Skip to main content

Sleep timer returns to Sonos app as improvements trickle in

Sleep timer settings in the Sonos app.
Phil Nickinson / Digital Trends

You’ll be forgiven if you’re a Sonos fan who keeps checking multiple times a day for app updates (count us among that group). And today’s a good day to have that habit, as another update has returned one missing feature and improved others.

The sleep timer has returned to the revamped Sonos app. And while all maybe isn’t quite right in the Sonos world, it’s definitely starting to look a little more like it did before the massive May update that came ahead of the Sonos Ace headphones — and either disappeared or broke a number of other things in the process.

Recommended Videos

As frustrating as the past few weeks have been for those of us who just want to use our wireless speaker setup and don’t really care too much about newfangled headphones, at least Sonos has been fairly transparent about what’s been broken and what’s being fixed. Sonos employees have been keeping up with the app update timeline on Reddit, and that thread is in sync with the changelog on the app itself.

Please enable Javascript to view this content

In addition to the return of the sleep timer, other improvements this time around include:

  • Better setup, Bluetooth discovery, and Wi-Fi settings. (You’ll note you have to approve a few things after this update, almost like it’s a fresh install.)
  • Improved playback settings, with “Play next” and “add to end of queue” looking better
  • A mute button on iOS
  • Improved Trueplay on iOS
  • Distance settings added for home theater surround speakers
  • Better navigation cues for those with visual impairments
  • Better VoiceOver support for pop-up messages on iOS

Sonos also has been keeping up with a “coming soon” list of improvements. Slated for later this month are mute and volume numbers on the playback controls, more accessibility improvements for visual impairments, and local music library search and playback.

Phil Nickinson
Former Digital Trends Contributor
Phil spent the 2000s making newspapers with the Pensacola (Fla.) News Journal, the 2010s with Android Central and then the…
Yes, Sonos, bring back the old app!
An Android phone with the Sonos app showing the music sources tab menu, next to a Sonos Roam wireless speaker.

If you're a Sonos owner, I can almost guarantee that at some point (and maybe many points) since the launch of the company's redesigned app, you've wanted to throw your phone at the wall. The frustration of not being able to use the wireless speakers in your home may be a quintessential first-world problem, but it doesn't change the fact that this was all so avoidable. But now there are rumors that Sonos is contemplating bringing back its old app -- known as Sonos S2 -- and I couldn't be more supportive. Frankly, I don't know why it hasn't already happened.

When the new app launched in early May, I immediately noticed a slew of missing features and performance issues. My reaction — which was shared by many industry watchers — was a wait-and-see approach. Software bugs are just a fact of life, and Sonos has had to squash plenty of them over the years. I was willing to give the team the benefit of the doubt, and I fully expected that by the end of May -- maybe, worst-case scenario, mid-June -- everything would be back to normal.

Read more
What can Sonos possibly do to ‘delight’ customers again?
Phil Nickinson wearing the Sonos Ace headphones.

Sonos has had a bad summer. It hasn’t been a particularly easy few years for the upscale wireless audio company -- its stock is basically one-third of where it was in early 2021 -- but this summer has been especially brutal.

For those of us on the consumer side of things, 2024 started pretty optimistically. Sonos in November 2023 started teasing that the following year would see new products in new categories. Headphones almost certainly were one of them -- coming after years of leaks and rumors. What ultimately became the Sonos Ace were a long time coming. They turned out to be very good headphones, and an important product category for Sonos.

Read more
‘Push for speed backfired,’ Sonos CEO says as new products delayed
The Sonos app on an iPhone in front of a Sonos Move 2 speaker.

Sonos CEO Patrick Spence today in the company's third-quarter earnings call said that two new products scheduled for later this year will be delayed until major issues in the Sonos ecosystem are fixed.

The news came on August 7 as Spence continued to apologize and lay out the roadmap for returning customer experience to its former standards following the botched May update to the Sonos app, as well as the greater Sonos hardware wireless system.

Read more