Sonos may have finally fixed its app’s biggest remaining problem

New Sonos app home screen shown on an iPhone, held in a person's hand
(Image credit: Sonos)

  • The terrible lag on the volume control appears to be gone
  • One of the most talked-about problems since the app update
  • Sonos' CEO is gone and the firm promises to "do right" by its customers

2024 was a terrible year for Sonos and many of its customers thanks to a botched app update that removed key functionality and introduced problems. By the end of 2024 it still wasn't completely fixed. But it's a new year, and it seems there's been a new dawn as well as the departure of CEO Patrick Spence: one of the most annoying on-going issues with the Sonos app finally appears to have been fixed.

This is going to sound daft to non-Sonos users. But customers are celebrating a massive change: the volume control… works!

Our Managing Editor Matt Bolton has checked this out on his own Sonos system, and says it's true: Hell has frozen over, pigs have learnt to fly and the moon has turned to cheese. The volume control works instantly!

What Sonos users are saying

The news broke on the r/sonos subreddit, home of some of Sonos's biggest fans and most disappointed customers. "They finally fixed the volume control," Brian Nicholson rejoiced.

The problem with the volume control was simple: there was tons of lag between adjusting it in the app to actually hearing the volume level change – if it even did change. And of course, that's a feature you're going to use very regularly so even a little lag is going to get very annoying very quickly, since you might want to change volume a few times in quick succession to get it right.

The volume issues have been among the top problems discussed on the subreddit for many months now. But not everybody is reporting that their app is fixed; the issue seems to be fixed on iOS but some Android users are still reporting problems; other users say they've never encountered any issues at all.

Assuming the issue really is fixed and this isn't going to turn out to be a false dawn, the posters' relief is understandable – but it's still pretty damning that it's taken months to make the best Sonos speakers' volume control work properly.

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Carrie Marshall
Contributor

Writer, broadcaster, musician and kitchen gadget obsessive Carrie Marshall has been writing about tech since 1998, contributing sage advice and odd opinions to all kinds of magazines and websites as well as writing more than a dozen books. Her memoir, Carrie Kills A Man, is on sale now and her next book, about pop music, is out in 2025. She is the singer in Glaswegian rock band Unquiet Mind.

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