Sonos' app is so bad, even fixing it qualifies as "Updates you'll love"

Sonos users have grown accustomed to a certain level of chaos when opening the company’s app. But this week, a software update announcement took the cake. A Reddit post by Deenglow titled “Sonos presenting fixes as features” caught my attention. It was mocking the company’s latest attempt to spin basic bug repairs as groundbreaking upgrades. The update’s splash screen cheerfully invited users to “explore app fixes” and “experience continuous improvements” in setup, navigation, and volume control. This felt like Sonos was handing out participation trophies for finally doing its homework.

The backlash isn’t new. Sonos’ app has been a sore spot since a controversial redesign stripped away features, slowed navigation, and introduced bugs that turned simple tasks like adjusting volume into a game of chance.

By May 2024, the company was scrambling to contain user fury, rolling out patches and workarounds (and awkwardly promising to do better). Later that year, an ex-Sonos employee even posted a rant about the company criticizing certain decisions that might have led to the company’s decline.

Fast-forward to January 2025, when Sonos fired its CEO over the app debacle, vowing to rebuild trust. The new leadership’s first big move? Labeling long-overdue fixes as “updates you’ll love.” The irony wasn’t lost on customers. “Explore app fixes??” wrote Reddit user JakePT, sarcastically quoting the update’s tagline.

Sonos’ habit of repackaging fixes as features highlights a deeper issue. After last year’s overhaul, the app became a punchline for its clunky interface and random crashes. Fans who once praised Sonos for premium hardware now joke about needing a PhD to navigate its software.

One Redditor even found the situation “lowkey hilarious,” acknowledging the absurdity of celebrating basic functionality. The company’s rocky journey — documented in earlier efforts to address backlash — shows just how far it’s had to climb. Last year’s promises of “continuous improvements” now ring hollow when the same language is used to describe fixes for problems that shouldn’t have existed in the first place. Still, some users are cautiously optimistic. As leoele noted, “They can call it whatever they like as long as it works.”

For now, Sonos seems stuck between a rock and a hard place. But if there’s a silver lining, it’s that the company is at least trying to listen — even if its marketing team needs a reality check. After all, when making the app not terrible becomes a selling point, you know the bar is underground.