Control Sonos from your Apple Watch or Pebble

by Volker Weber

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Max just alerted me about this tweet from Pebble product manager Henry Levak. What works for Pebble should also work for Apple Watch. And it does.

Just swipe up for the Music Glance and there it is: the same controls you have on your iThing lock screen. And that is actually all the Sonos integration I need from Apple Watch. Since it is not a 3rd party app, it loads immediately.

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Comments

Nice find!!

Leo Wiggins, 2016-06-21

interesting that Sonos is not advertising that nice feature in their release notes...

Hauke Fink, 2016-06-21

Is it only showing the most recent room or is there a way switch rooms from the lock screen/watch?

Torsten Hoffmann, 2016-06-22

Of course not. This is a watch/iPhone feature, not Sonos code. And your question shows why Sonos isn't even mentioning this cool thing.

Volker Weber , 2016-06-22

Only with the newest update to the Sonos App (6.3.1, I think) it is possible to control the music from the lock screen.
And exactly this enables the controls on the watch.

I still would like to have a watch app from Sonos. Maybe with watchOS 3 around the corner there is hope. Then it should open really fast.

Matthias Welling , 2016-06-22

As an arm chair product manager, I would not put this high on my list. There is more important stuff going on.

Don't forget the Sonos app is already very complicated. You have all sorts of plugins for music services, you can group rooms and manage the queue. The most important feature has already made it onto the watch. I find a Siri interface more important than a full blown watch app.

Volker Weber, 2016-06-22

The sonos watch app should/must not have all features from the phone app. ("full blown")

When you speak about a siri interface: Do you mean via iThing (with the new announced siri api) or via microphone in the speaker?

If it's coming through the api i think the api has to mature (and open up) more. Then I can see me giving voice commands to my watch to control sonos speaker.

If they concentrate on the mic in the speaker... they will make that feature only for recent buyers of the new play:5 or future speakers. That means: not me.

That would contradict one of the best things about sonos: make existing stuff better. (i can understand that: sometimes you have to leave old hardware behind for new features)

Matthias Welling, 2016-06-22

Come to think of it, your thoughts are somewhat twisted. Making Siri work through the speaker would only serve a small amount of customers. Making a watch app however is important. ;-)

Sonos is always trying to make the least platform specific choices. They will make use of all voice assistants. And they are still figuring out how to do it. Sit back and relax.

Volker Weber, 2016-06-22

If you want more control, you can use 3rd-party apps like Sonobit or ZonePlay. Sonobit also has a Watch-App which has a few advantages over the new standard lock-screen controls.
I normally control my play:1 from the iPad, so "now playing" on the iPhone is mostly showing other apps like Audible or Downcast. This means that this new feature just doesn't work for me... so I stick with Sonobit on the Watch.

Marcus Kuba , 2016-06-22

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