The Sonos app fiasco: how a great audio brand nearly ruined its reputation

In 2024, Sonos gave everyone a valuable lesson on the worst way to introduce a redesigned app. It was too soon, too buggy, and too careless.

In May 2024, Sonos released a completely rebuilt and overhauled mobile app for Android and iOS. The new software was meant to improve performance, make the app feel more customizable, and allow for new features in the future. But customers immediately complained about countless bugs, degraded Sonos speaker system performance, and features that had gone missing.

The controversy effectively torpedoed Sonos’ reputation with many customers. In the months since, Sonos has worked to regain their trust, address issues with the redesigned app, and bring back features that were absent at launch. The company still hasn’t fully recovered from its enormous mistake. On January 13th 2025, Sonos announced CEO Patrick Spence would step down after he was unable to turn things around.