Retired Sonos Staff

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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.

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Show previous replies

J

JohnG666

Enthusiast II

I honestly believe that Sonos knowingly released software that was not even half finished and someone at the top level of the company must have made that decision.

T

teedeepee

Contributor I

I honestly believe that Sonos knowingly released software that was not even half finished and someone at the top level of the company must have made that decision.

And then decided to stick with it rather than roll back and fix the new app behind the scenes. It's been like watching someone perform surgery on a family pet.

J

JRVINK

Lyricist I

Can't believe what's is being said there. It took the Sonos Techs two hours yesterday and two hours again today to NOT resolve the issue of me not being able to combine two rooms with Era 300s and Era 100s via S2. Adding a room resulted in the music on one Era stopping in the other room. I bought a multi-room system that doesn't work multi-room.

And this is just one of the manny issues.

T

tommybaldy

Lyricist I

I had to by a new phone just so I could continue to use my system. My only other option as advised by the customer service adviser was that they could down grade my system to be compatible with the old app but this would eventually be outdated any way. Bought a new phone and the app is still garbage. No volume control, does respond to selecting speakers in rooms and I often have to reset the system to find a missing speaker. I will persevere with Sonos as it’s a good sounding system and still seems to work well with spotify but unless the app improves over the next 12 months and their approach to working with long standing customers, 11 yrs now. I’ll be looking for a replacement.

C

Chri5toff

Lyricist I

The app is total garbage. It’s not working again. I not buying another product.

J

JamesJamesJamesJames

Contributor I

I will just leave this here

H

Horny2night

Lyricist I

Hi pep

This is my first post, so go easy

I was planning on buying a arc ultra, sub and 4 era 300,s for the house.

Plan was a multi media set up for the TV and seamless music for various rooms in the house. I'm a android user.

Having read all the posts I don't know if I should do this, from what I have read the multimedia TV set up should work but the room music is currently not working for many people, it's not really true sound for android.

Do I do this go, elsewhere (who) or wait for the app to get fixed.

Thanks for any advice

Horny2night

B

BrianJG

Enthusiast II

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.

The new app is garbage - how can you post that it surpasses the old one? I have pretty much given up on using Sonos for anything other than a white noise speaker beside my bed. The rest of the system I bought is basically useless now with this painfully bad app. I’ll probably give it away and buy something else that actually works, since Sonos still hasn’t fixed the problems it created back in May. Can’t import and save playlists, painfully bad controls, and it’s painfully difficult to create new playlists. It’s impossible to get help from Sonos due to ridiculous wait times. I can’t even just Bluetooth to my phone as it keeps losing the connection. All of the features we had prior to May are just gone. If anyone at Sonos thinks the new app is better, your heads are in the sand.

M

Markhopski

Lyricist I

Agree, my sonos comes and goes in terms of the sub and sonos one surrounds. I will spend 45 mins to an hour on the help line (30 minutes waiting, 30 minutes troubleshooting with an agent). This usually (3 times in past year) fixes things such that I can have the arc/sub/surrounds all working. That will last for 1-2 months and then slowly things stop working. This last time I went away for a week and it did not work when I returned home. After trying all the online troubleshooting (unplug, replug; remove subs and ones - re-add them to the system, etc..), no luck doing this myself so I am again unhappily spending the an hour + now with sonos technician on the phone. I do find the technicians very helpful, though it is a bit frustrating repeating many troubleshooting actions that i have already done. What is also frustrating is that one previous help sessions, once it is working there is no explanation as to what caused it to not work. THAT is very frustrating.

M

Markhopski

Lyricist I

My afternoon with Sonos. Tech had me reboot system, uninstall the surrounds and sub, try each of them as if they were in separate rooms (work fine), combine one of the surrounds with the sub and play music (worked together), add the other surround (all 3 worked), separate and add each to the arc - nada - only sound from the arc, nothing else. Then, after 1hr 28 minutes on the line, i get cut off. Their system calls me back twice (presumably to connect with the tech) after I answer, it starts with the computer voice telling me this will be recorded and then cuts me off. This happened twice then I guess they gave up. I have called back and now I am on hold with an expected wait time of 35 minutes. How can a company selling a premium priced product be run like this?? Just pathetic.

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The latest on the Sonos App from Nick Millington

The latest on the Sonos App from Nick Millington

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