The Sonos app received a major makeover in 2024, with the company hailing it as “faster, easier, and better.” While it introduced several excellent new features, Sonos received significant criticism from users for removing certain features in the revamped app design. One of the major complaints was the lack of Android’s media and volume controls.
Sonos users have repeatedly highlighted it on both Reddit and Sonos’ community website since the day it went missing, but the company has never provided an update on when it plans to fix it. While it’s frustrating that the company has remained tight-lipped about this for the last two years, Sonos has finally fixed the issue without much fanfare.
It’s finally here
Pretty much every popular playback app in the Android ecosystem has playback controls in the notification shade and lockscreen. This allows you to change tracks, play or pause a song, and jump to a specific portion in the audio from both the lockscreen notification and the notification shade. All of this is possible because developers incorporate Android’s MediaSession API in their playback apps.
Sonos never officially confirmed if it indeed stopped using the MediaSession API in the updated app, but this was perhaps the most plausible explanation as to why the playback controls went missing, as many users on Reddit have contemplated. Whatever might be the case, the Sonos app on Android is now fully capable of controlling media playback from the Android notification shade.
User u/edfosho1 first spotted this change and posted a screenshot showing the feature on Reddit (via 9to5Google). The screenshot shared by the Reddit user shows the Sonos app with several playback control options like play, pause, skip, and more in the Notification shade, just like any other popular playback apps do on Android.
In a reply to the thread, an employee from Sonos confirmed that the company has started pushing the feature to everyone. If you don’t see the return of playback controls in Sonos’ Android app, open the Google Play Store and update the app to its latest version. If you still don’t see the update on the Google Play Store, wait a few more days.
