Hi all, New to this forum so please bare with me.
I'm thinking seriously about buying a MacBook Pro, but need to know if the Sonos app is accessible on the Mac
I currently use a standard laptop and Sonos is excellent in terms of ease of use for a blind user.
Many thanks for any help.
By Maccar, 3 June, 2021
Forum
macOS and Mac Apps
Comments
Sonos on a Mac
Anyone? thought this was the place to come to!
Sonos Mac app
For whatever reason, even though the iOS, Windows and Android Sonos apps have been great for accessibility, the Mac app is terrible and has been for years, with a ton of unlabelled buttons everywhere. The most serious issue however is that the browser lists that let you navigate your library or the play queue are completely invisible to VoiceOver, so while the app does kinda work if you want to control playback with media keys, starting music from it is pretty much impossible, and I wouldn't expect this to change any time soon considering Sonos has been focusing more on mobile in general, with both the Windows and Mac desktop apps losing some of the more advanced speaker control features some time ago.
That being said, this isn't as much of a problem depending on what services you want to use. Spotify for instance has the Spotify connect feature that lets you control Sonos from any of their apps, and this works great. For Apple Music, you can use Airplay to play to your system from the music app. Finally, since I'm guessing you'd be getting an Apple Silicon app, you have the option of side loading the iOS app, though since Sonos blocked it from being installed you'll need to do it before you update Mac OS to 11.3 which killed side loading unlisted apps, and I can confirm that this works pretty well and lets you have full control over the speaker.
Sonos App on a Mac
since I'm guessing you'd be getting an Apple Silicon app, you have the option of side loading the iOS app, though since Sonos blocked it from being installed
you'll need to do it before you update Mac OS to 11.3 which killed side loading unlisted apps, and I can confirm that this works pretty well and lets you
have full control over the speaker.
Thanks for the reply.
Excuse my ignorance, but I've never used a Mac of any kind. What do you mean by Apple Silicon app? and what do you mean by side loading?
Cheers
Mac
With all due respect
With all due respect, dude, it's only 7:08AM here in eastern US time, so give people a chance to respond. I see you wrote back saying, "Anyone?" Yes, this is a good resource to post such questions, but be patient. Now, on to your question.
Unfortunately, you are not going to have a good experience with this at all! Not, that is, unless someone knows one heck of a trick I don't know, at which point, I'd love you for ever if someone can tell me. I use the app on my iOS devices and it's wonderful there, but on the mac, there are tons upon tons of unlabeled buttons, and not as many shortcut keys as on the Windows side of things. The thing is, it kind of sort of ish works, but definitely not to the point to be any bit productive with it really. I did write Sonos about this back in 2018 when I first came on board the Sonos ecosystem, and they said they were working on accessibility, but of corse, nothing ever came of it, and every time I ask them, well, oh, um, we're working on it. Well, it's been 3 years since then, and still it's no better than it was in 2018. In fact, it might actually be worse. I absolutely would not let this turn you off in any way though from getting a mac! Though pricy as all get out, they are incredibly worth it in most respects. Yeah, there're some quirks here and there, but generally speaking, they are very very usable. It's just this one Sonos app is pretty much a no go.
Sonos on a Mac
Hi Christopher,
with all due respect dude, I didn't realise the forum was only for those in the States, so had hoped that someone from the UK/Europe might have replied sooner.
That's disappointing about Sonos, I will write to them myself just to give them a nudge.
I do appreciate your overall reassurance of the MacBook and it's useability though.
Cheers
Mac