Sonos has heard the music: VoiceOver improvements, local playback, and more return to new app

Sonos launched a brand-new version of its app this month. And it received lots of critical feedback from users over missing features, broken VoiceOver for vision-impaired users, and more. Now the company has acknowledged some of the problems and launched its latest update with fixes.

At first, Sonos responded to criticism about its overhauled app saying it took “courage” to make.

But beyond a new UI that many found unappealing and lots of missing features, there was also the big problem of broken VoiceOver support for blind and vision-impaired users.

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Fortunately, Sonos moved quickly and launched an update on May 14 that restored features like alarms, VoiceOver support that works with individual app elements, and more bug fixes.

And today, Sonos shared on social media that it’s launched another update with further VoiceOver and TalkBack improvements, local music library playback has returned, and perhaps most notably, an acknowledgment that they have “heard your feedback and are moving quickly to improve your app experience.”

You can find the full release notes on Sonos’ website (below as well) and the latest iOS version is available on the App Store.

With Sonos being receptive to user feedback and making quick improvements, we’ll likely see more releases soon restoring further functionality.

Sonos 80.01.11 iOS release notes:

In this update:

• Support for the all new Sonos Roam 2.
• Improved VoiceOver support, allowing for easier navigation and control on the Now Playing Screen, System View, Output Selector, Queue, Volume Sliders, and Add Product.
• Improved TalkBack support for the Now Playing Screen, System View, and Add Product.
• Improved Local Music Library playback of folders.
• Added the ability to Search for content to use with an Alarm.
• Improved system connectivity for Boost and portable products in sleep mode.
• Fixed issues with Add Product that resulted in incomplete registration, a need to sign in again, or inability to confirm a product PIN.
• Fixed an issue with enabling Surround and Sub Audio.
• Fixed an issue that blocked Trueplay if a TV was the input source.
• Fixed an issue with asking for Local Network permissions.

Top image via Sonos

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