Sonos update: Smart speaker company responds to outcry over new app

Sonos says it is “moving quickly” to improve its new app, after an update that led to widespread outcry.

Last month, the smart speaker company announced that it had rebuilt its app from scratch. The new version of the app, which is used to select music and control speakers, would become “easier, better and faster”, it said, and update it for the modern streaming ecosystem.

But when it arrived in early May, it was met with a barrage of complaints. “Aargh! Everything is broken!” reads one representative post on Sonos’s Reddit forum, which has been filled with user problems in the weeks since the new app was launched.

Some critics have pointed to poor performance of the new app, with users waiting a long time for it to load or being unable to control or add new speakers. Others have pointed to missing features, including some that are central to using the speakers, such as the ability to edit or add alarms.

Now Sonos has said that it is listening to the issues and working to fix them.

“We’ve heard your feedback and are moving quickly to improve your app experience,” it said in an update posted to its social media accounts. “We are listening to all of your comments and working to address them as quickly as possible,” it wrote in an update on its website.

It said that it was “fixing bugs and performance issues” while working to add features back into the app. A new update, released earlier this week, brings back support for Apple accessibility features, the option to play music from a local library and the option to add and edit alarms, for instance.

It said that further updates would come in the following weeks. That includes further improvements for visually-impaired customers, which is scheduled for mid-June; the ability to add music into a queue, which will arrive in early June; and the addition of sleep timers and the ability to update WiFi settings in mid-June.

But some problems remain unfixed, without any indication of when the problem would be resolved. It did not give any indication of when it would allow people to snooze alarms again, for instance, and pointed to an error that stops people from being able to update their products but said there was “no workaround currently available”.

“Our latest update resolves some of the most critical known issues, but know we have more to do,” the company said. “We hear your feedback and are working hard to deliver the experience you expect and deserve.”

The new app update has somewhat overshadowed the launch of Sonos’s first ever headphones, which were announced earlier this week.