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Hello,

A few days ago, I noticed that my Sonos speakers were "unresponsive" in the Home app when I was away from home.

After trying several things (rebooting, removing and re-adding the speaker in HomeKit) without success, I reset all the speakers to factory settings. It took some time, but it worked.

But this morning, I updated my iPhone and iPad to iOS 18.2.1, and the problem came back! My Sonos speakers are once again unresponsive in the Home app. Please note that I am not at home, so I can't check if it works when I'm on the same network. In any case, do you know a way to fix the issue without resetting the speakers again?

Thanks for help.

Hi ​@PPE44 

Thanks for your post!

Sorry to hear of this issue you are having with your speakers and HomeKit.

First, I recommend that you do not base anything on what happens when you are not at home - I don’t know HomeKit at all, but I assume that it does not operate remotely. If I am wrong about this, I’d still like to know if anything is different when on the local network.

With some previous issues we’ve have with HomeKit integration, factory resets have been necessary to get things working again. In those cases, however, it has been up to Apple to resolve the issue each time, if I recall correctly - although you may need to reset again to resolve this, I would not recommend doing so until hearing of a fix being issued (presumably by Apple).

We do have some steps to follow in our internal documentation when things are not going right with HomeKit, but as far as I can tell, none of them mention “unresponsive”.

Please check HomeKit when you are at home and let me know what it reports about your Sonos speakers, and I will see if any of it matches with the documentation that I have - if so, I will hopefully be able to give you some steps to try. If not, best to contact Apple about it - they have broken HomeKit in regards to using Sonos in previous iOS updates, so perhaps it has happened again.

Thanks.

 

Edit: I have just been informed that HomeKit can still work with Sonos when away from the local network, but let’s see if anything is different when you are not away.

Hello Corry,

thanks for your help.

HomeKit really works in a very strange way. First, I confirm that when I'm at home, everything works correctly: AirPlay, no devices in "no response" status.

But what's surprising is that this morning, I had no devices without response even though I was away from home. I came back at noon and updated the speakers (system update offered by Sonos), and once again, the speakers are unresponsive when I'm not connected to my local network... In short, I don't understand anything. As you said, it's not a big deal since I can't use the speakers outside my home through HomeKit, but I don't like not understanding…

If you have any idea….

Hi ​@PPE44 

Sorry - I can offer no insights. Not only do we not really get any training on HomeKit, there isn’t much in our documentation about it either - we generally refer to Apple.

Considering your recent iOS update, I think this will be on Apple to address - I can only recommend that you report it to them.

I just did a Google search for “apple homekit ios 18.2.1 unresponsive” (intentionally leaving out mention of Sonos) and can see multiple reports of issues, so I don’t think this is related to Sonos in particular.

I hope this helps.

 

Hello Corry,

thanks for your help.

HomeKit really works in a very strange way. First, I confirm that when I'm at home, everything works correctly: AirPlay, no devices in "no response" status.

But what's surprising is that this morning, I had no devices without response even though I was away from home. I came back at noon and updated the speakers (system update offered by Sonos), and once again, the speakers are unresponsive when I'm not connected to my local network... In short, I don't understand anything. As you said, it's not a big deal since I can't use the speakers outside my home through HomeKit, but I don't like not understanding…

If you have any idea….

Not sure if this may assist, depending on what you’re looking for here? - Sonos HomeKit ‘accessories’ are for use when Airplaying audio only to the speakers/rooms - you can AirPlay audio when the ‘sending’ device is operating on the same local WiFi/wired network subnet. So you would need to be connected to your LAN (and Airplaying to an accessory) - there maybe ways to achieve it remotely too by running a VPN server setup on the LAN and remote tunnelling /connecting to the Home network using a VPN client connection, but this can vary by VPN software. I believe Softether VPN will work to achieve such a connection, it certainly provides remote access to the Sonos mobile App, but it’s a fair bit of a learning curve to setup the server software, opening/forwarding of TCP/UDP ports on the router etc. and keeping things secure.

If you just need remote access to Sonos, it’s probably far easier/simpler to use the Sonos "Web App" instead. See link:

https://support.sonos.com/en-us/downloads

If you just want to see the Sonos accessories/speakers working in HomeKit, then first start an AirPlay session locally to the Sonos accessory to enable it and you should see it ‘light-up’ in the HomeKit App.

I have been having the same issue

Same here and I’m also getting random no response when at home on the same network.

 

It has to be a bug somewhere in IO18 / the latest Sonos update as I have other HomeKit accessories such as TV’s that don’t exhibit this issue. 

 

Just to add the speakers still show up as airplay speakers and function normally so this is a homekit issue. 

I have the same issue, when I’m away from home all Sonos devices show as unresponsive, when I’m home they show as working ! 

Still an issue with latest versions of iOS 

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