Sonos app for Android is losing support for local media files

Ben Schoon | May 15 2023 - 1:04 pm PT

If you’re a Sonos user on Android, a useful feature is going away. Local media files will soon no longer be supported by the Sonos app on Android.

As spotted by The Verge, Sonos is stripping local media support from its Android app later this month. A notice on the company’s website reads:

Starting May 23rd, 2023, we’re removing the ability to play audio files directly to Sonos using the “On this device” menu in the Sonos app for Android.

To make up for the removal, Sonos suggests users upload their music to YouTube Music, Apple Music, Deezer, or Plex or use a NAS (network-attached storage) drive. The abrupt removal comes about three years after Sonos removed the same functionality on iOS, but there’s no clear reason why it’s being removed on Android. In a support forum post, Sonos vaguely implies that it has something to do with newer versions of Android.

As newer versions of mobile operating systems are released, it can sometimes change the way information is shared between devices, and this feature will no longer be compatible with newer versions of the Android operating system.

Android did make some changes to how apps can interact with local files back in Android 11 with the introduction of “Scoped Storage,” but there hasn’t been anything else recently that would seemingly affect this Sonos functionality. Unless Sonos offers some specifics, it really feels like this is intended to just do away with a feature the company no longer wants to offer.

The silver lining here is that Sonos just debuted its first speakers with built-in Bluetooth support with the Era 100 and Era 300. But, at the same time, Bluetooth won’t stream in the same quality as Sonos was offering when streaming local files through the app. So, really, this just stinks all around.