Sonos has had quite the year. Back in May, the company announced they were releasing a new app. Then, the app they released took away a bunch of features we all liked, and the company subsequently laid off 6% of its employees. That about brings us up to speed, when last week, Sonos announced the release of a long awaited new subwoofer (the Sub 4) and a more robust soundbar (the Arc Ultra). Buried in that news was something positive for us Sonos fans: Most of the old app features have now been restored.
In their attempts to fix the situation, Sonos had, at times, considered reverting to the old app (which wasn’t that great either, if you ask me) but that would have worsened the issue due to updates to their cloud servers. Instead, in July, CEO Patrick Spence laid out a summer-long plan to restore all the old features. With the last update on Oct. 15, Sonos appears to have resolved 90% of the issues they've set out to fix, at least according to Tom's Guide. Here's what they've fixed, as well as what's new.
When you look at the updates added over the summer, it certainly seems like a lot of issues have been addressed. The biggest issue to tackle was the user interface: Aside from a Home Feed that was hard to navigate, users were also having trouble adding products. Those issues have all been fixed, among other improvements to controls like volume, group audio settings, as well as the addition of a mute button. More importantly, there have been consistent accessibility updates to the app since May that have positively affected almost every part of the app experience.
Sonos has seemingly addressed most major issues around queues and the music library. Personally, I was thrilled to be able to play Top Songs from an artist again. Autoplay settings have been improved, and Sonos made extensive updates to the way you can search for, pull, and queue from your locally stored music. The company added “Play next” back in, as well as the ability to clear your queue.
The new app also affected Settings, so Sonos has added recursive fixes as well as new changes here. Issues surrounding VoiceOver, TruePlay, and Talkback are now fixed. Sonos improved the stability of the app in almost all areas, and I’ve noticed in the last month that I run into fewer hangups in general. The company addressed TV Audio Swap bugs, so these shouldn’t be an issue anymore. The new app introduced some issues around surround sound setup, and those have been solved, but Sonos generally worked on audio settings across the whole app.
In the middle of all this, Sonos added some miscellaneous new features and updates to the app, as well: There's now a sleep timer, for example (Sonos isn't the only one to add one of these lately). The company improved Alexa controls, and added additional support for SonosNet (a dedicated wifi network for your speakers). I was also delighted to discover that Sonos added a light mode, since the app has traditionally operated in dark mode.
As a user, I have been confused by the profound effect the May app release had on Sonos. The controversial update wasn't all bad: While there were features I missed, I was pleased with the new flow to switch between choosing music and choosing or grouping speakers. With the latest updates Sonos made here, Sonos has kept what worked with the May update, and added back many of the features they removed—though I suspect there’s still room for improvement.
If you’ve been hesitant to purchase a Sonos product because of the issues around the app, I would suggest it’s time to fire it back up and take a look through the improvements. I myself am looking forward to adding a Sub 4 to my surround system.
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