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Cannot group Sonos system with Google Home devices

R
Userlevel 4
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Sonos,

After all this waiting. And after multiple articles. And after multiple phone calls to your service reps (including today), I’m now being told that you cannot group your Sonos system devices with your Google Home devices (after being told for months and more than a year that the aid be able to group them). Even the rep I spoke with today tried to help me and didn’t find out it wasn’t possible until he spoke to a system engineer. You can do it with Amazon devices, but STILL not with Google devices

In all honesty, what is the point of adding Google assistant to Sonos if you can’t even use Sonos speakers with Google Speakers together in a group? It’s pretty useless for me to be in living room, have to get up and walk to my kitchen to say “hey google, play x in my Living Room” and then walk back.
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Best answer by Ryan S 15 May 2019, 00:50

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218 replies

106rallye
Userlevel 7
Badge +17

This thread is about Google groups, not Alexa. You could check elsewhere at the forum for Alexa groups on Sonos.

R

Well this sucks. The salesperson said it would hook up to Alexa and play in groups so I can play the same music in all areas of the house. One of the deciding factors versus Bose. I have a Bose soundbar and it doesn’t show up in groups also. What a mess, wouldn’t have bought it if I had the right information. 

melvimbe

Can someone confirm that this has still not been fixed, 4 years later? 🤔

I was 1 click away from buying a Sonos One (Gen2) and a Sonos Move, as I am not happy with the sound quality from some of my google assistant devices.

But cancel that!

You can not group Sonos speaker with other speakers for multiroom playback, using google assistant? 

That makes this speaker useless for me

Can someone confirm that this is still not possible? I have google assistant devices in all my rooms and I just want Sonos speakers in my living room and kitchen for better sound there. 

 

You’ve never been able to group Sonos speakers with any other brand speakers. It’s not broken because it’s never been a promised feature.  You also cannot group Amazon and GA speakers.  Or Apple Homepods with GA speakers. 

Other than Apple’s airplay, which has it’s issues and isn’t usable without an iOS device or AppleTV, there is no universal multiroom audio standard that all companies use.  Nothing indicates that we are close to one developing anytime soon.

Danny
K

Can someone confirm that this has still not been fixed, 4 years later? 🤔

I was 1 click away from buying a Sonos One (Gen2) and a Sonos Move, as I am not happy with the sound quality from some of my google assistant devices.

But cancel that!

You can not group Sonos speaker with other speakers for multiroom playback, using google assistant? 

That makes this speaker useless for me

Can someone confirm that this is still not possible? I have google assistant devices in all my rooms and I just want Sonos speakers in my living room and kitchen for better sound there. 

C

Sonos,

After all this waiting. And after multiple articles. And after multiple phone calls to your service reps (including today), I’m now being told that you cannot group your Sonos system devices with your Google Home devices (after being told for months and more than a year that the aid be able to group them). Even the rep I spoke with today tried to help me and didn’t find out it wasn’t possible until he spoke to a system engineer. You can do it with Amazon devices, but STILL not with Google devices

In all honesty, what is the point of adding Google assistant to Sonos if you can’t even use Sonos speakers with Google Speakers together in a group? It’s pretty useless for me to be in living room, have to get up and walk to my kitchen to say “hey google, play x in my Living Room” and then walk back.

 

 

If you have an Android, you set your dual/separate audio to a sonos speaker  and connect to it via Bluetooth and then connect to a google home speaker via Bluetooth. Then you can go into your google home and play on all google speakers. The downside is that you can only get the one sonos to play with google Groups.

G

I don’t mind manually grouping my devices to play, but this would be a really nice feature - and seeing as this thread is 3 years old I sure won’t hold my breath. Google’s assistant seems to get worse by the day.

What I would like is for the assistant to recognize when two devices are paired OR if there’s not music playing. Egs: “Garage 1 (stereo pair) and Garage 2 (another stereo pair) are paired and playing music, and I say ‘pause music in garage’ - it comes back with “Would you like to pause music on Garage Sonos 1 or Garage Sonos 2” DUHDUHHHH. The other hilarious one is I have a routine that dims my lights and pauses my bedroom music - If I run the routine without any music playing it prompt with “There’s a problem in the bedroom”. Funny but tiresome several years into using the same devices.

Airgetlam

It is indeed a restriction imposed by Google. 

Bruce
jgatie

The big disappointment for me is that I just wanted to be able to say to google “play 96FM on home group” and have it play on all my sonos speakers throughout the house like I use to do with all my google speakers but sonos cant even be bothered to support this on their own speakers. Can’t  have sonos voice and google assistant running at the same time so cant even use the sonos voice command to bring the music into a room because i have to choose between the voice systems if I choose sonos then the rest of my home automation doesn’t work. Sonos know exactly what they are doing here this is a gigantic marketing scam, for the price I have paid for sonos equipment I feel completely ripped off how can I recommend Sonos to anyone when the basics are not there? 

 

Are you sure about the bolded?  Because I have both Alexa and Sonos Voice running on my system and it works just fine.  So if Google and Sonos Voice cannot coexist, it would logically follow that it is a limitation imposed by Google, not Sonos. 

M
Userlevel 3
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The big disappointment for me is that I just wanted to be able to say to google “play 96FM on home group” and have it play on all my sonos speakers throughout the house like I use to do with all my google speakers but sonos cant even be bothered to support this on their own speakers. Can’t  have sonos voice and google assistant running at the same time so cant even use the sonos voice command to bring the music into a room because i have to choose between the voice systems if I choose sonos then the rest of my home automation doesn’t work. Sonos know exactly what they are doing here this is a gigantic marketing scam, for the price I have paid for sonos equipment I feel completely ripped off how can I recommend Sonos to anyone when the basics are not there? 

Airgetlam

You must not be aware of the legal tussle between the two companies. So far, Google has been on the losing side, however just this week there have been new lawsuits. 

Bruce
jgatie

Unbelievable. This Move speaker is going STRAIGHT back to the store. Total horse manure. I have JBL and other manufacturer’s speakers grouped together, so I don’t believe this is an issue on the Google side. So long Sonos!

 

Take care!  Brush your hair!  

C

Unbelievable. This Move speaker is going STRAIGHT back to the store. Total horse manure. I have JBL and other manufacturer’s speakers grouped together, so I don’t believe this is an issue on the Google side. So long Sonos!

M

Just got my Arc and was so confused why I could not use my Google home app to control it. It sounds great but I think this is a basic requirement to be called smart. I don’t even think the process is complicated and feels like it is intentional.

 

Wonder what their angle is, I am forced to login into to all the services I wish to use it is so bizarre. My wife likes listening to the radio and work fine with the Bose 900 and my other Google speakers. However, the arc forces you to login. Why! Just work like all the other speakers!

106rallye
Userlevel 7
Badge +17

@Kaluju Beats This thread is about Google Home devices - I’m not sure Alexa on Sonos works in the same way Google does and would also make it impossible to command grouping with Amazon devices.

As I'm not an Alexa user , maybe someone else can shed a light on this….

K

I just quit Amazon and decided in all rooms except kitchen and living room to replace my echos with Sonos roam or Sonos One SL. I wish I would've read this article first. I love the speakers but might have to return them. Can't afford another almost 1000$ just to replace those rooms with Sonos equivalent right now. 

Airgetlam

So far, Google has not implemented it. 

Bruce
L

Two years later, can this be done? Can we link google/nest speakers and Sonos speakers? 

melvimbe

This would likely be one of two things, or a combination of both. First, the method by which data is transmitted to each device is different, and second, Google doesn’t want to allow Sonos into their ‘walled’ garden, so that Google gets the hardware sales, not Sonos.

Given the legal issues between the two companies, I wouldn’t expect this to change any time soon. 

 

I am pretty sure Sonos doesn’t want it’s customer to pick Google speakers to fill out their Sonos system either.  Although Sonos does support Apple airplay.

Danny
Airgetlam

This would likely be one of two things, or a combination of both. First, the method by which data is transmitted to each device is different, and second, Google doesn’t want to allow Sonos into their ‘walled’ garden, so that Google gets the hardware sales, not Sonos.

Given the legal issues between the two companies, I wouldn’t expect this to change any time soon. 

Bruce
8

It is too bad that after 2 years since this topic, still I can't sync my Sonos speaker with my Google home speaker. Disappointed. Do you have any update? Google or Alexa are able to group with Sonos?

S
Badge

Here is another problem.

I have fully equiped smarthome and couple of nest hubs. Nest hubs control lights, heating, AC, Roomba etc. It's very convinient out of the box solution. My family members really like it and use it every day. Way better than using your mobile phone.

I started with Sonos, have couple of them. For me, Sonos sound is perfect, way better than nest audio speakers.

But for multiroom Sonos lost the battle. Convinince of manipulating groups of speakers with nest hub is way better than, grabing your phone , opening Sonos app, and doing everything needed.

So what happend is that I got couple of nest minis and couple nest audio speakers for multiroom audio and installed Sonos speakers in rooms that I would like to have better listening experience, but I also have google speakers in that rooms.

All in all, I use Sonos now as dumb speakers and google nest for multiroom audio, home control, and everything else it offers.

I am sad because of that. Still thrilled when I hear sound from Sonos speakers but the reallity is google offers way more in one solution. And smarthomes are the future.

So for me it would be dream come true if I could control speaker groups with nest hub that could include both Sonos and google speakers. 

But in truth, google will launch good expensive speaker and that would be the end of Sonos in my home :-(

melvimbe

That’ll be the page which details the Google Assistant features in Sonos. 

I'm aware. I'm simply showing examples as to why customers may have arrived at the wrong impression about this, when Sonos marketing team seemingly banged on at length about how it does everything your current Google stuff does and left out mentioning that the multi speaker thing Sonos is famous for does not integrate with Google Speakers.

 

 

I agree that it’s a reasonable assumption, but I also don’t think it’s Sonos, or any other company’s, job to do negative marketing so that customers don’t draw the wrong conclusions about their product features.  Perhaps it’s a good role for 3rd party reviewers to play, or just a gap in the market that we’ll have to deal with.

 

I'm not saying I'm technically right. I should have been more thorough in my research before buying it. I considered asking the question by email of Sonos before buying, but with a sale on, I impulse click & collect bought it thinking there's no way it won't do that. I even asked the sales guy & he just pointed to the works with Google logo and said it should right? 

 

 

I don’t think it’s a matter of right and wrong, or should have done more research.  Sure, there doesn’t have to be a target for frustration.  And I would not trust salesmen in a tech store to know much about the products.  Too many products with different variations and likely too low on the pay grade.

 

I run Alexa on it now just to hear it's different voice & have a Google Home Speaker in the same room to do the group music stuff. I'll survive and I'll never buy Sonos again unless they get this feature right. If Google supposedly stole their intellectual property they should be able to integrate with it easily 😂

 

The feature isn’t wrong.  I doubt there was ever any intention in the Google integration to downgrade Sonos multiroom capabilities, throw out their own system in favor of Google’s (or Amazon’s) and any ability to add features that differentiate themselves from the market. 

And there is no more ‘if’ regarding the theft of intellectual property, at least according to the trade commission ruling.   But Google didn’t steal everything, only certain features.  For example, the method for adjusting volume on multiple speakers at the same time.  Google didn’t steal the method for playing TV audio, aux input sources, or adding speakers to an exsting stream, as far as I know.

 

Danny
ratty

Even if Google did a technology licensing deal and, somehow, it was technically feasible to sync with cheap third party speakers I’m sure you can see that it would be commercially crazy to do so. Overnight a large slice of Sonos’ business would haemorrhage away.

S

That’ll be the page which details the Google Assistant features in Sonos. 

I'm aware. I'm simply showing examples as to why customers may have arrived at the wrong impression about this, when Sonos marketing team seemingly banged on at length about how it does everything your current Google stuff does and left out mentioning that the multi speaker thing Sonos is famous for does not integrate with Google Speakers.

I'm not saying I'm technically right. I should have been more thorough in my research before buying it. I considered asking the question by email of Sonos before buying, but with a sale on, I impulse click & collect bought it thinking there's no way it won't do that. I even asked the sales guy & he just pointed to the works with Google logo and said it should right? 

I run Alexa on it now just to hear it's different voice & have a Google Home Speaker in the same room to do the group music stuff. I'll survive and I'll never buy Sonos again unless they get this feature right. If Google supposedly stole their intellectual property they should be able to integrate with it easily 😂

ratty

That’ll be the page which details the Google Assistant features in Sonos. 

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