Sonos apologizes for the worst app update in history

Sonos’ CEO has written a full apology after the botched rollout of its revamped app for its wireless speaker system.

The company, which also announced its Sonos Ace headphones last month, detailed the app in late April and rolled it out on 7 May. But it was clear from the outset there were problems.

“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”, says Patrick Spence in a blog post.

“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.”

From the outset Sonos’ forums were packed with lengthy comments and lists of gripes about the redesigned app.

I had problems, too. For a couple of weeks I couldn’t reauthorise my connection to Apple Music: “Something went wrong” says the app. I had that error just browsing around, too.

And the app also would periodically ‘forget’ my entire system existed; like it couldn’t find it on the network.

I think the apology is very late, considering the company was forced to detail basic timelines for some missing features as early as 9 May. Those timelines slipped significantly and Spence admits in the blog post that the work on the app was hampered by “a number of issues” which “delayed our prior plan to quickly incorporate missing features and functionality”.

Regular updates have been coming every couple of weeks, with Sonos detailing a new timetable of features to rollout (below), some of which – like local library support – were fine in the old app but missing from the new app. These ‘missing features’ previously taken for granted have really frustrated users.

At the time, Sonos said: “Further improvement will be added to the experience regularly until we reach parity with the [current] S2 app by late June” – a date that now seems very over-optimistic.

According to the timeline detailed below the app won’t be at parity with the old app for all features for at least a couple of months yet.

Here’s what Sonos is planning in terms of further work on the app:

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

Sonos clearly rushed the app out in advance of its Sonos Ace headphone launch in early June – though as you can read in my review, I don’t think the app integration is that hot.

What else might come from Sonos in 2024? A prototype of a new Sonos Arc replacement soundbar has been spotted in the wild (codenamed ‘Lasso’), while we’re also thinking that we’re going to get a third generation of the Beam soundbar too. There may also be a replacement for the Sonos 5 to sit above the Era 100 and Era 300.

• Our guide to the best Sonos speakers