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This page is a plain-English summary of how Somos InControl interacts with your device’s network and stores your data. Nothing here requires a legal background to understand — if you want the full formal version, see the Privacy Policy. The short answer: almost everything the app does happens locally on your Wi-Fi network, one narrow internet request exists (speaker photos), and no personal data ever leaves your device.

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Local network discovery

When you open Somos InControl, it needs to find your Sonos® speakers on your Wi-Fi network. It uses two standard methods at the same time, both of which stay entirely within your home network:
  • Bonjour (mDNS) — the same zero-configuration discovery protocol used by AirPlay, Apple TV, and the official Sonos® app. The app listens for speakers advertising the _sonos._tcp Bonjour service on your subnet.
  • Subnet scan — the app sends a short HTTP request to each address on your local subnet to ask: “are you a Sonos® speaker?” Addresses that respond are added to your speaker list. No information is sent beyond the question itself.
Once your speakers are found, Somos InControl controls them using the publicly documented local control protocol (UPnP/SOAP on port 1400) that every Sonos® speaker exposes on the local network, and subscribes to the speakers’ own event notifications so changes made elsewhere show up quickly. Discovery and control traffic never leave your Wi-Fi network.

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Bluetooth scanning

Somos InControl uses Bluetooth for one narrow purpose: listing Sonos® speakers that are nearby but not yet on your Wi-Fi network — for example, a new speaker you are setting up. The app reads only the advertising name broadcast by nearby Bluetooth devices and filters that list for Sonos® speakers. It does not:
  • Pair with any device
  • Send any data over Bluetooth
  • Identify you, your device, or your location
If you decline Bluetooth permission when iOS asks, the app continues to work normally for any speaker already on your Wi-Fi network.

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The only internet request

There is exactly one type of request Somos InControl sends to the internet: fetching your speakers’ product photos from Sonos®‘s public image library at media.sonos.com. This is a plain HTTPS request for a static image file — equivalent to your browser loading a logo from a website. The request contains:
  • The model identifier of the speaker (e.g., “Era 100”) — nothing personal
  • No speaker names, no network details, no location, no account information
If media.sonos.com is unreachable, the app automatically falls back to the low-resolution icon served by your speaker directly over the local network. The app works fully offline — speaker images are the only thing that require an internet connection.
Want to verify this yourself? Put your iPhone into Airplane Mode, then turn Wi-Fi back on without turning Airplane Mode off. Everything in Somos InControl — volume, EQ, presets, home theater controls, music — will continue to work normally. Only the speaker product photos will be missing (replaced by local icons).
A few menu items — Support & Feedback, Suggest a Feature, and the four Speaker Checks questionnaires — open a page on the Somos website in your browser. The app itself sends nothing to that site: it hands the URL to iOS and what you type into the web form afterwards is entirely up to you. The app also opens the official Sonos® app when you tap Tune in Sonos app on the Trueplay tile.

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Your settings

All of your preferences are stored locally on your device using iOS UserDefaults — the standard on-device storage mechanism Apple provides to every app. This includes:
  • Your room order, saved favourite groups and system names
  • Sound presets and crossover values
  • Live Activity, Haptics and Appearance settings, and the identify-tone switch
  • Tutorial state and which Speaker Checks you’ve been shown
A small slice of this storage is shared with the Somos InControl widget and Live Activity extension so they display the same rooms and presets you are controlling. No iCloud sync. The app does not use iCloud, iCloud Drive, or CloudKit. Your settings never leave your device and are never synced to any cloud service — presets don’t follow you to a new phone. Uninstalling the app removes all of its stored data automatically.

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What we don’t do

Somos InControl has none of the data-collection infrastructure common in modern apps:
The app sends no usage events, screen views, or behavioral data to any analytics platform — not even anonymised data.
There is no crash-reporting SDK. No stack traces or device info are sent anywhere when something goes wrong.
The app contains no ad networks and no advertising identifiers are read or transmitted.
The app is built entirely on Apple’s own frameworks. There is no third-party code that could phone home.
No sign-in, no registration, and no server-side profile. The app works without any account.
We operate no backend infrastructure. There is nothing for your data to be sent to.
For the complete formal statement of our data practices, read the full Privacy Policy.