Sonos has formally named its app and multi-room operating system. Sonos 27 is being introduced this year with two new products – Ace Ultra and Beam Ultra – and boasts new AI control features, and new app navigation.
According to the company's press release, it "represent[s] the next stage of Sonos’ evolution from a collection of connected audio products into an increasingly intelligent and adaptable audio operating system for the home".
Why now? We spoke to Sonos's vice president of software, Sid Patel, and senior director of product development, Brandon Holley, both of whom have been with the company for over a decade, to dig into the newly-christened Sonos 27 operating system.
"For years, people have seen us as a speaker company, but what we actually have been building is an audio operating system," says Holley.
"Why now? We really think we've not done enough justice to tell the story of what the software does with the overall system and the speakers, and what it brings, and so this [branding] gives us a place to talk about the software and hardware and how it all works together," says Holley.
"Underneath it's extremely complex, there's a lot going on... but from a customer's standpoint, we want them to understand that every interaction, every piece of the system, whether it's the hardware or a partnership with a specific music provider – that is all part of a system."
"We've spent 20 years learning how a home feels and functions, and finally, we're naming the thing that we've been building all along," says Holley.
Sonos 27 is the overarching operating system powering the Sonos ecosystem and its many products, with Sonos aiming to treat its "audio operating system" like an Apple/Android operating system that updates every year. The '27' in the name will update every year, changing to '28' next year, we're told, just like iOS 26 will update to iOS 27 this year.
Fabric – "the magic that has been Sonos for 20 years"
While naming the various things the Sonos ecosystem can do might seem like a marketing exercise, what is more concrete is the company's commitment to ensuring its ecosystem isn't a walled garden like other brands, offers various ways to control its products, and that these products work together more seamlessly.
Ensuring that the new Ace Ultra wireless headphones connect to every Sonos 27-compatible product seamlessly is a key component of this. "That is not a promise we fulfilled fully with Ace; we are fulfilling it with Ace Ultra," says Patel.
Sonos Fabric is the name given to the multi-room capability of the ecosystem, in the way that Sonos products can be linked together – or as Patel calls it, "the magic that has been Sonos for 20 years".
That includes the whole-house multi-room grouping of products, a stereo pairing between two speakers, and the new 'headphone linking' feature, which will let you transfer sound between a Sonos speaker or soundbar to Sonos Ace Ultra wireless headphones.
Another new feature under the 'Fabric' umbrella opens up the possibility of portable surrounds. The Sonos Play and Move 2 portable speakers (which feature Bluetooth and wi-fi) can now be used as rear surrounds alongside the Sonos Arc/Arc Ultra, Beam (Gen 2) and Beam Ultra soundbars. Sonos' Positioning Technology will use high-frequency sound to "sense a speaker's location and adapt its role" accordingly.
New AI-enabled ways to control your Sonos products
It will come as no surprise that AI is a big part of the new operating system, and as an evolution of the brand's "open platform philosophy", Sonos will let users control its ecosystem using any AI assistant they prefer.
"AI is obviously all the rage in the industry, but the way we're approaching it is like how we've approached it from the beginning for everything," says Patel. "We're creating a platform where we plug into other AI ecosystems and AI ecosystems can plug into us, similar to how music partners can plug into us today."
Sonos 27voice is the brand's own assistant for "music and mood curation" that has been customised and is more AI-friendly, while the Sonos 27mcp (Model Context Protocol) infrastructure will let you connect any external AI assistant or agent to your Sonos system (e.g. ChatGPT, Claude, Gemini, Siri) so you can ask it to control music anywhere in your home.
"We know the home, we know audio, we know music," says Patel, "and so we've taken a layer and created intelligence there, so what we do is bring that intelligence to the home." The focus is on letting users control their music in a way that's quickest and feels most natural to them, whether that's using voice control, the app, the web app, the on-unit buttons or AI.
"From the time you bring your speaker home and your system home and you set it up, we want you to be listening to TV or music as fast as possible," says Patel of the brand's number one goal for the app.
A new feature called Sonos Custom Agents will also let users "create their own agents" through their system, allowing you to customise the model, persona and voice for your own personal AI assistant.
"We are in a new era where we're listening to our customers a lot more"
A big part of the creation of Sonos 27 and any updates going forward will be listening to customer feedback, especially on the app. It's a concentrated effort after the disastrous app redesign of 2024, which led to widespread customer dissatisfaction, the then-CEO stepping down, and Sonos rolling back many of the app features to re-gain trust amongst its customers.
"We still believe the Sonos app is the best way to experience your system along with all the other control services like voice and web and direct control," says Patel.
"We are in a new era where we're listening to our customers a lot more," Patel acknowledges, and declares many of the new app changes have been "community driven and very experimental", with the Sonos team engaging with customers on Reddit and social media channels to get instant feedback.
"We sort of opened the door to even our engineering team engaging with customers on Reddit, which is not something we did in the past. And it's actually worked out really well for us."
The Sonos 27app will gain fresh discovery and tab navigation, a new "virtual" volume dial, presets, lock screen integration and more. On top of that, the brand says it's still "innovating" and working closely with Apple and Google to further integrate Sonos features within a smartphone's native operating systems.
Will this be a turning point for Sonos, and will it be enough to claim back trust amongst its many long-term customers? There is a definite sense of confidence that the new features will work as promised, and we'll be getting our hands on Beam Ultra and Ace Ultra review samples imminently to try out all the new features and see how the updated app works – so stay tuned.
Sonos 27 will be available as a free update to all current-generation Sonos products (i.e. all products working with the 'S2' app/OS since 2020), with the portable surrounds support, new app navigation and Sonos 27mcp rolling out from 8th September.
MORE:
Read our original Sonos Ace review
