The Sonos app update that finally respects your time
The latest Sonos app update is a redesigned speaker management app that introduces clearer tab-based navigation, flexible speaker sorting, and more intuitive multi-room audio control to fix complaints about complexity and a broken interface from a previous redesign.
Sonos has started rolling out a new update to its companion app, adding tab navigation and speaker sorting options. This is not a cosmetic refresh; it is the company’s attempt to repair the disastrous redesign from two years ago that broke the app so badly it delayed new hardware launches. Announced in a Reddit post, the update is arriving in versions 87.00.36 on iOS and 87.00.35 on Android, with a phased rollout that could take up to two weeks to reach everyone. For a platform built on multi-room audio control, this release finally aligns the software with the quality of Sonos’ speakers—and it does so by embracing a surprisingly simple idea: put the basics back where people expect them.
Tab navigation: familiar, obvious, and long overdue
The heart of the Sonos interface redesign is the new tab layout, and it fixes one of the app’s most frustrating sins: hiding the basics. The bottom navigation bar now features clear buttons for Home, System, and Search, and the app highlights whichever button is selected far more clearly. You enable this Improved Navigation through a dedicated toggle in settings, which says a lot about Sonos’ caution after the last redesign.
This change matters more than it sounds. Multi-room audio control should start with a clear mental map: where you are, what’s playing, and which speakers are involved. By restoring familiar tab navigation, Sonos reduces cognitive load and shortens the path between opening the app and doing the thing you came for. It is a quiet admission that the previous interface was over-designed. When a company has to tell people to "Enable Improved Navigation" in settings, it is acknowledging that the default experience used to be anything but improved.
Speaker sorting that matches how people think about their homes
If you own more than a couple of Sonos speakers, you know the old experience: a cluttered list of rooms that never felt quite under control. The new Sonos app update finally treats speaker management as a first-class problem. Users can sort their Sonos speakers alphabetically, by most-used, or based on which speakers are actively playing audio. On top of that, you can pin specific speakers to the top for quick access to your favorites.
This is the most important improvement for ordinary households. Multi-room audio control only feels magical when you can glance, tap, and know what you’re about to change. Sorting by "most‑used" mirrors how people live—kitchen, living room, office—while sorting by "currently playing" fits party scenarios where you need to see which zones are active right now. According to CEO Tom Conrad, the team spent hundreds of hours watching real customers use the app to understand what confused them and what slowed them down when they were "just trying to change the darn volume." For once, the speaker management app respects everyday patterns instead of forcing users to adapt to a designer’s hierarchy.
Volume, Now Playing, and the small touches that rebuild trust
Beyond navigation and sorting, Sonos is tightening the experience where it was most obviously frayed: volume control and Now Playing. iPhone owners get a new dynamic volume slider that replaces the old controls and is designed to be more responsive. The slider can display the current volume level or show an EQ shortcut when enabled, putting fine-tuning within a thumb’s reach instead of inside buried menus.
The Now Playing screen also gets a visual refresh, with background colors that change based on the album art, plus swipe-to-delete for Sonos Favorites. None of these tweaks are headline-grabbing features, but they tackle the micro-frustrations that made the last redesign feel hostile to average users. A multi-room audio setup lives or dies by how quickly you can correct a bad queue, lower a too-loud room, or remove a stale favorite. These quality-of-life upgrades show that Sonos has stopped chasing novelty and started repairing the daily interactions that actually shape user trust.
From Sonos 2.0 disaster to a more human multi-room future
This update exists because Sonos had to dig itself out of a hole of its own making. The earlier Sonos 2.0 redesign was so disastrous it nearly tanked the company’s reputation and delayed multiple hardware launches while teams scrambled to fix the damage. Since then, Sonos has been on what one report called a "generational sprint" to bring the app back to its former glory. The current release is the clearest sign that sprint is paying off.
The rollout is phased and may take up to two weeks, so not everyone will see the changes immediately. But this time, Sonos appears to have its priorities straight: make the app easier to learn, easier to use, and better suited to everyday multi-room audio control. There are still gaps—lock-screen controls and widgets remain on many wishlists. Yet with tab navigation restored, speaker sorting finally intuitive, and volume control less of a gamble, Sonos has taken a necessary step from clever system to comfortable appliance. The message to long-time owners is clear: the app is no longer the weakest link.
