Sonos

localby ALYT

What it adds to a house

adds speakers.

How a person connects it

Method: discover. Nothing to type: the speakers are found on your network.

What it can look for

Yes: “Look for speakers”.

What stops working when it is disconnected

The things it brought stop answering until it is connected again.

The descriptor

Connection fields are served for a program at /connectors/sonos.json.

{
  "source": "built-in",
  "visibility": "public",
  "listed": true,
  "version": "1.0.0",
  "docsUrl": "https://developers.alyt.com/connectors/sonos",
  "kind": "SONOS",
  "logo": {
    "url": "/integrations/logos/sonos.png",
    "color": "#000000",
    "ratio": 1.5,
    "background": "#111518",
    "inset": 0,
    "scale": 1.65
  },
  "name": "Sonos",
  "icon": "speaker",
  "connectivity": "local",
  "brings": [
    "speaker"
  ],
  "connect": {
    "method": "discover",
    "fields": [],
    "help": "Nothing to type: the speakers are found on your network."
  },
  "discovery": {
    "verb": "Look for speakers"
  },
  "library": {
    "verb": "Open saved playlists and room queues"
  },
  "disconnect": {
    "consequence": "{count} {things} stop answering until it is connected again."
  },
  "author": {
    "kind": "alyt",
    "name": "ALYT",
    "url": "https://alyt.com"
  }
}

The guide

The Sonos connector adds Sonos speakers to ALYT with a home-selected runtime: local discovery on the home network, or Sonos cloud control for hosted homes. Local functions can keep working during a cloud outage; cloud-dependent Sonos control requires Sonos authorization and network access. Hosted homes use Sonos sign-in by default, while explicitly selected local connections still use discovery.

Connect and choose a household

Connection uses discovery, so there is nothing to enter. The speakers are found on the local network for local runtime homes.

A property has one connected Sonos integration at a time. To link a different Sonos account or change to another selected household, disconnect first.

For hosted homes, Hosted homes use Sonos sign-in. If Sonos authorizes exactly one household, setup continues automatically. If several households are available, the connector cannot guess which one to use from the home layout alone. With several households, finish setup by choosing one. Labels use speaker names because Sonos does not provide household names.

A stored Sonos account must match the selected runtime. If you change the runtime for the home, reconnect Sonos. Cloud Sonos does not silently fall back to local LAN control.

What Sonos exposes

Each discovered player appears as a speaker endpoint with media player controls. Grouped rooms are handled as Sonos rooms, not individual bonded speakers. Transport commands target the current group coordinator, while volume and mute stay with the selected room.

State includes playback state, source, volume, mute, elapsed position, duration, current actions, and seek support when the current source supports it. The connector reads Sonos state back after a command instead of assuming success.

Controls include play, pause, stop, previous, next, mute, volume, source selection, and seek. Availability depends on the currently loaded source. For example, an internet radio source may not allow next/skip even when queue playback does.

Music browsing and playback

Local homes can browse saved playlists, room queues, and albums or tracks from a Sonos music share. Music-share browsing needs a configured share. Without that share, local album and track browsing is unavailable.

Hosted homes expose Sonos favourites and playlists through the authorized household. They do not expose the same local-share browsing or queue track browsing as the local path.

Routine music actions keep the same shape across both runtimes, but the selected source must match the speaker’s available source modes. Hosted Sonos can load saved sources, but starting a hosted playlist at an item above 1 is refused.

Restricted Spotify playlists may be resolved through a separate library queue. This separate library queue is for browsing and resolution only. It is never selected for playback, and it does not append to or clear the normal room queue.

Announcements

Hosted announcements use audioClip. Local announcements continue through the home’s local voice service.

Announcements respect room quiet hours and recheck eligible targets before scheduling. On the hosted path, only connected cloud Sonos speakers in the requested room that support audio clip playback can be targeted.

For hosted delivery, a signed HTTPS clip URL is valid for two minutes. Sonos returning a scheduled clip means scheduling succeeded, not that audible sound was confirmed.

On local Sonos, the outcome can be played, failed, or unconfirmed. In user-facing terms, playback unconfirmed means the connector did not receive a decisive result before its bounded wait ended. It is not proof that the speaker refused playback or stayed silent. Playback confirmation means the speaker’s recorded result was committed by the connector. The bounded wait is eight seconds for one player and twelve seconds for several.

Events and refresh

Sonos reports local events on the local runtime, and ALYT republishes current state through the normal event flow after reading back authoritative state. Polling remains the recovery path if subscriptions or callbacks are unavailable.

Cloud updates also arrive through events, with a five-minute backstop poll. The local runtime uses a twenty-second poll backstop.

What Sonos does not do

Sonos cloud browsing does not provide the same local music-share library or queue-track browsing as the local runtime. A hosted speaker can load supported saved sources, but direct Spotify URIs are rejected on the hosted path.

Sonos in ALYT works at the room level. It does not split Sonos-owned bonded pairs or home-theatre sets into separate controllable speakers.

Check these when it fails

• Confirm the home’s selected runtime matches the connected Sonos account or local binding.
• If setup stalls after sign-in, check whether more than one Sonos household was authorized. With several households, finish setup by choosing one.
• If local browsing is incomplete, check whether the music share is configured.
• If a command appears to do nothing in a grouped setup, confirm the room is still in the expected group and the target source currently allows that action.
• If an announcement fails, check quiet hours, speaker busy state, and whether the target room has eligible Sonos speakers for that runtime.
• If an announcement result is playback unconfirmed, treat it as unknown outcome rather than confirmed failure.
• If hosted Sonos is selected, verify Sonos authorization is still valid and the cloud path is available.