Sonos CEO Apologizes for Bumpy App Redesign Amid User Uproar Online

Photo Credit: Sonos

Sonos updated its app in May, much to the chagrin of long-time customers who complained of missing features. Part of the negative feedback is the app redesign took away several longstanding features—leaving Sonos users with broken routines.After the update, a megathread on reddit highlighted many of the issues people were having with the new Sonos app. Users complain of the removal of ‘shuffle all’ from the combined library, the removal of timers and alarms, no more volume numbers, lack of EQ control, and everything taking more steps to accomplish in-app than previously.

“I have been a Sonos user for at least a decade; I have 32 Sonos devices in my home, using Sonos Net. I dealt with the S1 to S2 transition, accepted the end of life products I had, moved on and bought new gear. But I am floored at how bad this is. My assumption is that there isn’t a single dev on the Sonos team that said, ‘yep this product is ready for launch,’” reads one comment about the update.

“It is clear that this was a misguided executive decision to meet some deadline tied to either the headphone launch or to calm down shareholders after some poor quarterly numbers. Clearly the opposite of the desired outcome has occurred. Sonnos looks like a joke and has alienated those of us that matter the most—whether they realize it or not.”

Three months after shipping that disastrous update, Sonos CEO Patrick Spence is apologizing to those long-time customers. A blog post titled, “Update on the Sonos app from Patrick” starts with a personal apology and a note that “there isn’t an employee at Sonos who isn’t pained by having let you down.” Spence says the company’s number one priority is getting the app fixed for its users, with new updates arriving every two weeks since the big change in May 2024.This is the first public acknowledgement from Sonos that the app redesign hasn’t gone as planned, with fresh promises to bring the app to parity. It comes after Sonos jumped into the headphone ring to compete with Apple’s AirPods Max with its own take on premium headphones, the Sonos Ace.