I'm starting to feel a bit like the electric blue superhero Dr Manhattan from Watchmen, who sits on Mars and watches humanity do the same things over and over again, when it comes to reporting on the Sonos app: "it is June and Sonos has updated its troubled app. It is July and Sonos has updated its troubled app. It is August and Sonos has updated its troubled app." And that's because the Sonos app issues are about to enter their fifth month. But in an important plot development, Sonos has created a new tool to provide information on its update work, including what's coming soonest, bringing all the glamor of project management tools to the world of streaming audio.
The new tool is a Trello board, which enables you to see what Sonos has done, what it's doing, and what it's going to do next. You can access the Sonos app Trello board here.
Why Sonos wants you to say hello to Trello
I'm needling Sonos a little bit here because while like all right-thinking people I've learnt to hate project-management tools of all kinds, the Trello board here is actually pretty useful and performs a similar role to Epic Games' one for Fortnite, which is where it posts details of bugs and updates. The Sonos Trello provides quick links to support articles, but the most important columns are the ones that tell you what's on the app update roadmap, what's coming soon and what has recently been fixed.
For example, right now if you take a look at the Sonos Trello you'll see the Clear Queue feature has been fixed on Android and the Night Mode toggle in Room settings for soundbars has also been added; there are fixes to search and latency issues en route and the app is about to get support for TruePlay in iOS 18. The board also keeps track of larger issues that have already been resolved, and there's a section called "what we're hearing & working on" to show what's being looked at in the longer term.
Sonos has invested a great deal of time, talent and money into the app updates, to the point where it's overshadowed the launch of the Sonos Ace headphones and delayed the launch of the Sonos Arc 2/Ultra and Sonos Sub 4. And while the Trello board shows that there's still work to be done, the app is in a much better place than it was when it first launched back in May, and means the best Sonos speakers are getting back to normal, relatively, when it comes to usability.
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