Barring any major bugs, Sonos has likely released the final update of 2024 to the Sonos app, capping a strange, rough year for it's music streaming and management application.
The update brings several improvements and changes to the both the iOS and Android versions of the app. Based on the release notes for version 80.14.06 for Android and 80.14.07 for iOS, here's what's new:
- Improved smoothness and reduced latency for Group Volume controls on Android
- Local music libraries will display album art on Android
- Improvements to multi-system support on Android
- Sirius XM will display album art
- Continued improvements to user interface on Android
- Ongoing improvements to Trueplay and quick tune
Some of these updates we knew about because of a blog post by Sonos CEO Patrick Spence in October that laid out the roadmap for updates into the future.
There are still things missing like Playlist editing and Snoozing alarms. Sonos' CIO Nick Millington noted in an accompanying blog post that those things are supposed to come early next year. He added that requests like A to Z scrolling and improved queue management are also coming.
How did we get here?
In May, Sonos released a totally redesigned Sonos app that was met with immediate backlash. Since then the company has been backpedaling and scrambling to fix things that were broken in the poor rollout of the app while bringing back features that were excised in the redesign.
Sonos staff did warn executives of the potential pitfalls of releasing the new version of the app. Clearly, they listened. The resulting fallout was so bad that Sonos had to delay several product launches while they fixed up the app.
Despite that, the company was able to release three excellent products after the app launch, including the impressive Ace headphones, the company's first foray into that space. Later that summer, Sonos released the portable bluetooth speaker Sonos Roam 2, and we immediately put it on our list of the best bluetooth speakers.
This fall, Sonos released the anticipated Sonos Arc Ultra, a spectacular, if expensive, soundbar that brings a wide, spacious sound stage and decent depth to watching movies. It's our pick one of the best soundbars.
The app is nearly back to 100% functionality. Though if you survey the Reddit community, the app is still wildly broken and everyone wants the S1 version back (we do too, but Spence has said multiple times that will never happen). Even with that, most of the Reddit posts now are people seeking advice and ragging on others' speaker placements in their home theaters instead of complaining about the app. See, things are slowly returning to normal.
