the back for fixing things you broke in the first place. The new app is still just as cluttery, over-complicated and hard to use. It takes to many swipes and going back and forth to do simple things like setting an alarm, choosing what to play or changing the volume.

Messages like this, when all you do is brag about the new app, is just ridiculous.

T

Toolio

Prodigy II

I am one of those unfortunate enough to have downloaded the latest update about 30 minutes ago on my iPad and am currently staring at a “something went wrong” message while trying to play a selection from one of my favourite services. So I picked up my downstairs, not-yet-updated, iPad and it plays fine using the previous update.

So, thanks for the laugh.

MoPac

Headliner III

Still no local library album art in the queue.
Still queue does not follow music progress.
Still no alphabetical search bar on the right.

W

WibblyWombat

Contributor I

I am a long term Sonos user and was a long term user of this forum until the rampant abuse that became prevalent around here following the May release. I’m dipping my toe in the water here again in the hope that some sanity has prevailed. Clearly there are same people whether continue to have issues,m. I sympathise.

I’m not forgiving Sonos for the pain they put people through, or the reputational damage they have done to the brand. But I actually like the new app, and each update seems to improve the overall responsiveness and stability. There remain occasional glitches but these are getting fewer and fewer, and shutting down and restarting the app clears most of these when they do occur.
The only thing I’m now missing is the a-z slide bar for the local library, though I appreciate everyone has their own priorities in what they want.

I do feel Sonos has made efforts in the promise to clear up the mess, that of course was of their own making. I’m not missing the old app, and I was never fond of it. I just wanted to ‘balance the books’ a little, as my experience now is overall a positive one.

Show more replies

The latest on the Sonos App from Nick Millington

The latest on the Sonos App from Nick Millington

Sign up

Login to the community