The Sonos app has undergone a substantial redesign, putting customisation, easy access to your music and more powerful search across your streaming services front and centre.
The new update will be available for all existing products and the app using the current Sonos S2 platform (Era 100 and Era 300, Sonos Arc, Beam Gen 2 and so on), while those on the older S1 app/platform will remain unchanged.
Core to the new app update is a "reimagined" Home screen that lets you access all your favourite music faster and more readily from one screen, eliminating the need to switch between tabs all the time. This means if you listen to music across a variety of sources – say, you're signed into Tidal, Spotify, listen to internet radio and use a wired HDMI input – you will be able to see and access all these sources from your new one-stop home screen.
The new Sonos app will show your recently played tracks and the services you are signed in to, while you can pin favourite playlists and collections, edit the home page to show exactly the services and sources that you want to prioritise, and rearrange the blocks around on screen in a layout that suits you best. It's an element of curation that has been missing from the brand's otherwise excellent app. You can control music playback from this one page, too.
The app has also been given a new lick of paint (it now supports light and dark modes), while the search option has been updated too. The new Sonos app will show you search results from every streaming service you are logged in to. If you select a specific service as your preferred service, it will show up results from that service first by default. Sonos has always been 'platform-agnostic' – that is, not tied to a specific music streaming service – and this is a neat way of organising and finding all your music from one app and screen.
“Today’s streaming experience has become fragmented across multiple platforms due to varied content offerings, algorithmic curation, or simply the desire to not recreate playlists in multiple locations,” said Maxime Bouvat-Merlin, Chief Product Officer of Sonos. “As the only audio brand with an open platform offering extensive choice, Sonos makes it easy to control your system and curate your favourite sounds all in one place. Our reimagined app delivers the industry’s most streamlined streaming experience by bringing a world of content and intuitive control to the Home screen.”
Other updates include a neater way of grouping together multi-room systems if you have multiple Sonos speakers and soundbars in various rooms, a quicker way of accessing the 'now playing' screen with a swipe motion, and easier ways of accessing the full settings menu.
Sonos has also announced an all-new web-based app to access and control your Sonos products. The web app is supported across all modern browsers and you will be able to sign in to your Sonos account as normal.
The new Sonos app update and web app will come into effect globally for all S2-based products on Tuesday 7th May.
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