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Sonos Makes Multiroom Music Even Easier with 5.3 App Update

By Rachel Cericola

We've never heard anyone accuse Sonos of creating products that make the whole multiroom music experience more difficult. However, the company keeps working to make it all even easier -- and also, faster. Now, they're delivering some of that speed and ease of use, by announcing a new app update, known as Sonos Software version 5.3.

The new Sonos Software version 5.3 promises better navigation and faster access to your music. The company says that the change was due to customer feedback. (They listen! Imagine that?)

"While we've received a lot of positive feedback for new features like the ability to search across all of your music sources in one place, we also heard from many of you that we made some things worse," the company said in a blog post. "It became more difficult to move music between rooms, the Sonos app for tablets did not make good use of the screen size, and some of the smaller features you loved in the previous app were not available (e.g. the track progression bar)."

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Image courtesy of Sonos.

This newly announced update promises to fix a lot of those issues. For starters, the new Sonos Software version 5.3 is making managing various rooms a lot faster. That's a possibility thanks to a more accessible menu for different rooms, which is available from any screen in the Sonos app. No flipping or fumbling is necessary.

Sonos is also adding new dedicated screens for Now Playing and music discovery on iOS and Android tablets, so that toggling between screens is more intuitive. This change boasts a better overall tablet experience.

The company is also promising improved navigation for search and browsing, so you can find and play music and favorites, all while queueing up more music. They've also put the track progression bar on the Now Playing screen, right below the album art. You can't miss it -- and it makes it easier to find favorite points in songs.

An Android version of the Sonos Software version 5.3 is available now, in beta. The full Android release, as well as one for iOS devices, is expected in the coming months.

Sonos-AppMenu.jpg
Image courtesy of Sonos.

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