See it in action
How to Use Somos InControl
First launch
When you first open Somos InControl, iOS will ask for Local Network permission. Tap Allow — this is how the app discovers your Sonos® speakers on your Wi-Fi. Without it, the app has nothing to control.
Once permission is granted, the app scans your network and lists every Sonos® room it finds — home theater (soundbar) rooms, stereo pairs, and single speakers alike. Discovery usually takes a couple of seconds.
A short interactive tour runs automatically the first time. It walks you through the app step by step: Welcome, The Menu, Volume, Sound Presets, Fine-tune EQ, Build Your Home Theater, Music & Favorites, Your Rooms, and You're All Set. You can skip it and come back to it any time from the menu (top-left).
Your rooms
Every Sonos® room in your home appears in the app — home theater rooms with a soundbar, stereo pairs, and single speakers. What you can control depends on what's in the room:
- All rooms get volume, bass, treble, loudness, sound presets, Trueplay status, and music.
- Soundbar (home theater) rooms additionally get the home-theater-only controls: height channel, Speech Boost, Night Sound, TV source, and the audio-format badge.
- Any room with a subwoofer bonded shows a subwoofer slider — soundbar or not.
Switching rooms: the bar at the bottom of the screen holds up to 4 favorite rooms as tabs — tap one to switch. The menu lists all of your rooms: tap a room to switch to it, or hold and drag to reorder the list. Whatever sits in the top 4 of the list becomes your bottom tabs.
Volume
The Volume card is the big control near the top. Drag the slider left or right to lower or raise the volume in the selected room. Changes apply immediately — no "Apply" button to tap.
If you want to mute the room without changing the slider position, tap the speaker icon next to the slider.
Sound presets
A sound preset is a saved snapshot of how a room sounds. Presets capture your EQ levels along with the Night Sound and Speech Boost toggles.
- To save: dial in the sound you want, then hold a preset to save your current sound into it.
- To load: tap a preset and everything it captured applies at once.
- To rename: hold a saved preset again.
While a preset is active, changing any control it captured deactivates the preset — a toast explains what happened, and your manual change stays in effect.
EQ, Loudness, and Trueplay
The EQ card gives you direct control of the sound in the selected room — every room, not just soundbars:
- Bass — boosts or cuts the low end. Negative values reduce bass, positive values add it.
- Treble — adjusts high frequencies. Negative for warmer, positive for brighter.
- Subwoofer — appears in any room that has a subwoofer bonded, and adjusts its level.
- Loudness — a toggle that applies a gentle EQ curve at low volumes so quiet music still sounds full. Most people leave this on.
- Trueplay — Sonos® room calibration. If your speaker supports it and you've calibrated it through the official Sonos® app, you can see and toggle the Trueplay status here. When it's on, the room's sound is tuned to the acoustics of the space it's in.
Home theater controls
Rooms with a soundbar get an extra set of controls that only make sense for home theater:
- Height — level of the height (Atmos) channel.
- Speech Boost — makes dialogue clearer.
- Night Sound — tames loud moments for late-night viewing.
- TV source — switch the soundbar to its TV input.
- Audio-format badge — shows the audio format the soundbar is currently receiving.
These controls appear only in soundbar rooms. In rooms without a soundbar you still get volume, EQ, loudness, presets, Trueplay status, and music.
The room diagram
Each room's diagram shows the real topology of what's playing in it: a stereo pair renders as two speakers (left and right), a single speaker as one, and a bonded subwoofer is shown when the room has one.
- On a bare soundbar (no satellites yet), the diagram shows a quiet "Hold to add speakers" hint.
- On a soundbar room with satellites, it shows "Hold to configure".
- On rooms without a soundbar, speaker setup is managed in the Sonos® app — the app tells you so if you hold the diagram.
Live Activity
Somos InControl can put a volume control on your Lock Screen and in the Dynamic Island — with +/− buttons and the current volume percentage — so you can adjust the room without opening the app.
Live Activity is off by default. To turn it on, open the menu and enable Live Activity.
The menu
Tap the menu button in the top-left corner. From here you can:
- See all your rooms — tap to switch, hold and drag to reorder (the top 4 become the bottom tabs)
- Enable or disable Live Activity, adjust Haptics and Appearance
- Open Help — Take the Tour, Getting Started, Feature Reference, and App Permissions
- Open Support & Feedback (brings you to this site's support page)
- View Legal & Info and the app version
Replaying the tutorial
If you want to see the walkthrough again, open the menu and tap Take the Tour (under Help). It runs the full interactive tour — Welcome through You're All Set — with the highlighted callouts just like the first time you opened the app.