Siri Voice Control


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Please allow Siri to control Sonos for iPhone/iPad devices.

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32 replies

Homekit integration? Siri would be awesome my friends echo makes sonos feel like a record player.
What an excellent idea
Yes please, Sonos!
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if I have my phone up I may as well just use the Sonos app).But you don't need to have your phone "up" now. With the latest iPhones, "Hey Siri" is always on. I can ask Siri how the weather is tomorrow from across the room now, or to do any number of features. And if you don't have the 6S or 6S+, it still works on older models if the phone is plugged in. Makes perfect sense to me. "Hey Siri, play some Beatles music in the living room."
This is the one thing that keeps Sonos from being a 10 out of 10.
If Sonos simply added Apple HomeKit support, all of this would "just work." Come on, Sonos, how about it?
Brilliant
This would be awesome... +1 from me 🙂
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Yes please, apple home kit it. I'd happily update my bridge if required (as i'm having to do with my philips hue).
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Now that Apple have announced access to Siri API's to 3rd parties in IOS10 hopefully Sonos can fully integrate the app with Siri. That would be ace come on Sonos !
Unforeseen consequence that betters the ecosystem of tech in my home. The Apple Watch mirrors the lock screen phone update. So no longer using my paid $3 sonosbit app. But in addition Siri knows apple is playing music thru my sonos system. So saying skip track it thinks it's just skipping a song as normal.

Sonos reps have stated the lock screen controls were implemented using a silent track playing on the phone in order to trick the iOS into thinking the phone is playing when it is really Sonos. iOS seems to only allow audio playing on/through the actual phone to have lock screen control, so Sonos had to resort to the silent track trickery. This may explain why the watch and Siri can be used to play/pause/skip, because they are being tricked by the same silent track.
This has been an interesting thread with a clear consensus that some type of Siri support for Sonos would be a welcome thing. Before I add my $.02 to the discussion, I'm going to sidestep the platform wars (e.g., "Sonos should support Alexa instead of Siri") by stating that I bought into the Sonos system PRECISELY because of its strong support for iOS and MacOS. For Sonos to abandon or lessen support for these platforms would be a decision that would rightly anger what I'm guessing is a huge segment of their installed base. They can do it, but I don't think it would not be a wise business decision.

The calls for support to be added through HomeKit are, I believe, misplaced. The HomeKit API and architecture are all about home automation and Apple has many other fish to fry there (e.g., coordinating with all the other companies who are in the home automation business). What''s important to understand is that the HomeKit API does NOT currently support control of music devices. As such, that's a dead end for Sonos unless Apple decides to add it. Given that Siri already controls Apple's music applications just fine, I don't see Apple shifting it's music control efforts to this API and don't think this is a safe place to hang one's hopes.

A more likely path to what we iPhone/iPad owners would like (i.e., voice control of the Sonos controller app on iOS devices via Siri) would be for Apple to open up the Siri API to music apps. Apple has announced that it is opening up the Siri API on iOS 10 via SiriKit, but is only doing it for a limited number of "Domains and Intents" (https://developer.apple.com/sirikit/) at first. Unfortunately, "Music" is not a Domain that SiriKit is supporting for 3rd party apps out of the gate. Many people suspect that Apple is proceeding with caution here. As popular as something like Alexa is, day one of support for 3rd party use of Siri will produce more server traffic than Amazon ever sees for Alexa. There are far more people out there using Siri than there are Alexa and opening up SiriKit to music apps (e.g., Pandora, Spotify, Sonos, etc.) will produce a boatload of traffic. I think Apple is wise to test the waters before opening the floodgates.

With these considerations in mind, I think the best thing Sonos could do, if it is committed to supporting Apple's platforms, would be to work with Apple on opening up the SiriKit to music apps down the road. Having music become a supported domain would give us Siri control over the Sonos app and we'd get just what we want. My fear is that Sonos will take a different path, as hinted at by the microphones included in the new Play:5; developing their own voice control architecture. This would mean that every Sonos speaker I own (three first generation Play:5s and six Play:1s) is out of the running. It would also mean that I'd need to be close enough to the speakers for the microphones to hear me. Even if I bought new Sonos speakers with included microphones, I'd only get voice control if I was next to one of them, and not my older ones. Definitely not a "take care of the installed base of users" kind of solution.

Conversely, I've always got my Apple Watch on my wrist and almost always am close enough to my phone for "Hey Siri" to work. For users of the Apple ecosystem, building Siri support into the Sonos controller apps via SiriKit is, far and away, the best path. Let's all cross our fingers that Sonos and Apple are in discussion to allow this in the future. Let's also ask for it whenever we can so that Sonos knows we want existing users to be well supported.
Apple will need to open the API up for this first.
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I don't see it happening. However, the revelation that the new Play:5 speaker has built in microphones opens up the question on if Sonos is planning some type of voice control of speakers (and on-speaker voice control seems a lot more useful then on-phone voice control...if I have my phone up I may as well just use the Sonos app).
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Well I won't be keeping hey Siri on as my battery already won't last the day.
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Perhaps people want Siri to choose what to listen to!
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Is this really not a thing? Echo now works with Sonos. Time to jump ship and use Echo with Sonos? Or just get echo?
Siri was just recently released to developers, so hopefully soon this will happen...
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Please allow Siri to control Sonos for iPhone/iPad devices.

Or Alexa for the amazon echo
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Homekit integration? Siri would be awesome my friends echo makes sonos feel like a record player.

Please Sonos and Apple. Leverage Siri 3rd party support to keep Sonos relevant. I've been using Sonos happily for years. I want to add a playbar and a 3 but I'm holding off until this gets done. This is about Siri without usiing another device. To control music, set a timer while your cooking, etc. Think about it, how do you do any of that when you are up to your elbows in raw chicken?

I was early to Sonos and love having the best tech. Sonos is still great but daves1186 nailed it. No voice control makes it feel like last years cool tech
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Sonos CEO a few months back has announced that the company is seeing voice control as integral in their current and future plans. We know they have made changes to their technical development teams by letting people go and hiring others with relevant experience.

We don't know, as yet, which way Sonos will go and it will probably be quite a few months before we do and certainly before you can voice control Sonos whilst elbow deep in a chicken (That's illegal in most countries by the way).
If Sonos simply added Apple HomeKit support, all of this would "just work." Come on, Sonos, how about it?

First, anything from Apple is going to be problematic, due to Apple's propensity for keeping things highly proprietary. Sonos would be better off going with Amazon Voice Services (Alexa is well documented to be far "smarter" than Siri), or waiting for Google's service.

Whichever they choose, software development projects of this scope take many months and millions of dollars to roll out; "simply added" simply isn't realistic. I've been training all week at a very well know company in Silicon Valley, on their BI product. It's been out for at least a year, but still requires a good bit of "under the covers" tweaking of JSON to do the hard stuff. The product VP told me it would be another year before most of that would be included in their UI. Not uncommon at all, even $multi-billion companies take years to build software that is "simple".
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Why would Sonos build an interface into Siri instead of Alexa or Google?

Maybe they should do all 3 and then whatever comes next?

The answer is that would be a huge cost and take a long time. Sonos are a speaker company. There ethos has been make a great product and provide an interface for others to use if they wish. I don't see any reason why that should change with VR.
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Why would Sonos build an interface into Siri instead of Alexa or Google?

Maybe they should do all 3 and then whatever comes next?

The answer is that would be a huge cost and take a long time. Sonos are a speaker company. There ethos has been make a great product and provide an interface for others to use if they wish. I don't see any reason why that should change with VR.



Their CEO (Sonos) has stated that Voice Control is a major goal alongside concentration on streaming music services. So we know that Sonos will be ensuring there is some form of voice control but whether they jump into bed with Amazon, Google or Apple or AN Other is a matter for endless speculation
So maybe just me this morning.... after a system update. I now have sonos control on my Apple Watch. So i was joking with the wife about control via siri. Been talking about it daily, since most of our home is homekit enabled. Well I said "Hey siri please skip" ..... It skipped the song on my sonos system. After which I haven't been able to duplicate success. Appears though SIRI and APPLE totally recongnize the sonos ecosyestem in my home as of this morning. :?