Contributor II

Question

I can't control Sonos group with Apple HomeKit

10 replies
17325 views

When I try to play music on Sonos group set from Apple Homekit I get “Controls unavailable for this device.”

The speakers (Playbase, Sub and 2 Sonos Ones) are grouped as home theater set.

How to solve this?

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Brewasaurus

Lyricist III

Having the same issue. Sonos One (Gen 2) all set up and working fine in that I can group it, play music to it via the Sonos app, and send music to it via AirPlay 2 from my iPhone. When I go to the Home app though, the controls for the speaker are greyed out.

Do the Sonos One speakers work ok if you ungroup them?

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patrickdiviaccoAuthor

Contributor II

An update: I noticed if I use Siri I can play music with them. So it’s just the Apple HomeKit app that doesn’t work, but they are recognised.

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PatV

Lyricist I

Same issue here. No clue why - and why I can add Sonos speakers to HomeKit if I can’t use it afterwards...

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Brewasaurus

Lyricist III

From what I can see, in terms of AirPlay, the speaker is just a destination, so for the controls to become available you have to connect a source first. Typically this would be your iPhone or iPad when you select the speaker from the AirPlay menu.

Having the speaker in the Home app does seem pretty redundant right now although it does mean everything is in one place. It may be Apple adds extra functionality over time...

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Chris 1000

Lyricist III

Even if you have an active source streaming to Sonos over Airplay 2, are on that device, you will still only see dimmed out controls.

Ken_Griffiths

Even if you have an active source streaming to Sonos over Airplay 2, are on that device, you will still only see dimmed out controls.

My Sonos Controls appear to work ok in HomeKit when I Airplay from Apple Music to a Sonos Speaker using my iphone?..see screenshot.

I can skip tracks and adjust volume from within the HomeKit App etc.

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Brewasaurus

Lyricist III

Ken: yes, that's my experience too.

When streaming from my phone:

When using the Sonos app or Alexa to play music:

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Nozuka

Lyricist II

Having the speaker in the Home app does seem pretty redundant right now although it does mean everything is in one place. It may be Apple adds extra functionality over time...

Not really, you can use it for automation. But i think it only supports Apple Music as a Source.

I have it configured to wake me up every morning, sending music to all speakers in my appartement.

(Since the Apple TV is my Homekit “Controller”, the music will get streamed from there)

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Brewasaurus

Lyricist III

Having the speaker in the Home app does seem pretty redundant right now although it does mean everything is in one place. It may be Apple adds extra functionality over time...

Not really, you can use it for automation. But i think it only supports Apple Music as a Source.

I have it configured to wake me up every morning, sending music to all speakers in my appartement.

(Since the Apple TV is my Homekit “Controller”, the music will get streamed from there)

Nice! Never even thought of that 😊

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astrobboy

Enthusiast I

I thought I was doing something wrong when I hooked up my Sonos ONE:SL speakers to Homekit last night and couldn’t control anything.

I assumed I was going to be able to control the speakers using Homekit:

control volume
pause/play the queued list
select tunes from my music library on my NAS
group/ungroup speakers

All without talking to siri/alexa/whoever

This is a deal breaker for me and Homekit. I guess you get what you pay for.

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