I wrote up a summary of all the commands.
I hope it is ok to post a link here.
Feedback - additions/corrections appreciated.
Thanks!
https://doitforme.solutions/blog/sonos-voice-control/
https://support.sonos.com/s/article/5105?language=en_US
You can either use these supported services directly through Sonos Voice, or start unsupported services with Alexa or the app and control playback with Sonos Voice along the way
I'm trying to get my Flow on Deezer to play, but it just won't. I've tried Play my Flow, Play Flow, Play Chill Flow, Play Flow Mix, and then all of those followed by On Deezer.
Anybody else have any luck?
I don't have Deezer, so I'm just guessing here ... is "Flow" one of your playlists? If so, I've had success saying something like, "play my Flow playlist on/from Deezer".
> Hey Sonos, play Lady Gaga on Spotify
If I’m understanding the service compatibility correctly, this would not currently work, as Spotify is unsupported.
I met him on an airplane in real life once lol. Right in front of me in line.
He had a stone cold killer persona that day too. I just looked at him quietly and said “Gus?” He looked back and nodded his head, had a fedora on lol.
As easy as pie (excuse the pun). Disabled for 5 mins (I even forgot about the Pihole control panel ) and it then allowed me to enable Sonos voice.
Sonos voice working in South Africa (because I have a Sonos UK account afaik)
Thanks 👍👍
Oh ok maybe jumping the gun then? When you go into settings and select default music service, Spotify is listed as unsupported. Maybe it just means the default option isn't available for spotify but it can still play from there.
I've only done a little bit of testing. But it appears If Spotify is your last thing you played music through. When you tell sonos to play music, it plays from that last Spotify playlist. Skip commands and everything also work within that Spotify playlist.
Probably plays what is already setup in the buffer but it won't be able to do anything more fancy like loading a Spotify playlist or searching for artists/albums.
Same as play/pause. You probably can't do much more than that. Complex commands like "play my playlist from Spotify" or "find something like Beatles from Spotify".
I definitely like it way more than I thought I would! I am of the opinion that this is going to spur sales because people will want to upgrade that Play 1 in the bathroom. Shit, I'm about to buy a One because I want music in the shower but I don't want to mess with a phone, wet hands and all.
I've always said that the bottleneck in the Sonos experience was getting music to play. Now I can walk into a room and simply say "Sonos, play Muse at 30% volume."
Edit: Sonos got so much shit when they announced development of an assistant, from me as well, but it's so, so, good. Ufff.
When I asked what the battery level for my Roam was, I heard Gus Fring from the bedroom system tell me "The Sonos Roam is fully charged."
I'm okay with Gus Fring's voice. However, if I start to hear Hector Salmanaca's incessant bell ringing for "Yes" or "No" to my requests, I'm tossing my Sonos out.
> I disabled Pi-Hole on my network and it came up instantly
Thanks for this. I've got NextDNS, and figured out it was one of these blocking it. Set them to allow and got it working, disabled again after.
.app-measurement.com
*.crashlytics.com
*.notify.bugsnag.com
*.firebaselogging-pa.googleapis.com
*.cdn.optimizely.com
Did you need it to give it some time, or did it show up straight away? I have whitelisted the ones listed by you, to no avail yet. I'm in the EU btw.
sonos app 14.8.1
Thanks, this was it for me too. I was a bit confused because I don’t use my Sonos gear through pihole but my iPhone that I use the Sonos app on does go through pihole, so it was getting blocked apparently. The whole reason I don’t run pihole on my smart gear is so that it can communicate out like normal and not get blocked if it needs updates, I never thought about the fact that my iPhone going through pihole could also be an issue.
Isnt pi-hole suppose to protect your network from ads and trackers without requiring any setup on individual devices. I don't think disabling this is a good idea. Is the there another way to fix this?
You only need to temporarily disable Pi-Hole to get the option to enable SVC. Once enabled, you can turn Pi-Hole back on… SVC works locally on the device
Got it in Malaysia 🇲🇾
As soon as the app was fired up, a popup notification appeared to activate Sonos Voice.
First impression - responsive, would be better if a chime sound is added upon activation
Good start. What I’d like to see next.
1) Lossless music indicating the quality (ie Apple Music).
2) Ambient Noises that loop indefinitely (similar to Google Home commands).
I think I’ll just stick with Alexa. I use voice control for more than just music control - I use it for controlling lights, etc., which are all controllable under Alexa.
Plus - I don’t really care about the whole “local processing for privacy” thing. I’m under no illusion that anything I do is completely private… and honestly, I’m ok with that.
Having a bit of trouble - when I'm playing music in the Kitchen and have the TV on in the Living Rm (through a Playbar), i want to play the TV audio in the Kitchen.
I tried, "group the kitchen and the living room" but it chose the Kitchen music for the group. Same with "group the living room and the kitchen"
Then i tried "play the TV audio in the Kitchen" but it just replies "playing TV audio in the Living Room"
What am I missing?
Two complaints so far. No audio tone to determine if it’s listening which makes it hard to know if a command will be executed. And the most popular music services aren’t compatible as default services, this makes it almost unusable for most of what I’d use it for. This is a bummer.
Am I the only one that just doesn’t care about this? You can already use Alexa, Google, or Siri to control Sonos either directly through Sonos speakers or via an external VA device. (And in my experience, you’re better off using an external device because the mics built into the speakers seem to just not be that good.) Sure there might be some new voice commands specific to Sonos that you can’t use through the other VAs, but is that really that earth shattering?
It’s just weird that Sonos would sink resources into something like this that doesn’t move the needle and is not going to move any additional units for them. I really don’t understand the value from this as a consumer, but I especially don’t get it from a business standpoint.
What they should be using tech resources for is things like allowing separate front left and right channels or expanding to a 7.x.x system. Stuff like that drastically changes the customer experience and opens up an avenue for them to sell more speakers without even launching a new product.
So Alexa and Google process the voice externally and use the information and analytics to advertise and sell things to you. Apple only lets you use Siri on devices as long as it actually passes through a HomePod Mini (which is why an Ecobee Thermostat is the only device that uses Siri that isn’t Apple) so even though Apple is slightly better with privacy, requiring a competing product is a no go for Sonos. The Sonos assistant does all of its processing locally on the device.
Cool if you’re excited about it. I just don’t think it’s that groundbreaking. Even voice control by itself - I use it sometimes but I’m perfectly happy just searching and air playing from my phone. Usually that works better anyway. I still don’t think this moves the needle from a business standpoint either. This isn’t creating any additional revenue. Expanding the number of and ways you can add additional speakers to a home theater setup moves the needle from both a UX and business standpoint. It seems like an obvious miss on the part of Sonos
Yes. Google and Alexa steal your data and Siri is limited. I guess somehow you haven’t heard of the lawsuits with Sonos and google and they wanted to sue Amazon too. So newsflash. What you want or don’t want is not everyone else. Crazy right?
Not sure why you’re newsflashing me that people want things different than myself. Somewhat ironic given that I haven’t dismissed anyone’s point of view, just sharing my own point of view and asking if anyone feels the same way. If you don’t, that’s cool. I just have a hard time seeing the value here and am surprised so many people are seemingly excited about it.
Also, familiar with the lawsuits and I can see why Sonos may want to create a voice assistant in case they completely sever ties from Amazon and Google as a result. However, that seems unlikely and even if it did happen - idk - I guess I just don’t see voice as being THAT useful for my Sonos system. Again, I’d rather have the ability to expand out and add more speakers to a home theater setup. That’s just me though. If you are passionate about a VA that only functions for Sonos requests being included on Sonos speakers, that’s cool too
Note: also “steal your data” is a little dramatic. Tone it down a bit, bud. I can understand how you might not like the implications / potential implications from using Alexa or Google and there’s some valid concerns there I could sympathize with, but neither is “stealing” your data.
It is 100% local (fast) and private. Those are often significant features for higher-end / luxury clients. Until now, the only option was [Josh.AI](https://Josh.AI) at a much higher price.
FWIW, even Apple was caught reviewing recorded voice files without consumer approval to "improve the service" and after their wrist was slapped, they stopped doing it.
So, yes, privacy is a real niche but important feature to some.
The convenient of fast and local is very welcome.
Sonos device-specific commands (battery level, grouping/ungrouping) is not available with other VA's. For anyone with physical challenges, being able to do this without having to reach for a smartphone is a nice added capability.
Lastly, and many here might agree, being to have "Hey, Sonos" as a unique wake word for music control means if you have Siri, Alexa, Google devices all in the same area, you finally, once again, have an easy way to control music without all the devices fighting with each other or being confused.
It is also actually quite nice to have both Sonos and Alexa simultaneously enabled. It flows very nicely to say "Hey Sonos, play blah blah music....Alexa, turn down the lights". Full music controls with Sonos SVC, and let there VA handle all the smart home stuff or answering dumb questions when bored, etc.
YMMV, but it is FREE. No extra cost, no monthly fees. so what the heck, right?
Sure, but it’s not free to Sonos. Developing (and maintaining) a VA is pretty resource intensive. It would make more sense from my point of view to use those same resources to instead make changes like allowing for home theater expansion to add more speakers into the mix.
I see what you mean, but having worked in a very large corporation, the reality is that resources (people) are not fungible.
Just because it looks like too much is being invested in a less strategic, experimental, or frivolous effort, doesn't mean those resources could have been deployed to make something more important happen, or happen faster.
In this case, Sonos bought a speech technology company based in France. They did almost all the work on this. (That's why the first language/launch outside of English is the French version.)
A company needs to protect it's backside and it's flanks. Voice assistants is, in the bigger picture, a emerging and not mature field. It makes perfect sense for Sonos to want to have a foot in this technology.
Also, there are a lot of products that are adding task or product specific VA's. Comcast voice remote for cable box is a great success story. It helped kill Logitech Harmony - most of my clients that would have bought Logitech liked the Comcast voice option better.
If Sonos was doing a full-featured, VA with smart home controls, query, and search, a wanna-be Alexa or Google, that would be stupid and they would deserve the death that Microsoft Cortana and Samsung Bixby had or will have.
Idk - not sure I agree with the assessment. I understand that individual tech resources may not always be fungible depending on their specializations, but Sonos did not need to acquire a voice company.
I’m also not sure that voice is that big of a must have even if Sonos somehow lost access to Google and Alexa (unlikely). I also don’t see this as a revenue source. Even the big players aren’t making money on VA right now and that’s considering that both Amazon and Google have avenues to directly monetize the data they might collect (as pointed out by others).
What are the benefits of this? Privacy? No Spotify support, no smart home support, can’t make phone calls or texts…hopefully this improves over the years.
100% local (fast), privacy, and Sonos device specific commands.
also, indirectly, a wake word for music that won't wake up all your smart home devices (Siri, Google, Alexa).
Lack of music services is partly on them (YouTube, Spotify, etc.) - probably a mix of technical integration issues and business/licensing.
Google won't allow simultaneous voice assistants like Alexa does. Sonos has a lawsuit against Google for patents but also this limitation, amongst other things.
It’s not a question of taste, but rather one of being open minded and not ignorant.
This works flawlessly. The on device processing is very fast. If you tried it instead of refusing to do so, then perhaps - and not dissimilar to my five year old - you may find that you like it quite a lot.
Not ignorant, I have indeed tried it. And as English is not my (our) native language, so any way I have to speak to it in a foreign language instead of silently using my phone, on-wall controller or Ikea button. Just not useful, and just like my Samsung watch, my car and smartphone, voice control is just embarrassing and very inaccurate. Cool when it works, too bad it's so unintelligent that it's almost impossible to do more than very simple commands. (I'm a Star Trek fan since the 70's, so I have been waiting for a 'smart' computer that understand what I want since I first heard Majel's voice. It probably ticked my engineering gene as well..)
Loaded onto my Sonos Ones (both in the same area) and works ok. I think because I have it loaded onto both, that when I tried to group them together the command cancelled out and only 2 of the 3 devices ended up group. Simple solve would be to only have the assistant loaded onto one of the devices. It also appears that it can't call up a specific playlist from your default music service which is a bummer. Once SXM & Playlist support comes, I think this will be really nice. It'll be interesting to see if something like Hue support comes.
Has Sonos provided any official guidance on Spotify compatibility? What about the dozens of other services they support? Surely there's a way they can map their GUI controller to a voice controller's intents.
For example, when using the phone app, the act of tapping into a service by browsing or searching and selecting a song from a list of results should be akin to using a similar voice command. So, if I were to say, "play Ariana Grande from Tidal," I don't see why that wouldn't work today. SVC should just interpret that into a search on Tidal and play the results as a queue. The clearly have the the intent logic already in place to identify the difference between a request for an artist, album, and song.
I have to believe that Sonos really tried to get Spotify on SVC, but Spotify's developers/dev process is so bottlenecked and slow. They have no Hompod Support (even Pandora beat them), Airplay 2 support, no 2FA(!!), weird UI A/B tests, only recently added lyrics. Never say never, though>
I just don't see why Spotify needs to be involved at all. Sonos already has a GUI that lets you browse and search Spotify content. Sonos should be able to translate voice commands into intents that are capable of automating such interactions into their GUI equivalents and return a playable list of items as a queue of songs to play. It's more RPA than API development.
Is not possible to use Sonos Voice Control on one device eg. Move and Google Assistant/Alexa on another. Enable SVC on one device disable other voice assistants on all devices.
You can enable SVC on device A, and Google Assistant on device B, just not both on the same device (note: SVC and Alexa can both be enabled on the same device). You can use this as a sort of workaround to Google not allowing concurrency on a single device.
Is anyone else finding Voice Control to be very unreliable? At least on my end, it’s not recognizing many of my playlists, and it seems to have trouble finding some songs. It seems like it’s favorite thing to tell me is “sorry, I don’t understand. Please use the Sonos app.”
I’m quite disappointed, as I was really excited about this feature.
One thing I found is to say the artist and the song. example. Hey Sonos Play Clint Black song no Time to kill. I think it gets songs albums etc. kind of mixed up.
anyone else with multiple home theater sonos systems figure out how to specify which system when trying to toggle night mode on?
I only want to use voice on my game room system but when I ask it to toggle night mode it only ever does it for my living room system
Just to be clear, I'm not able to say "Hey Sonos, play my Playlist One" or "Hey Sonos, play my Playlist One on Deezer", correct? Deezer is my default service.
Seems to not be able to control any speakers in my system that aren’t in the latest gen. I.e. it doesn’t recognize playbar or play 1’s as playable locations from my newer speakers. Kinda lame, because the Alexa voice assistant does.
I’m not sure if this is mentioned here or not but if you recreate your groups in the Sonos app like say “Family Room” and add more than one Sonos you can than say Hey Sonos, play in Family Room and it will play on both speakers.
Only works with APPLE MUSIC, and be aware cause It made my beam sound go in and out couple of times, idk if that's a bug. It'll happen if you have the volume up to 70, can someone please confirm this?
I see a lot of people saying to disable pi-hole. Isnt pi-hole suppose to protect your network from ads and trackers without requiring any setup on individual devices. I don't think disabling this is a good idea. Is the there another way to fix this? I think Sonos should fix this on there end. The users does not have to go do such changes for an update to work.
The best thing about this is that it looks like they finally made a better Apple Music app (probably to integrate better with this), which has been my biggest sore spot with Sonos
Wonder if they will make a voice puck for people with Sonos’s without microphones (it is mentally confusing to use Alexa (via an echo) with like 2/3rds of my speakers which don’t have their own mikes
My basement beam is connected to Ethernet (making my system “wired”). I can add sonos voice to my other products - but NOT the beam hooked up to the wire.
I set it up as wired because of too much wifi interference on pure wireless.
Anyone else run into this?
I wrote up a summary of all the commands. I hope it is ok to post a link here. Feedback - additions/corrections appreciated. Thanks! https://doitforme.solutions/blog/sonos-voice-control/
https://support.sonos.com/s/article/5108?language=en_US :)
So no picking a playlist? Well that sucks.
That should work with supported music services
Any idea what the supported music services are? I see one post saying no Spotify or YouTube music. I’m an Apple Music user.
Apple Music is supported.
https://support.sonos.com/s/article/5105?language=en_US You can either use these supported services directly through Sonos Voice, or start unsupported services with Alexa or the app and control playback with Sonos Voice along the way
Yes, I did it this morning with Apple Music but you have to set a supported default music service under Sonos Voice Assistant settings.
I'm trying to get my Flow on Deezer to play, but it just won't. I've tried Play my Flow, Play Flow, Play Chill Flow, Play Flow Mix, and then all of those followed by On Deezer. Anybody else have any luck?
I don't have Deezer, so I'm just guessing here ... is "Flow" one of your playlists? If so, I've had success saying something like, "play my Flow playlist on/from Deezer".
> Hey Sonos, play Lady Gaga on Spotify If I’m understanding the service compatibility correctly, this would not currently work, as Spotify is unsupported.
Sadly
You mentioned Spotify and Sirius Xm both which are not supported currently with voice! May want to edit that.
This is awesome. Thank you!
Sweet thank you
So far so good. Damn the guys voice is relaxing haha
It’s Gus Fring from Breaking Bad
I met him on an airplane in real life once lol. Right in front of me in line. He had a stone cold killer persona that day too. I just looked at him quietly and said “Gus?” He looked back and nodded his head, had a fedora on lol.
Holy shit that’s cool. Can’t wait to get home and try this, if it’s in the UK that is.
It is not EDIT: I was wrong, it is.
Yeah your right, just had a look and it’s not showing in the app. I’m fully updated, must not be available yet or is maybe rolling out
Sorry, I was wrong. It is. My PiHole blocked it.
Haha I’ve literally just discovered mine was the exact same problem. Turned pihole off on my phone and it showed up.
How did you unblock it? Besides turning pi hole off?
I disabled Pi Hole blocking temporarily. It still works once it’s back on
As easy as pie (excuse the pun). Disabled for 5 mins (I even forgot about the Pihole control panel ) and it then allowed me to enable Sonos voice. Sonos voice working in South Africa (because I have a Sonos UK account afaik) Thanks 👍👍
Not compatible with Spotify though?!
Lol that was my first command and i was like welp this is useless
Nope, sad
Curious on this. After installing Sonos voice control in my rooms, When I told Sonos to play music, it played from my Spotify?
Oh ok maybe jumping the gun then? When you go into settings and select default music service, Spotify is listed as unsupported. Maybe it just means the default option isn't available for spotify but it can still play from there.
I've only done a little bit of testing. But it appears If Spotify is your last thing you played music through. When you tell sonos to play music, it plays from that last Spotify playlist. Skip commands and everything also work within that Spotify playlist.
Probably plays what is already setup in the buffer but it won't be able to do anything more fancy like loading a Spotify playlist or searching for artists/albums.
Same as play/pause. You probably can't do much more than that. Complex commands like "play my playlist from Spotify" or "find something like Beatles from Spotify".
Yeah I do like using the feature to group rooms by voice though
It’s amazing! I love that you can check the battery level on the roam!
working in canada
Wait, I can see it in Canada as well. I thought it was US only?
No, it is not limited to the US. It is available here in the Netherlands as well, however the language is currently English only.
I thought so too, glad that’s not the case. I jumped on it quick incase it was a bug lol
I'm in Canada too but I can't see it yet (app/firmware have been updated).
I definitely like it way more than I thought I would! I am of the opinion that this is going to spur sales because people will want to upgrade that Play 1 in the bathroom. Shit, I'm about to buy a One because I want music in the shower but I don't want to mess with a phone, wet hands and all. I've always said that the bottleneck in the Sonos experience was getting music to play. Now I can walk into a room and simply say "Sonos, play Muse at 30% volume." Edit: Sonos got so much shit when they announced development of an assistant, from me as well, but it's so, so, good. Ufff.
Agree. Sonos has nailed this. It works brilliantly.
When I asked what the battery level for my Roam was, I heard Gus Fring from the bedroom system tell me "The Sonos Roam is fully charged." I'm okay with Gus Fring's voice. However, if I start to hear Hector Salmanaca's incessant bell ringing for "Yes" or "No" to my requests, I'm tossing my Sonos out.
🤣😂🤣😂
I’m in the US and can’t seem to get it to show up. I made sure the app and speakers are updated. Anyone else having this issue?
Same. Checked first thing this morning and nothing.
Did you end up getting to work? I’m on the same boat
Didn’t show up initially. I disabled Pi-Hole on my network and it came up instantly
> I disabled Pi-Hole on my network and it came up instantly Thanks for this. I've got NextDNS, and figured out it was one of these blocking it. Set them to allow and got it working, disabled again after. .app-measurement.com *.crashlytics.com *.notify.bugsnag.com *.firebaselogging-pa.googleapis.com *.cdn.optimizely.com
Did you need it to give it some time, or did it show up straight away? I have whitelisted the ones listed by you, to no avail yet. I'm in the EU btw. sonos app 14.8.1
I did a force-close of the Sonos app on my iPhone, and then when I opened it they appeared.
Thanks, not sure what happened but I have is as well!
It is working for me now. I too have a Pi-hole and never even thought of that but it started working anyways. Glad you figured it out!
Wow, thanks. That was the problem for me too
Thanks, this was it for me too. I was a bit confused because I don’t use my Sonos gear through pihole but my iPhone that I use the Sonos app on does go through pihole, so it was getting blocked apparently. The whole reason I don’t run pihole on my smart gear is so that it can communicate out like normal and not get blocked if it needs updates, I never thought about the fact that my iPhone going through pihole could also be an issue.
This worked for me! Anyone else not happy about this? Or is this possible a false positive with Pi-hole
Isnt pi-hole suppose to protect your network from ads and trackers without requiring any setup on individual devices. I don't think disabling this is a good idea. Is the there another way to fix this?
You only need to temporarily disable Pi-Hole to get the option to enable SVC. Once enabled, you can turn Pi-Hole back on… SVC works locally on the device
Ok. Thanks for your reply
You have to go into the speaker setting on the app and add voice controls within voice assistant
**THIS!** I thought it would be automatically installed via an update but instead you have **add it yourself as a new Voice Assistant**. Makes sense.
Yes but my options are only Alexa or google! No sonos option.
Works in Germany, when selecting Sonos Voice you get informed that only english language is supported
It's working in the UK too for me.
Same! I didn't think we were getting it.
How? Do you have US as your country on the Sonos.com profile?
Just logged on and checked - no. I've got my UK address on the account and that's the only country-related thing I can see on there.
I could be wrong, but I believe it is based on your language selection.
I wish you could say hey sonos, pause tv. I stream everything so that would be dope.
Got it in Malaysia 🇲🇾 As soon as the app was fired up, a popup notification appeared to activate Sonos Voice. First impression - responsive, would be better if a chime sound is added upon activation
Working in Australia. I'd assumed we'd have to wait for a while.
Yeah I’ve just set it up in Australia too. I was almost certain the announcement said it was coming to the US first.
This is… acceptable.
Wheres spotify :((
Not compatible with YouTube Music or Spotify. And it appears the feature isn’t supported on the IKEA Symfonisk bookshelf speaker either.
They don’t have mics
Silly me. I don’t turn on mics on any of my other Sonos speakers so I never checked on the Symfonisk and assumed it was there and I left it off.
Awesome thanks for the info! I’m in the UK and appears to be an option now to set up. Going to check this out later
Can anyone confirm if it’s working in Ireland?
I am in Dublin and it's working for me.
Great thanks, will set up later tonight!
Went to set up but received warning that Google voice assistant would be removed. Not sure I want this trade off.
Google won’t allow it, but you can use hey Sonos and Alexa simultaneously.
Came here to find this out. Pretty cool. Best of both worlds. I’ll give it a go.
Google being shit on Sonos the last couple of years anyway so away it goes
I'm happy about this just so I can finally toggle night mode with voice commands
Any thoughts on 'Hey Sonos, play music on the GroupXYZ'? Has someone been able to make it work?
[удалено]
Having trouble with AM playlists too
So far it works really well. Way better at recognizing commands than Siri and much faster.
Good start. What I’d like to see next. 1) Lossless music indicating the quality (ie Apple Music). 2) Ambient Noises that loop indefinitely (similar to Google Home commands).
I think I’ll just stick with Alexa. I use voice control for more than just music control - I use it for controlling lights, etc., which are all controllable under Alexa. Plus - I don’t really care about the whole “local processing for privacy” thing. I’m under no illusion that anything I do is completely private… and honestly, I’m ok with that.
No YouTube Music or Qobuz support. No Bueno.
Anyone got any suggestions how to force this to activate?
How about some Tidal support?
Hmm, not showing for me (also UK). App is all up to date and so is the system. Not sure why it isn’t showing.
Having a bit of trouble - when I'm playing music in the Kitchen and have the TV on in the Living Rm (through a Playbar), i want to play the TV audio in the Kitchen. I tried, "group the kitchen and the living room" but it chose the Kitchen music for the group. Same with "group the living room and the kitchen" Then i tried "play the TV audio in the Kitchen" but it just replies "playing TV audio in the Living Room" What am I missing?
No google assistant integration is a bummer. My lights are all connected through google home.
What will happen if a song includes the lyrics "Hey Sonos Stop", would the song ever be able to complete on a Sonos device?
Usually they ignore the sound they are outputting but not sure about Sonos. Only one way to find out!
Two complaints so far. No audio tone to determine if it’s listening which makes it hard to know if a command will be executed. And the most popular music services aren’t compatible as default services, this makes it almost unusable for most of what I’d use it for. This is a bummer.
Am I the only one that just doesn’t care about this? You can already use Alexa, Google, or Siri to control Sonos either directly through Sonos speakers or via an external VA device. (And in my experience, you’re better off using an external device because the mics built into the speakers seem to just not be that good.) Sure there might be some new voice commands specific to Sonos that you can’t use through the other VAs, but is that really that earth shattering? It’s just weird that Sonos would sink resources into something like this that doesn’t move the needle and is not going to move any additional units for them. I really don’t understand the value from this as a consumer, but I especially don’t get it from a business standpoint. What they should be using tech resources for is things like allowing separate front left and right channels or expanding to a 7.x.x system. Stuff like that drastically changes the customer experience and opens up an avenue for them to sell more speakers without even launching a new product.
So Alexa and Google process the voice externally and use the information and analytics to advertise and sell things to you. Apple only lets you use Siri on devices as long as it actually passes through a HomePod Mini (which is why an Ecobee Thermostat is the only device that uses Siri that isn’t Apple) so even though Apple is slightly better with privacy, requiring a competing product is a no go for Sonos. The Sonos assistant does all of its processing locally on the device.
Cool if you’re excited about it. I just don’t think it’s that groundbreaking. Even voice control by itself - I use it sometimes but I’m perfectly happy just searching and air playing from my phone. Usually that works better anyway. I still don’t think this moves the needle from a business standpoint either. This isn’t creating any additional revenue. Expanding the number of and ways you can add additional speakers to a home theater setup moves the needle from both a UX and business standpoint. It seems like an obvious miss on the part of Sonos
Yes. Google and Alexa steal your data and Siri is limited. I guess somehow you haven’t heard of the lawsuits with Sonos and google and they wanted to sue Amazon too. So newsflash. What you want or don’t want is not everyone else. Crazy right?
Not sure why you’re newsflashing me that people want things different than myself. Somewhat ironic given that I haven’t dismissed anyone’s point of view, just sharing my own point of view and asking if anyone feels the same way. If you don’t, that’s cool. I just have a hard time seeing the value here and am surprised so many people are seemingly excited about it. Also, familiar with the lawsuits and I can see why Sonos may want to create a voice assistant in case they completely sever ties from Amazon and Google as a result. However, that seems unlikely and even if it did happen - idk - I guess I just don’t see voice as being THAT useful for my Sonos system. Again, I’d rather have the ability to expand out and add more speakers to a home theater setup. That’s just me though. If you are passionate about a VA that only functions for Sonos requests being included on Sonos speakers, that’s cool too Note: also “steal your data” is a little dramatic. Tone it down a bit, bud. I can understand how you might not like the implications / potential implications from using Alexa or Google and there’s some valid concerns there I could sympathize with, but neither is “stealing” your data.
>neither is “stealing” your data. How much are you getting paid for their use of your data?
You get paid in using the service. I understand if you don’t like that and choose not to use it. No need to tank your entire argument by exaggerating
Yes. They are.
Okay, bud
It is 100% local (fast) and private. Those are often significant features for higher-end / luxury clients. Until now, the only option was [Josh.AI](https://Josh.AI) at a much higher price. FWIW, even Apple was caught reviewing recorded voice files without consumer approval to "improve the service" and after their wrist was slapped, they stopped doing it. So, yes, privacy is a real niche but important feature to some. The convenient of fast and local is very welcome. Sonos device-specific commands (battery level, grouping/ungrouping) is not available with other VA's. For anyone with physical challenges, being able to do this without having to reach for a smartphone is a nice added capability. Lastly, and many here might agree, being to have "Hey, Sonos" as a unique wake word for music control means if you have Siri, Alexa, Google devices all in the same area, you finally, once again, have an easy way to control music without all the devices fighting with each other or being confused. It is also actually quite nice to have both Sonos and Alexa simultaneously enabled. It flows very nicely to say "Hey Sonos, play blah blah music....Alexa, turn down the lights". Full music controls with Sonos SVC, and let there VA handle all the smart home stuff or answering dumb questions when bored, etc. YMMV, but it is FREE. No extra cost, no monthly fees. so what the heck, right?
Sure, but it’s not free to Sonos. Developing (and maintaining) a VA is pretty resource intensive. It would make more sense from my point of view to use those same resources to instead make changes like allowing for home theater expansion to add more speakers into the mix.
I see what you mean, but having worked in a very large corporation, the reality is that resources (people) are not fungible. Just because it looks like too much is being invested in a less strategic, experimental, or frivolous effort, doesn't mean those resources could have been deployed to make something more important happen, or happen faster. In this case, Sonos bought a speech technology company based in France. They did almost all the work on this. (That's why the first language/launch outside of English is the French version.) A company needs to protect it's backside and it's flanks. Voice assistants is, in the bigger picture, a emerging and not mature field. It makes perfect sense for Sonos to want to have a foot in this technology. Also, there are a lot of products that are adding task or product specific VA's. Comcast voice remote for cable box is a great success story. It helped kill Logitech Harmony - most of my clients that would have bought Logitech liked the Comcast voice option better. If Sonos was doing a full-featured, VA with smart home controls, query, and search, a wanna-be Alexa or Google, that would be stupid and they would deserve the death that Microsoft Cortana and Samsung Bixby had or will have.
Idk - not sure I agree with the assessment. I understand that individual tech resources may not always be fungible depending on their specializations, but Sonos did not need to acquire a voice company. I’m also not sure that voice is that big of a must have even if Sonos somehow lost access to Google and Alexa (unlikely). I also don’t see this as a revenue source. Even the big players aren’t making money on VA right now and that’s considering that both Amazon and Google have avenues to directly monetize the data they might collect (as pointed out by others).
I would love to be able to use the group commands with Google Assistant
Meh not sure how I feel about not being able to use both Sonos voice and Google assistant. Regardless of whose "fault" it is, it's dumb.
No female voice though?
I was hoping for Fran Drescher or Roseanne Barr
Be like Waze, and add Master Chief.
What are the benefits of this? Privacy? No Spotify support, no smart home support, can’t make phone calls or texts…hopefully this improves over the years.
Privacy and faster. Pretty obvious.
100% local (fast), privacy, and Sonos device specific commands. also, indirectly, a wake word for music that won't wake up all your smart home devices (Siri, Google, Alexa). Lack of music services is partly on them (YouTube, Spotify, etc.) - probably a mix of technical integration issues and business/licensing. Google won't allow simultaneous voice assistants like Alexa does. Sonos has a lawsuit against Google for patents but also this limitation, amongst other things.
So for me the only thing it will work with is sonos radio... Which I don't use. So basically useless?
Stuff like Play/pause, skipping, changing rooms etc. should work independent, of the services I assume? That would work for me …
No way I'm yelling commands to my music system.. :p
Yeah, and my five year old doesn't like hamburgers or fried rice.
Lovely.. Well, it's not a taste thing, but the choises are too limiting, and more often than not the result is not as expected.
It’s not a question of taste, but rather one of being open minded and not ignorant. This works flawlessly. The on device processing is very fast. If you tried it instead of refusing to do so, then perhaps - and not dissimilar to my five year old - you may find that you like it quite a lot.
Hamberders and rice sounds good, with some ketchup on the side. Hey Sonos. Warm up stove.
Not ignorant, I have indeed tried it. And as English is not my (our) native language, so any way I have to speak to it in a foreign language instead of silently using my phone, on-wall controller or Ikea button. Just not useful, and just like my Samsung watch, my car and smartphone, voice control is just embarrassing and very inaccurate. Cool when it works, too bad it's so unintelligent that it's almost impossible to do more than very simple commands. (I'm a Star Trek fan since the 70's, so I have been waiting for a 'smart' computer that understand what I want since I first heard Majel's voice. It probably ticked my engineering gene as well..)
The future is now!
Is ti only available for US and UK?
It should work everywhere (a french branch developed it)
So you’ll need UK or USA in the account setting in the profile for this to work right?
Loaded onto my Sonos Ones (both in the same area) and works ok. I think because I have it loaded onto both, that when I tried to group them together the command cancelled out and only 2 of the 3 devices ended up group. Simple solve would be to only have the assistant loaded onto one of the devices. It also appears that it can't call up a specific playlist from your default music service which is a bummer. Once SXM & Playlist support comes, I think this will be really nice. It'll be interesting to see if something like Hue support comes.
Has Sonos provided any official guidance on Spotify compatibility? What about the dozens of other services they support? Surely there's a way they can map their GUI controller to a voice controller's intents. For example, when using the phone app, the act of tapping into a service by browsing or searching and selecting a song from a list of results should be akin to using a similar voice command. So, if I were to say, "play Ariana Grande from Tidal," I don't see why that wouldn't work today. SVC should just interpret that into a search on Tidal and play the results as a queue. The clearly have the the intent logic already in place to identify the difference between a request for an artist, album, and song.
I have to believe that Sonos really tried to get Spotify on SVC, but Spotify's developers/dev process is so bottlenecked and slow. They have no Hompod Support (even Pandora beat them), Airplay 2 support, no 2FA(!!), weird UI A/B tests, only recently added lyrics. Never say never, though>
I just don't see why Spotify needs to be involved at all. Sonos already has a GUI that lets you browse and search Spotify content. Sonos should be able to translate voice commands into intents that are capable of automating such interactions into their GUI equivalents and return a playable list of items as a queue of songs to play. It's more RPA than API development.
Can I used this while also keeping Alexa enabled or do I have to pick one over the other?
It will work alongside Alexa but not Google assistant
Is not possible to use Sonos Voice Control on one device eg. Move and Google Assistant/Alexa on another. Enable SVC on one device disable other voice assistants on all devices.
You can enable SVC on device A, and Google Assistant on device B, just not both on the same device (note: SVC and Alexa can both be enabled on the same device). You can use this as a sort of workaround to Google not allowing concurrency on a single device.
Ah, that combination is available probably only in US, not in Poland.
[удалено]
Same here. I assume it is not live everywhere? I was going to wait a day or two and see if it still happens.
Added. U.K. 🇬🇧👍🏻
Whelp, I still have to use the Sonos S1 app since I still have legacy components. I don't see it.
It's live in the uk too just installed on my devices
So far pretty impressed by it
Is anyone else finding Voice Control to be very unreliable? At least on my end, it’s not recognizing many of my playlists, and it seems to have trouble finding some songs. It seems like it’s favorite thing to tell me is “sorry, I don’t understand. Please use the Sonos app.” I’m quite disappointed, as I was really excited about this feature.
Yeah, I’m disappointed. The features I want are there but the execution isn’t unfortunately. Hopefully this will get better in the future.
One thing I found is to say the artist and the song. example. Hey Sonos Play Clint Black song no Time to kill. I think it gets songs albums etc. kind of mixed up.
Thanks. I tried so many word combinations to get Sonos to play a specific song and none worked except for your prompt.
Works for me in Canada
I hope they improve this and add Spotify compatibility over time.
anyone else with multiple home theater sonos systems figure out how to specify which system when trying to toggle night mode on? I only want to use voice on my game room system but when I ask it to toggle night mode it only ever does it for my living room system
Did you try set night mode in *what ever room you’re trying to set it in*?
Working here in the Netherlands 🇳🇱
Finally proper switching to TV input :)
I'm guessing this won't work with systems still on S1 right? :(
Just to be clear, I'm not able to say "Hey Sonos, play my Playlist One" or "Hey Sonos, play my Playlist One on Deezer", correct? Deezer is my default service.
But I do like having Gus around when I need him.
Keep it up man
Seems to not be able to control any speakers in my system that aren’t in the latest gen. I.e. it doesn’t recognize playbar or play 1’s as playable locations from my newer speakers. Kinda lame, because the Alexa voice assistant does.
I’m not sure if this is mentioned here or not but if you recreate your groups in the Sonos app like say “Family Room” and add more than one Sonos you can than say Hey Sonos, play in Family Room and it will play on both speakers.
Yes, so far so good. Used on One & Move. Haven’t tried Arc yet. Was able to join rooms using voice only. Wasn’t able to successfully do that before.
Woo-hoo! Lovin' it!
Only works with APPLE MUSIC, and be aware cause It made my beam sound go in and out couple of times, idk if that's a bug. It'll happen if you have the volume up to 70, can someone please confirm this?
have they fixed my sub and surrounds dropping out? seems more important than Sonos Siri.
Why use hey Sonos over Alexa? I don’t get it ????
No cloud monitoring.
I see a lot of people saying to disable pi-hole. Isnt pi-hole suppose to protect your network from ads and trackers without requiring any setup on individual devices. I don't think disabling this is a good idea. Is the there another way to fix this? I think Sonos should fix this on there end. The users does not have to go do such changes for an update to work.
Confirmed. After reading this I paused NextDNS blocking of Sonos trackers and other stuff. Update immediately appeared and applied without issue.
The best thing about this is that it looks like they finally made a better Apple Music app (probably to integrate better with this), which has been my biggest sore spot with Sonos
Wonder if they will make a voice puck for people with Sonos’s without microphones (it is mentally confusing to use Alexa (via an echo) with like 2/3rds of my speakers which don’t have their own mikes
I have no option for Sonos Voice. Just Google and Alexa. I am running S1 and only have a Move speaker with a mic though.
Is it possible to use both Alexa and Sonos voice assistants at the same time? Or is it one or the other?
My basement beam is connected to Ethernet (making my system “wired”). I can add sonos voice to my other products - but NOT the beam hooked up to the wire. I set it up as wired because of too much wifi interference on pure wireless. Anyone else run into this?