Sonos Can’t Release Old App for Customers Unhappy With Design Changes

Sonos won’t be able to re-release its old app to appease customers that have been dissatisfied with the new version of the app, Sonos CEO Patrick Spence today said on Reddit (via The Verge).

Spence said that he was “hopeful” the old app would be able to be re-released up until “very recently” as an alternative for people having issues, but Sonos found that doing so would ultimately make the issues worse because of backend updates to cloud servers and the software that runs on speakers.

Everything has been on the table in terms of finding the fastest path to fixing your systems. In fact, until very recently I’d been hopeful that we could re-release the old app (S2) as an alternative for those of you that are having issues that we’ve not yet resolved.

The trick of course is that Sonos is not just the mobile app, but software that runs on your speakers and in the cloud too. In the months since the new mobile app launched we’ve been updating the software that runs on our speakers and in the cloud to the point where today S2 is less reliable & less stable then what you remember. After doing extensive testing we’ve reluctantly concluded that re-releasing S2 would make the problems worse, not better. I’m sure this is disappointing. It was disappointing to me.

Earlier this month, The Verge reported that Sonos was considering bringing back the original version of its app, and Sonos was reportedly hopeful that allowing customers to revert to the old app would provide an interim solution as the company works to improve the new app. It sounds like that plan has been scrapped, which is unfortunate for customers who are having problems with the redesign.

Sonos released a redesigned version of its app back in May, and it has turned out to be a disaster for the company. Sonos customers quickly found that the new app lacked several key features and was riddled with bugs, and there have been ongoing complaints for months.

Sonos issued an apology in July and shared an outline of future update plans that will see missing features returned in September and October. In August, Sonos said that it would delay two upcoming product launches planned for 2024 to focus on improving the app.

In today’s Reddit post, Spence said that the “original architect of the Sonos platform” has been put back in charge, and that the company has also “pulled together the very best and most experienced engineers” that it has to work on the app until it is fixed.