Sonos shares have recovered overnight from yesterday’s slump after the US audio company finally delivered its much-hyped reengineered app, nearly two years after a botched software relaunch gutted consumer trust and cost former CEO Patrick Spence his job.

Sonos’s new CEO Tom Conrad is working on turning the Company around

Late last night select Sonos customers got their first hands-on access to a public beta of the redesigned app navigation system, months after chief executive Tom Conrad admitted the company was pouring millions into rebuilding software that almost sank the business.

What’s Changed

Conrad, who first flagged the overhaul on Reddit, has ripped out the app’s widely criticised card-based layout, replacing it with a tabbed structure across Home, System, and Search, built natively on both iOS and Android.

Gone are the confusing swipe gestures and close boxes that left thousands of Sonos owners fumbling through their own speaker systems. Screen transitions now follow standard native patterns, with new views sliding in from the right and a swipe gesture returning users to the previous screen, behaviour consistent with virtually every other app on the market.

The System tab has picked up sorting controls that let owners arrange their speakers and pin favourite devices to the top of the list, ending the frustration of scrolling through a fixed order.

Volume controls have also been rebuilt, with new plus and minus icons for fine adjustments, a one-tap option to synchronise levels across grouped rooms, and higher-fidelity dragging near the upper and lower limits. iOS gets most of the volume refinements first, with Sonos confirming equivalent controls will land on Android in a future update as testing continues across both platforms this year.

Cleaning Up Spence’s Mess

The redesign was long overdue. Sonos speaker owners have been openly hostile since the disastrous 2024 app relaunch under Spence, who was sacked following the botched rollout of both the software and the company’s first headphones.

The new interface began rolling out this week as a public, opt-in beta available to anyone running app version 87, activated via a new toggle in the Settings menu labelled Enable Improved Navigation.

Beyond the headline changes, the update delivers quality-of-life improvements to the Now Playing screen, playlist management, and the app’s layout on iPad, refinements Sonos claims were shaped by months of beta community feedback.

Sonos is also building lock screen controls for iOS delivered as a Live Activity, a feature Android users already have, currently in its own beta ahead of a wider rollout that will not require opt-in.

No Firm Date

The cautious, phased approach reflects just how badly burnt Sonos was by the 2024 debacle. Conrad has refused to commit to a firm date for making the new navigation the default, though he expects it to happen by autumn depending on how feedback develops.