Sonos App Controversy: What happened and is it being fixed?

May 7th 2024 won’t go down as one of Sonos’ best days in the companies’ history. It was the day it launched one of the biggest revisions to its control app, and the reception was not positive.

Trusted Reviews had been one of a number of websites that had been briefed on the new app ahead of its launch, with Sonos telling us that it had customisation and personalisation at the heart of the upgraded app. What we didn’t know at the time was the extent of what was missing and broken in the app when it did relaunch.

Sonos has since apologised for the lack of communication about the revamped app. We’ll take you through the time of what happened, and when features will be brought back to the app.

The Sonos app problems

Sonos tends to update its app every few years. Its previous update dropped the S1 app for the S2 app, which didn’t support legacy products. This update has given the app a massive visual overhaul and allowed for more customisation and personalisation of the app.

The demo we were presented with showed an app that looked swift, fast, and streamlined, with no jumping from from to tab to tab with everything consolidated into one area.

Sonos claimed the new app was laying the foundation for a better experience and more innovative features going forward. However, there have been a number of bugs, missing features, and just general issues that have affected the app.

Customers have complained about issues with controlling the volume on separate Sonos speakers, saved radio stations have disappeared, music libraries that don’t load, issues with connecting to speakers, adding new speakers, not being able to queue music, not being able to group speakers, alarm function missing, the app using excessive battery on iOS devices among many more known issues.

Sonos CEO Patrick Spence outlined a response in a blog post beginning with an apology for the disruption.

“We know that too many of you have experienced significant problems with our new app which rolled out on May 7, and I want to begin by personally apologizing for disappointing you. There isn’t an employee at Sonos who isn’t pained by having let you down, and I assure you that fixing the app for all of our customers and partners has been and continues to be our number one priority.”

Sonos has committed to fixing the issues, but given the scale, this won’t be an issue fixed with one update. Sonos has outlined a timeline for next several months, which you can see below.

Sonos app fixes timeline

July and August

• Improving the stability when adding new products
• Implementing Music Library configuration, browse, search, and play

August and September

• Improving volume responsiveness
• User interface improvements based on customer feedback
• Improving overall system stability and error handling

September

• Improving alarm consistency and reliability

September and October

• Restoring edit mode for Playlists and the Queue
• Improving functionality in settings