Sonos “closing gaps” in its app, but a full fix is far from finished

Last week, it emerged that Sonos has scrapped its TV streaming box as part of the continuing fallout from its 2024 app disaster.

Now its chief innovation officer, Nick Millington, has posted an update to explain Sonos' progress in fixing the app, and what's still to be done.

The short version is that Sonos is still working on it and has made a lot of improvements and fixes, but there is still significant work to be done.

Millington says the Sonos team has two priorities: "[To understand] the root cause of every single customer issue, whether big or small, whether common or rare, and making sure the technical performance of the app meets or exceeds what you have come to expect from Sonos."

The second is to close the gaps "in the functionality and usability of the new app relative to what you enjoyed before". The corrections are being made "in a priority order" and there are still some significant ones to be addressed.

Where is Sonos's app today?

The most recent update was delivered on 4 March. According to Millington you should now have the return of alarm snoozing, a more usable System Settings interface that no longer makes key options "too buried", better performance with search results, and interface elements such as volume sliders.

There are also improvements related to Sonos' portable speakers such as the Roam and Move.

Recent updates have also replaced "vague errors" and require fewer authorisations between the Sonos app and your music services.

Next on the to-do list? Creating and editing Sonos Playlists (originally predicted for the November update), improving the app startup time, making it possible to once again queue entire folders of your stored music in one operation, faster scrolling of large lists, and "continued improvements to volume and overall system responsiveness."

The improvements are of course welcome. But, as MapsAreAwesome put it in the r/sonos subreddit, it's "amazing that the chief innovation officer is focused on recovering from [an] app launch nearly ten months ago."