Sonos Updates Its Controller App, Bringing Whole Home Music Control Into The Jony Ive Age

Sonos has updated their decidedly dated and frustrating app to reflect a more modern, user-forward aesthetic. What’s changed? Pretty much everything.

If you’ve used Sonos in the past few years, you’ll have struggled with their controller app, a service that, thanks to the myriad of potential use cases, suffered from a lot of user experience problems. Creating playlists, for example, forced you to think about whether you were adding your songs to “Favorites” or creating a Sonos playlist or accessing a playlist in a music service. Settings often appeared in the music menu (until they added a separate icon) and adding and removing rooms from your whole home system usually resulted in tapping a few times in vain until you found the right menu. In short, the app marred an otherwise incredible music experience.

The system also supports cross-service search, allowing you to find music in multiple ways.

Quoth Sonos:

The new app takes full advantage of modern, high-resolution screens and includes more information and images for albums and songs. Multi-paned windows offer music information alongside search and selection systems and the whole thing looks decidedly more modern.

Updates on Android and iOS should be rolling out now although some of my devices haven’t registered the change yet. The way-ay-ting, as they say, is the hardest part.

[youtube=https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IGIRrSRTju4]