If there’s been a pain point for Sonos fans in the past two years, it’s software. In 2024, Sonos rolled out an infamous update that rubbed a lot of its customers the wrong way—and for good reason. Bugs in the new app caused people’s home sound systems to stop working, which is bad enough on its own without factoring in the general contempt for the UI and removal of some features.
There may be good news yet, though, even if it’s taken years to get here: In a post on Reddit, Sonos says a new app update is incoming and that “it’s a big one.”
Among the major changes are some tweaks to UI, like new tab navigation with buttons that show what’s selected. On top of that, Sonos says that Home, System, and Search are “easy to find” and “easier to see what’s selected.” You’ll have to choose this new tab navigation in the app. Sonos says to look for “Enable Improved Navigation” in the app settings.
Maybe more importantly, Sonos is rolling out better speaker sorting. With the new update, users can choose which order speakers show up in the app, meaning the system can now be sorted alphabetically, by what’s most frequently used, and also by what’s actively playing. You can also now pin speakers to the top.
Additionally, iOS is getting a new volume interface, which, from firsthand experience, should be a welcome change to most people using Sonos speakers on an iPhone. The new volume slider version is dynamic (it gets bigger or smaller depending on where you set it) and is also more precise with the addition of numbers.
It may not seem groundbreaking, but this is still arguably the biggest update to the Sonos app since the infamous rollout in 2024. Sonos says it’s rolling out in phases, but it should be available to everyone in the next two weeks, and if you have automatic updates enabled, you don’t have to do anything to download it. Here’s to hoping this one is a bit smoother than Sonos updates of yore.
