Sonos is bringing its own voice assistant to a ton of smart speakers

News
By
published

Sonos Arc Lifestyle
Sonos Arc Lifestyle (Image credit: Sonos)

What you need to know

  • Sonos is set to launch its own voice assistant on June 1.
  • Sonos Voice will work with most of the biggest music streaming services.
  • All existing Sonos hardware that supports the S2 software will also support Sonos Voice.

Sonos is reportedly set to announce its own voice assistant to compete with the likes of Google Assistant and Alexa — two options that are already available on its plethora of smart speakers.

Set to be called Sonos Voice, the new option will be available on all of the company's smart speakers that already run the S2 software, according to a report by The Verge. As for timing, those in the United States will get in on the action on June 1, but other countries will surely follow in due course.

In terms of capabilities, the report claims that Sonos Voice will support the usual array of music streaming services with two notable exceptions in the shape of Spotify and Google's YouTube Music.

At launch, Sonos Voice will work with Apple Music, Amazon Music, Pandora, Deezer, and the company's own Sonos Radio. Spotify and Google's YouTube Music aren't yet on board. In keeping with Sonos' interest in privacy, the feature will not record user audio commands or relay them to the cloud for processing. "Hey Sonos" will be the wake word for Sonos Voice Control, and the company's internal tests show it to be quicker than competing assistant services at core music tasks.

While Sonos itself hasn't yet confirmed the existence of Sonos Voice, job openings do point to such a thing while The Verge notes that the company has been running surveys surrounding such a feature.

Notably, Sonos will offer voice concurrency for Sonos Voice, essentially allowing it to function alongside Alexa for the ultimate in smart home and music control.

Looking to get yourself into the Sonos ecosystem before this new software update, and new voice assistant, arrive on June 1? Be sure to check out our collection of the best Sonos speakers before placing an order!

Oliver Haslam
Oliver Haslam
Contributor

Oliver Haslam has written about Apple and the wider technology business for more than a decade with bylines on How-To Geek, PC Mag, iDownloadBlog, and many more. He has also been published in print for Macworld, including cover stories. At iMore, Oliver is involved in daily news coverage and, not being short of opinions, has been known to 'explain' those thoughts in more detail, too. Having grown up using PCs and spending far too much money on graphics card and flashy RAM, Oliver switched to the Mac with a G5 iMac and hasn't looked back. Since then he's seen the growth of the smartphone world, backed by iPhone, and new product categories come and go. Current expertise includes iOS, macOS, streaming services, and pretty much anything that has a battery or plugs into a wall. Oliver also covers mobile gaming for iMore, with Apple Arcade a particular focus. He's been gaming since the Atari 2600 days and still struggles to comprehend the fact he can play console quality titles on his pocket computer.