The One Tip Every Sonos Speaker Owner Should Know

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There’s a quick way to regroup a rouge speaker back into your Sonos multi-room system.

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If you own more than one Sonos speaker and you’ve grouped them together – whether that consists of Play:1s, Ones, Play:5s, Beams, the new Symfonisk speakers, or a combination of any of them – you might’ve noticed that, on occasion, one of the speakers will stop playing with the rest. As a Sonos owner myself, I’ve noticed this happening to my various Play:1s when grouped with a One; I’ll ask Alexa to play music and all of my speakers save for a Play:1 will play in unison.

Scatter them around the house.

A portable speaker that's great on the go, but expands your system at home.

A living room centerpiece, complete with line-in for your turntable.

The bedrock of a surround-sound home theater.

Normally, the solution to regrouping your Sonos speakers is to go into the Sonos app, select the “Group” button and then select the specific speaker that’s not playing. It’s easy, if a little annoying.

However, something that you might not have known – I didn’t until just a few weeks ago – is that there’s a quick fix for regrouping a rogue Sonos speaker. And it doesn’t involve touching your smartphone or computer. Instead, all you need to do is go over to the speaker that’s not playing, press and hold down the Play/Pause button for three seconds, it’ll automatically regroup with the other speakers and play the same music. As long as the speakers are all connected to the same Wi-Fi network, this will work.

Another good use of this “hack” is if you have a Beam, Playbar or Playbase (any soundbar connected to your TV), along with another Sonos speaker in a different room. For instance, I gifted my mom a Sonos Beam last Christmas and one of her favorite things to do is listening to the Mets game on TV while making dinner. The problem is that her Sonos Beam is in the TV room and the Play:1 is in the kitchen, and the two often get ungrouped because she’s always turning on and off the TV (and thus the soundbar). But by holding down the Play/Pause button on her Play:1, it automatically syncs with her Sonos Beam (as long as the TV is on) and she can hear the Mets game.

Magic.

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