Gadgets

Product Update

9to5Mac

Sonos Finally Added Live Activities to Its iPhone App, Putting Playback Controls Back on the Lock Screen

Summary

Sonos shipped a significant app update on August 17 that brings Live Activities support to iPhone, restoring a capability users had been demanding since the company’s controversial 2024 app redesign stripped away Lock Screen controls. With the update, a playback widget appears on the iPhone Lock Screen and in the Dynamic Island while audio is playing, showing what’s on and which room or speaker group is active, with pause and skip controls directly accessible. The feature is off by default and must be toggled on in Account > App Preferences > Live Activity.

Why it matters

Sonos users lost Lock Screen playback controls during the 2024 app overhaul that became one of the most criticized product decisions in the company’s history. This restores them using Apple’s native Live Activities system, which is how they should have worked all along. If you have Sonos in your home, this update is worth grabbing today.

HTD Says

Sonos finally put playback controls back on the iPhone Lock Screen using Live Activities, and if your household runs on Sonos speakers, this is the update you should get from the App Store this morning. My wife and I are long-time Sonos users (we have some S1s). I literally just updated my app and my wife’s.

The setting isn’t obvious to find, though. It’s buried in the app settings, so head over to Account > App Preferences > Live Activities. Once you activate it, you will see it on both the Dynamic Island (assuming you have space for it and there aren’t other items running) and your lock screen.

What is truly nice about this is that you can view what is playing, skip songs, pause playback, and adjust the volume of your speaker(s). And clicking on the Live Activity will launch the Sonos app. Also, once you leave your network (and I haven’t tested this yet), I believe the Live Activity will disappear, since Sonos requires you to be on your speaker network to use it.

Source:

9to5Mac

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