These Sonos App Features Have Been Restored
Sonos had a great year. Back in May, the company announced the release of a new app . Then the app they released took away a lot of the features we all loved, and the company subsequently fired 6% of its employees . That brings us up to speed as last week Sonos announced the release of a long-awaited new subwoofer ( Sub 4 ) and a more robust soundbar ( Arc Ultra ). There’s something positive in this news for us Sonos fans: most of the app’s old features have now been restored.
In an attempt to remedy the situation, Sonos has occasionally considered reverting to the old app (which wasn’t that great either, if you ask me), but that would have made the problem worse due to updates to their cloud servers . Instead, in July, CEO Patrick Spence outlined a summer plan to restore all old features. With the latest update on October 15, Sonos appears to have resolved 90% of the issues they set out to fix, at least according to Tom’s Guide . Here’s what they fixed, as well as what’s new.
Critical app interface updates
When you look at the updates added over the summer, it seems like a lot of issues have been resolved. The biggest problem that needed to be addressed was the user interface: in addition to the main feed, which was difficult to navigate, users also had problems adding products. All of these issues have been fixed, along with other improvements to controls such as volume, group audio settings, and the addition of a mute button. More importantly, the app has seen continuous accessibility updates since May that have positively impacted almost every aspect of the app experience.
Simplified queue and local music settings
Sonos seems to have solved most of the major problems with queues and the music library. Personally, I was very excited to be able to play the artist’s “Best Songs” again. Autoplay settings have been improved, and Sonos has made extensive updates to the way it searches, retrieves, and queues locally stored music. The company has added “Play Next” again, as well as the ability to clear the queue.
All core Sonos settings such as TruePlay and Talkback are updated.
The new app also affected the settings, so Sonos added recursive fixes here as well as new changes. Issues related to VoiceOver, TruePlay, and Talkback have now been resolved. Sonos has improved the app’s stability in almost every area, and over the past month I’ve noticed that I’m experiencing fewer lags overall. The company has fixed TV Audio Swap errors so they should no longer be an issue. The new app had some issues with surround sound settings and these have been resolved, but Sonos has generally worked on audio settings throughout the app.
Miscellaneous updates
In the middle of all this, Sonos has also added a few new features and updates to the app: there’s now a sleep timer, for example ( Sonos isn’t the only one to add one of these lately ). The company has improved Alexa controls and added additional support for SonosNet (a dedicated Wi-Fi network for your speakers). I was also happy to see that Sonos has added a light mode, since the app has traditionally run in dark mode.
Bottom line
As a user, I was baffled by the profound effect the app’s May release had on Sonos. The controversial update wasn’t all bad: While there were some features I missed, I was happy with the new process for switching between selecting music and selecting or grouping speakers. With the latest Sonos updates made here, Sonos has kept what worked with the May update and added back many of the features they removed, although I suspect there’s still room for improvement.
If you have been hesitant to purchase a Sonos product due to issues with the app, I would encourage you to run it again and review the improvements. I myself am looking forward to adding Sub 4 to my surround sound system.