Sonos app overhaul will deliver a customizable home screen, universal search, and more
Sonos has unveiled what it's calling its most extensive app redesign ever. Not only is it more reliable, the company says, but it makes finding your favorite music and controlling your devices a lot easier.
The new app, set to debut on May 7 on both iOS and Android, supports all existing S2 products. Perhaps the biggest addition is access to more than 100 music streaming services on one home screen. Users no longer have to tap between tabs to use different services. Instead, they can now see preferred services in one place with controls to find recently played, libraries, recommendations, and more.
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Users can customize the home screen to their liking, arranging specific content or services wherever they want.
Sonos also added a new universal search bar that targets "varied content offerings, algorithmic curation, or simply the desire to not recreate playlists in multiple locations," which has led to a fragmented music market. Users can search for a specific song, artist, album, podcast, or audiobook across all platforms at once to see where it's available; no more trying to find your favorites on a certain service. You can set preferred services that are always shown above others -- provided what you're searching for is on that service, of course.
Sonos has added new system controls too. By swiping up from the bottom of the home screen, users can now see an overview of their entire system and find what's playing on every connected device. Users can quickly start or stop any speaker, control the volume of any device with a tap, and add speakers to a group to manage multiple devices simultaneously.
If you use the Sonos desktop app, however, there's bad news: It's going away and being replaced by a web version. The company didn't give a date for when that transition would happen. That new web controller, though, will give users access to all the same functionality as the app, even when they're not connected to their home network.