At last, Sonos is making some real progress fixing its mobile app. A major refresh is due this week, which should make it a lot more intuitive to use.
If you're late to the party, let us fill you in.
Back in April 2024, Sonos redesigned its app to coincide with the launch of the Ace, its first pair of wireless headphones. It was a disaster – the new app was buggy, and lacked a lot of the old one's features. (It didn't help that the headphones weren't much cop either.)
Since then Sonos has been on a mission to restore the app and win back customer trust. This week's refresh could go some way to doing so.
The improvements are aimed at making the app easier to use. It's "Not a new app, but a new way of navigating Sonos inside the app you already have," CEO Tom Conrad wrote on Reddit.
From spending "hundreds of hours" watching people use the Sonos app, his team found out what the sticking points are: too many content cards, swipe-up gestures to switch speaker orientation, close boxes in place of back buttons, and custom interface elements that feel out of place on an iOS or Android device.
So what takes their place?
We can look forward to more straightforward navigation, with three tabs (Home, System, Search) replacing the hidden gestures and content cards on both iOS and Android. There's a new volume interface, a "core mechanism that is easier to grab and fine tune" along with buttons to press to alter it and a new way of synchronising it across a group of rooms.
You'll get more control over how your players are listed and displayed, and there are dozens of smaller fixes like the ability to swipe to delete a track in a playlist, and a refreshed Now Playing screen.
The update will roll out to beta testers this week (you can sign up here), but they will have to enable it from within the settings menu. Even once it's rolled out wider, it will only be available as an opt-in toggle, so you can turn it off if you don't like it. Sonos will continue to polish it before making it the default.
Conrad says this is the way Sonos will work from now on, as "this is the beginning of a different way of working here at Sonos, where what gets built, and in what order, is shaped by the conversations here and with all our customers."
Maybe it's learned from its mistakes after all.
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