Estimated reading time: 5 minutes
Setting an alarm on Sonos has several uses, here’s how to do it
Setting alarms on Sonos was always one of our favorite features here at The Ambient. It’s not only useful for waking up to your favorite radio station or playlist, but it’s handy if you want to play some music for a pet when you’re out for the day too. Especially true as you can’t use the Sonos mobile app when not on your Wi-Fi network.
It was also a feature that was left off the redesigned Sonos app when that launched at the end of May 2024, but Sonos has since added alarms back into the app. If you’re wondering where they have gone and how to set an alarm on your Sonos system, we have you covered. It’s far nicer to wake up to your favorite tracks than a standard alarm after all.
Read: 13 tips and tricks to help you get to grips with the new Sonos app
What you’ll need
- A Sonos speaker
- The Sonos app
- Your smartphone or tablet
The short version
- Open the Sonos app.
- Tap on the Settings cog in the top right.
- Tap on ‘Manage’ next to Your System.
- Tap on ‘Alarms’.
- Hit ‘Add Alarm’.
- Make your selections.
- Hit ‘Save’.
The Sonos app was redesigned back in May 2024 as we mentioned, and since that redesign, it’s had a couple of updates that have reintroduced some features Sonos missed off when it first launched the new app.
Alarms were one of those updates and while the alarm functionality is now the same as it was previously, accessing setting an alarm is a little different to the older Sonos app. Once you find the alarm setting, which we guide you through in the steps below, there are a number of options.
You can choose the time, the room or speaker you want the alarm to run on, the music you want to play, whether you want the alarm to repeat and the volume. Crucially if you’re using this method to play music for pets in the middle of the day when you aren’t home, you can also select the duration, and if you’ve picked a playlist or album over say, the Sonos Chime, you can also toggle on shuffling. You don’t want your dog to know the next track coming up now do you.
Time needed: 5 minutes
- Open the Sonos app and head to settings
First things first, you need to open the Sonos app and then tap on the settings cog in the top right corner. This will pull up ‘System Settings’, like the Settings tab used to do in the previous Sonos app.
- Manage your System
There’s a small button called ‘Manage’ next to Your System at the top of System Settings. This pulls up a range of other settings, allowing you to dive a little deeper into your Sonos system, adjusting things like parental controls, your system name and any system updates. It’s also where Alarms live now.
- Head into the Alarm settings
Tap on ‘Alarms’ to get yourself into the Alarm settings. From here, you will see any alarms you have already set, as well as the option to ‘Add Alarm’. Tap on ‘Add Alarm’ to automatically play music at a specified time in a specific room or group of rooms and get an alarm set.
- Choose your preferences
Once you pick ‘Add Alarm’, you will have a number of options. It is here that you pick the time you want the alarm to go off, the room, the music you want to play and whether you want the alarm to repeat. You can also choose the volume and duration. Make sure you hit ‘Save’ when you’ve made all of your alarm choices.
That’s it! The music you have selected should go off at the time you have selected so if you’ve picked Queen Don’t Stop Me Now to light up your morning at 7AM, there really will be nothing stopping you.
FAQs
You can set up to 32 alarms on your Sonos system.
Sonos says: “If you check Include grouped rooms, the alarm will play in the rooms that are grouped together at the time the alarm goes off. It does not play in the rooms that were grouped when the alarm was originally added to the Sonos system.”
“To play tracks from your local Music Library, first add the track to a Sonos Playlist or Imported Playlists then select the playlist as the alarm source,” Sonos explains.
