HomeKit Sonos Room integration with Home

[Dizzy714]

Anybody in here with Sonos speakers? I bought a few Sonos One’s to add to the garage and the backyard patio, and was quickly disappointed when Home integration is essentially useless. Example. When I had a HomePod within Home and assign it to my Living Room, I get a dedicated dropdown bubble of the ‘Living Room’ when hitting the AirPlay 2 tab. I assumed this would be the same with Sonos speakers when assigning them to a Room (Garage in my case), nope, it does not get its own dropdown bubble - only option is to manually select it from the iPhone bubble, which still ties some sound to the phone. Anybody find a fix for this? I’ll attach a screenshot below (Bedroom and Entertainment Room are both HomePods).

 

[waw74]

use the sonos app?
(it's what I do, most of this should work, but I'm not 100% familiar with it)

each dropdown "bubble" is a player.
sonos is an airplay target, not a source/player. (as are most non apple airplay 2 devices, if not all)

When you select the "HomePod bubble" you're no longer using airplay. You've connected the music app in your phone to the player in the HomePod, and your phone is merely a remote.

When you select the Phone's bubble, and then open the airplay menu (like in your screenshot) that music will be played on the phone, and streamed using airplay to other devices.

You can select the HomePod bubble, and then open airplay, and select your sonos speakers as targets.


You should also be able to ask siri on the HomePod to "play _____ everywhere"
but you'll need to assign names and rooms to your sonos stuff first.

 

[pup]

You can't initiate playback from a Sonos like you can other apple kit, but what you can do is initiate playback from some device other than your phone and then airplay from there to Sonos. Then playback will be tied to that device and not your phone, but you still have control from your phone (or any other iOS device) via the airplay widget. Like so...

Alternately, you could start music from iTunes on your Mac and then use the remote app on your phone to control playback. And of course you could use the Sonos app, but then you have the opposite problem of the Sonos app not being able to control apple speakers.

 

[Dizzy714]

use the sonos app?
(it's what I do, most of this should work, but I'm not 100% familiar with it)

each dropdown "bubble" is a player.
sonos is an airplay target, not a source/player. (as are most non apple airplay 2 devices, if not all)

When you select the "HomePod bubble" you're no longer using airplay. You've connected the music app in your phone to the player in the HomePod, and your phone is merely a remote.

When you select the Phone's bubble, and then open the airplay menu (like in your screenshot) that music will be played on the phone, and streamed using airplay to other devices.

You can select the HomePod bubble, and then open airplay, and select your sonos speakers as targets.


You should also be able to ask siri on the HomePod to "play _____ everywhere"
but you'll need to assign names and rooms to your sonos stuff first.

This is EXACTLY the type of answer that I was looking for. Now I understand completely. Everybody else I’ve spoken with has not separated the fact, as you said, that a HomePod within HomeKit is a dedicated ‘player/source’, and the Sonos is simply a speaker ‘target’. That painted a perfect picture of understanding. Thank you for that.
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You can't initiate playback from a Sonos like you can other apple kit, but what you can do is initiate playback from some device other than your phone and then airplay from there to Sonos. Then playback will be tied to that device and not your phone, but you still have control from your phone (or any other iOS device) via the airplay widget. Like so...

View attachment 917741

Alternately, you could start music from iTunes on your Mac and then use the remote app on your phone to control playback. And of course you could use the Sonos app, but then you have the opposite problem of the Sonos app not being able to control apple speakers.

Thank you! I tried this ‘workaround’ and it actually does indeed do what I was aiming for. It’s just a bit annoying having to separate them when I want to go back to using that room as intended, but hey, that is a cool workaroun nevertheless.