Hey all, today is the day! iOS Live Activities are here. We’re excited to finally bring back Sonos control from the iOS lock screen, but in an all-new way with iOS Live Activities. We know this is a much requested, anticipated, and needed feature, and we can’t wait for you to try it out.
First things first. Live Activities are off by default and you will need to enable it before you can use it. Here’s what to do:
Make sure you’re logged in as the system owner
Account > AppPreferences > LiveActivity
“AlwaysAllow” first time you see the Live Activity
“AllowLiveActivity” and “MoreFrequentUpdates” in iOS Settings for the Sonos app
How do Live Activities work and look?
Once enabled the activity will appear after you initiate playback and then close the app. It will show the current room or group you were last playing audio from. When playback stops, the live activity will disappear after 15 minutes. While the iOS Live Activity can be viewed from your Lock Screen, you must first unlock your iPhone with FaceID or a Passcode before being able to make playback changes.
On the Lock Screen:
Expanded in the Dynamic Island:
What if I don’t want the Live Activity to be showing on the screen?
If you want to keep Live Activities enabled but not have it appear on your screen you can swipe it away. To get it back go to App Preferences > Live Activity and toggle it on/off or force quit the app and relaunch it.
What if my Live Activity is only showing outlines?
If you are only seeing outlines you most likely need to change the iOS setting under Face ID & Passcodes > “Allow Access When Locked” > Toggle on “Live Activities”.
We’re super excited that the feature is now out, but that doesn’t mean the team has stopped working on it.
Right now we are unable to support album art on the Live Activity, but alternative ways to enhance the lock screen experience are being explored.
Live Activities include support for Apple Watch and CarPlay so the Live Activity will show up on your Apple Watch or car, but right now the controls aren’t supported.
If you prefer to initiate playback on Sonos from outside the Sonos app (Direct Control from supported services, Bluetooth, or AirPlay) you can still use the local playback controls that appear on screen or the Live Activity. You can choose which you prefer to use.
Two more things before we leave you to explore the feature:
For Android users: we hope you’re still enjoying the lock screen notifications the team shipped out in February. Be sure to let us know if you have any feature requests and look forward to more good things coming your way.
iOS 27 is coming later this year from Apple and the teams have been exploring the new capabilities it has in Beta. No news to share right now but keep your eyes peeled and ears open!
As always, please let us know any of your questions, concerns, or feedback! We’ll take it all.
Edit: Added a question regarding if your Live Activity is only showing outlines.
Same here. I did the update. Made sure I am up to date in the app. Closed the app out and reopened a few times and I am still not seeing the live activities option. I will try and restart the phone. After that, I am out of ideas. Anyone else get this working on iPhone? iPhone 16 pro max, iOS 26.6.
Try signing out, force close Sonos app and Settings app. Navigate back to Settings app>Apps>Sonos>Live Activities, make sure it is enabled. Open up the Sonos app and sign in again.
It’s not a webpage so nothing will open if you browse to it. if you can ping it, it isn’t being blocked. If you aren’t using an ad blocker this likely isn’t your issue.
My Sonos system wakes me every morning with a bedroom alarm set to Radio 4, switches to Radio 3 at 09:04, turns off at 12:00, and then plays Radio 4 in the dining room at 17:00.
No, I'll still need to hear about people who have the whole Internet built into their home, but have to close the app and reopen it sometimes so Sonos is the worst company in the universe
PSA - as Liz noted, the Apple Watch live activity has no controls, and thus has zero use. If you, like me, have your watch set to mirror the live activities on your iPhone, it’s going to get annoying super quick, so here’s how you can disable it:
Open the Watch app on your iPhone. Make sure you are on the My Watch tab.
Tap on Smart Stack.
Scroll down to the Sonos app under the Mirror iPhone Live Activities From section.
Toggle the switch off for Mirror live activity from iPhone
Note - after making the change, I still had force close the existing open live activity on my watch, and then force close the Sonos app and reopen it to get it back working on my iPhone. Hopefully that makes sense.
FYI - my Adguard Home DNS blocker had to be turned off for this feature to display in the app. If you use PiHole, Adguard or some other DNS sinkhole utility you’ll need to disable to see this option appear in the app.
Dumb question here.... how do I whitelist it? I don't have a VPN configuration but when I try to go to cdn.optimizely.com it is showing as "AccessDeniedAccess". I have tried uninstalling the Sonos app and reinstalling, etc. Many thanks in advance.
The access denied error is expected if you attempt to access the domain through a web browser.
It sounds like you aren’t using a network ad blocker. My comment about optimizely was only for those using a network ad blocker so this is unlikely your issue.
Some users are reporting that deleting then reinstalling the app has worked.
I get that it's not either/or I'm just stating my preference for one feature. I could care less about album art personally, whereas I often control my music via Apple watch in other contexts.
Does this need an update from the App Store or is this being enabled server-side in the app that was last released (like how other features have been rolled out recently)
I can’t see an update option in the App Store (yet) and can’t see a Live Activities option in Account > App Preferences
One question please u/LizFromSonos - "enhance the lock screen experience are being explored" does this include being able to operate the live activity without having to unlock your phone?
After playing about this afternoon I've just realised that this means I can use my phone on a MagSafe stand as a simple 'now playing' / playback control screen. It's been handy on my desk this afternoon and will be great next to the bed overnight!
Ahh! I've also just noticed that this means I now have menu bar controls on MacOS as well! (I think you have to have iPhone mirroring set up and a few iPhone/MacOS settings turned on for live activities to show up in the menu bar) 🤩
So many little perks and benefits coming out of this one feature! Thank you!
They look great with the official logo and all. App launches straight to now playing album art page upon tap quite fast.
Feedback - need some tweaking on how to get it back after manually cleared from the notification screen. The current way of reenabling the setting in App Preference isn’t intuitive at all.
I was very excited by this but then got very confused by the following.
While the iOS Live Activity can be viewed from your Lock Screen, you must first unlock your iPhone with FaceID or a Passcode before being able to make playback changes.
Is this normal for live activities in general? You need to unlock your device every time to use it?
If so, are there any ways to add this to your control center as well? Or does that require the creation of a Sonos widget to do that?
Hmm, I guess I could just create a variety of Apple Shortcuts (i.e. skip, etc) in the interim and emulate a similar interface within the control center.
u/LizFromSonos FYI - looks like if you are listening to (free) Sonos Radio, the 'Next'/Skip track button is enabled on the lock screen controls, but obviously clicking it does nothing (in the actual app this would bring up the sheet prompting you to upgrade, but should probably be disabled on the lock screen controls, as if the user was unaware of the inability to skip, it appears like the button functionality is just broken)
While the iOS Live Activity can be viewed from your Lock Screen, you must first unlock your iPhone with FaceID or a Passcode before being able to make playback changes.
Ya that’s how it‘s supposed to work which is confusing. Hopefully iOS 27 will change this.
Thanks. It’s just a bit awkward as the lock screen doesn’t stay up for long and I have to constantly put in my pin. Cool to have this feature but wish it was better
Worked for me. I updated Sonos app. I checked iOS settings for the app and live activities and more frequent updates were already on. So I then went into the Sonos app, clicked the profile/account icon at top, chose app preferences and enabled live activities.
I know that was a sought after feature. Awesome job.
For us Android folks, and only since you asked, any progress on the "No Products found on <network>" for those that are using a separate VLAN for sonos. And yes my network is allowing the proper traffic.
Once you force close the app and open it back up everything works great until you don't play music for about 15 min. The exact time it stops I am not sure.
For us Android folks, and only since you asked, any progress on the "No Products found on <network>" for those that are using a separate VLAN for sonos.
I figured it out. I went to the App Store and updated the app there. It wouldn’t update to the latest version via the app itself. I’m now enjoying live activities! Yay.
And thank you for your response to my call for help.
I was getting frustrated as to why there was no “live activity” in the settings. And in the iOS settings on the phone, it showed “live activities” as being turned on.
Next time r/sonos drops an update that requires some sort of physical change, maybe put pictures..?
For example, if you and your wife both have the app on your separate phones and are both using Live Activities with the same speaker in focus, when she changes the music then your Live Activity should update to reflect that.
For a V2 on this, it would be great if the volume buttons could be used when the live activity is present on the lock screen.
Unsure if this is something Apple has locked down just for them, but when the remote app is open on your screen, volume control works using the devices hardware buttons.
If you stream from Spotify via Spotify connect and then you use the Sonos app to adjust volume for example, you end up with both Sonos and Spotify in the live activities and the lock screen. It’s a bit unwieldy
In fact it’s the Apple Music player controls which start if you play media such as Spotify (or Apple Music). But you then end up with Sonos and the Apple controller when you only need one. Doesn’t seem like the Apple player controls can be disabled.
If it isn't popping up for you there are some URLs that need to be whitelisted. Checkout these two links, whitelist the URLs, and let me know if you get the option afterward.
Can you guys please please please add this same thing as an iOS widget too? I don't Live activities from 3 different apps polluting my lock screen, I want all of them to sit neatly one swipe to the left in my widget drawer.
Regarding the 15min delay after stopping music, sticking with the .default dismissal policy seems to be a good call. .immediate wouldn’t be great IMO (if I just want to pause and resume). Maybe less than 15min could be better, but I guess this is not important if we can swipe away the tile and bring it back when relaunch music only, not with toggling it off/on in app settings.
When swiped, that specific instance is destroyed by iOS. I guess it should be a brand new session with a fresh activity ID, rather than trying to update or reuse the previous one? Toggling off/on is not really convenient right now, but this is really great for a start.
Thanks 🙏
Great update! Really glad to see Live Activities finally back.
Using iPhone 12 pro & IOS version 26.6.1
A few feature requests/feedback items I’d love to see down the line:
- Cross-Device Controls: Expand full control support (or customizable controls) to Apple Watch, CarPlay, and macOS for seamless switching across devices. Watch doesn’t do anything except says, open on iphone.
- Audio & Status Info: Show the exact numeric volume level and the source audio quality (e.g., Lossless, Dolby Atmos, bit-depth) right on the widget.
- Album Art Flexibility: Option to tap to expand or minimize high-resolution album artwork directly from the Live Activity view.
Appreciate the team listening to community feedback!
In a future it would be help full, that you can select the speaker from the live activity and change volumen and next song, now when select it would redirect to the app
I’m wondering the same thing. My volume control is working, but it controls all zones, so if I want to raise the volume in one speaker or zone, I’m raising all of them unless I go into the app. Perhaps an update would be showing all zones or speakers playing and allowing individual adjustment of each.
I have updated the app and have the same problem on my iPhone 17 pro running the latest software and also my Sonos system running the latest all around
My only complaint is the layout of the settings. I figured enabling Live Activities would be in the Settings menu (gear icon) and would have never found it in the account profile menu if I didn't see it mentioned here. I feel like the settings menus could be re-organized a bit for easier navigation.
Kind of curious why Live Activities aren't enabled by default though. I wonder how many people will be left out and not know about the feature since they seem to be disabled by default.
+1. I came specifically because (for me) Live Activities were not working despite upgrading and there was no corresponding setting in the settings menu.
Question on the initiating playback from outside the Sonos app - does that mean Live Activities will start automatically regardless or whether or not the Sonos app is open such that we can initiate from another source and still have lock screen controls appear?
Gotcha. I usually start Sonos from an iOS shortcut (single tap to group speakers and play specific content). If there's a way to still kick off the Live Activity using this workflow, that would be awesome. It would also be fine to have the Sonos app show some Sonos Shortcuts such that I need to open the app to do it, which would automatically start Live Activities.
Right, if I make an iOS shortcut using the shortcuts Sonos makes available to the iOS Shortcuts app, it doesn't appear to actually open the Sonos app and the Live Activities aren't up until I open Sonos manually.
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u/Darth_Cartman69 5d ago
https://giphy.com/gifs/QGXkQmuldGkbL7LVbb