unplugging temporarily to move a speaker

No special procedure needed, just plug it in and after it boots up you should see it appear again on the controller.

Please add some commentary on what happens to groups and queues when a speaker temporarily loses power. My experience is that groups are dissolved and queues are cleared. This means that if a GFI breaker trips or someone unplugs a speaker for a minute to move a chair or a table that all music playback can stop and someone must recreate the group and add music back to the queue.

Your experience is the way it is. But most users rarely unplug and maybe don't get sad and disappointed by the consequences. You could save a queue as a playlist if it's something you want longer term.

I have the same problemen, when a breaker trips or the wife moves play 1 from kitchen to veranda the group is canceld then they call me to come and fix it. 😞

Seems like I might as well have wired speakers if moving a wireless speaker requires a reconfiguration and reloading of current playlists :)

The most annoying thing is that my patio Play1 is on a circuit with a GFI, and the GFI gets tripped occasionally. It would be great if resetting the breaker was enough to get the music playing again.

Seems like I might as well have wired speakers if moving a wireless speaker requires a reconfiguration and reloading of current playlists :)

The most annoying thing is that my patio Play1 is on a circuit with a GFI, and the GFI gets tripped occasionally. It would be great if resetting the breaker was enough to get the music playing again.
Vote here to avoid loosing the playlist:
https://ask.sonos.com/sonos/topics/default_source_when_turning_on_power

Can we just be clear on terminology here?  Unplugging loses the current queue.  It does not remove stored Sonos playlists.

Seems like I might as well have wired speakers if moving a wireless speaker requires a reconfiguration and reloading of current playlists :)

The most annoying thing is that my patio Play1 is on a circuit with a GFI, and the GFI gets tripped occasionally. It would be great if resetting the breaker was enough to get the music playing again.
Of course I mean the queue and not saved favorite playlists. I'm using Sonos in German and there it is called "list". 😉

I spoke to a SONOS rep at a demo of the new PLAY 5 the other week and asked about unplugging a speaker in a group and it gets removed from the group. He said that it's so that people who unplug and move a speaker will want it to put it in a new group. I consider this presumptuous. If someone wants to do that then they should be OK to reset the group. However I expect most people would like to have the speaker revert to the group it is in when the power comes back. Especially when the speaker being unplugged is the group master.

So please change your view to this. If I want to unplug my conservatory speaker and plug it into an extensipn reel to take outside I don't want to have to mess about with the controller.
This should only be a small code change for your system as the speaker is already remembered when it is plugged in again. Alternatively make it an option to have groups fixed unless the user changes them.

I spoke to a SONOS rep at a demo of the new PLAY 5 the other week and asked about unplugging a speaker in a group and it gets removed from the group. He said that it's so that people who unplug and move a speaker will want it to put it in a new group. I consider this presumptuous. If someone wants to do that then they should be OK to reset the group. However I expect most people would like to have the speaker revert to the group it is in when the power comes back. Especially when the speaker being unplugged is the group master.

So please change your view to this. If I want to unplug my conservatory speaker and plug it into an extensipn reel to take outside I don't want to have to mess about with the controller.
This should only be a small code change for your system as the speaker is already remembered when it is plugged in again. Alternatively make it an option to have groups fixed unless the user changes them.

I completely agree this should change (although give the rep a break). I bought a Play:5 to move from my balcony to my bedroom and it's a small but noticeable pain to re-add it every time I move it.

I'd expect it's a common use case to have a fairly static 'living room' and then one more sonos play:5 or play:3 to move around elsewhere.

Even if I were rich enough to just get extra play:5s I'd still have to bring the balcony player inside to avoid weather damage.

I think you're being presumptuous, if I'm sitting outside 99% of the time I don't need or want the music to be playing in the house. What would be the point? I'm not in the house, so I don't want Sonos assuming that I still want the music to play inside.

I think you're being presumptuous, if I'm sitting outside 99% of the time I don't need or want the music to be playing in the house. What would be the point? I'm not in the house, so I don't want Sonos assuming that I still want the music to play inside.

If you go outside and don't want music playing in the house you can stop it playing.

The other day I pulled out the table that my conservatory speaker is on to clean the window behind it. The power lead moved slightly in the speaker - a not uncommon thing to happen as the connectors seem a bit flaky - and the power went off to it. That speaker is the master of a five speaker group so they were all ungrouped. Maybe not a big deal but I don't think Sonos should presume anything. If a speaker gets powered down and then back up it should revert to its previous state including retaining the grouping and queue and continuing playing whatever was playing. If you want to move a speaker and reconfigure it then you can use the controller to do it but I bet power outages way exceed the number of times you want to move a speaker.

Another thing that happened recently was that for some reason the conservatory speaker got lost to the system so the rest of the group weren't playing. In the controller the speaker wasn't there at all although it was still playing music. To resolve it I had to re-add the speaker then regroup everything. Strange!

That speaker is the master of a five speaker group so they were all ungrouped.
In that case you have network issues. When the group coordinator ('master' in your terminology) is dropped, another player should take over.

If a speaker gets powered down and then back up it should revert to its previous state including retaining the grouping and queue and continuing playing whatever was playing.

While there have been requests for persistent groups (and a stereo pair is in some ways a persistent group), storing the queue in non-volatile memory throws up various issues. Firstly in some models the non-volatile storage is maxed out, which is why the library index is constrained in size. Accommodating a potentially large queue would be out of the question. But also storing a queue in non-volatile storage would risk wearing it out. Persistent memory offers a finite number of write cycles. It's large, and such memory uses wear-levelling techniques, but a canny system designer would not want to store short-lived data there.

Another thing that happened recently was that for some reason the conservatory speaker got lost to the system so the rest of the group weren't playing. In the controller the speaker wasn't there at all although it was still playing music.

This supports the hypothesis that you have network issues, particularly around that player. (See above,)

In that case you have network issues. When the group coordinator ('master' in your terminology) is dropped, another player should take over.
Thanks, ratty. I'll look into the network thing. I have a boost that is only three feet away from the network hub and the conservatory speaker is only about ten feet as the crow flies from the boost.
I take your point about the amount of memory for temporary data, however I still feel that when a speaker powers down then up it should still return to its group.

If you can't figure things out then submit a system diagnostic and post the number. Sonos Support can take a look at the state of your SonosNet.

On the grouping question, I have some sympathy with those requesting persistent groups and/or group presets. It's clearly not been a high priority for Sonos.