Somos InControl Network and Data Use — Plain English

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: control happens locally on your Wi-Fi network; the app goes to the internet only for speaker photos, your music services when you use them, and Apple’s iCloud and App Store; and nothing goes to us — we run no servers.

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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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Internet requests the app makes

Somos InControl talks to the internet for the few things below, and none of them involves a server of ours. Two are Apple’s own services: iCloud, which syncs your settings when you’re signed in (see Your settings), and the App Store, which handles the Whole Home purchase, an offer code and Restore Purchases. Apple processes the purchase; Somos only learns whether Whole Home is owned. The other two are below.

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Speaker photos

The app fetches 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”) and nothing personal — no speaker names, no network details, no location, no account information. If media.sonos.com is unreachable, the app falls back to the low-resolution icon served by your speaker directly over the local network.

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Music services

When you browse, search or sign in to a music service on the music page, the app talks to that service’s own servers — Spotify’s, Amazon’s, Pandora’s and so on — over HTTPS, using the same music-service interface the speakers themselves use. What travels is what you would expect: the search term you typed, the folder you opened, the song you picked, and the sign-in the service issued to Somos so it can browse your account. Album art and station logos are loaded from wherever the service keeps them.

• Signing in happens on the service’s own sign-in page, opened inside the app. Somos never sees your password; what it keeps is the token the service hands back, stored in the device’s Keychain — the secure storage iOS uses for credentials — keyed to your Sonos® system. Disconnect removes it.
• Apple Music is different: Somos browses it through Apple’s own music framework on your iPhone, under the Apple Music permission you grant, and Apple handles that traffic. The speaker plays on the Apple Music account your Sonos® system already holds.
• Playing is still local — Somos hands the speaker what to play over your Wi-Fi, and the speaker streams from the service.

Control works fully offline: volume, EQ, presets, home theater controls and the queue all work with no internet at all. Browsing a music service does not — it needs the service.

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Links the app opens

A few menu items open a page for you: Visit our website (under Help & Support) opens the Somos website in your browser, and Getting Started, Feature Reference and Apple Watch guide (in the Apple Watch pop-up) open this manual. The app itself sends nothing to those sites: it hands the URL to iOS and what you type into a 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. Submit diagnostics opens an email with the app’s log attached, or the iOS share sheet with the log as a text file when Mail isn’t set up — the last few hundred lines of what the app did and what the speakers answered, with no passwords, sign-in tokens or music in it. Nothing is sent until you choose where to send it.

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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, which preset each room is on, and crossover values
• The favorites you heart from music services
• Live Activity, Haptics, Appearance, Pinch for volume, Swipe art and Room wheel settings, and the identify-tone switch
• Whether you own Whole Home (a copy of what the App Store says, so the widget can read it) and which room is your free room
• Whether the intro video has played

Music-service sign-ins are the one exception: they are credentials, so they live in the device’s Keychain, not in UserDefaults, and they never leave that device. 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, and the room list, each room’s presets and your Sonos® favorites are sent to the Apple Watch app when one is paired. iCloud sync. When your device is signed in to iCloud, Somos keeps a copy of your presets, home names, room order, saved groups, hearted favorites, playlists and app switches in your own iCloud storage, so they follow your Apple ID to your other devices and come back after a reinstall. This uses Apple’s iCloud key-value storage, tied to your Apple ID. Nothing goes to us, and no one else can read it. Room names, music-service sign-ins, the Live Activity switch, your Whole Home status, widget settings and the intro video’s flag are never synced. Signed out of iCloud, settings stay on the device only, and uninstalling the app removes them. See iCloud Sync.

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What we don’t do

Somos InControl has none of the data-collection infrastructure common in modern apps: