Sonos Voice Control promises what Amazon Alexa and the Google Assistant cannot: local processing of voice commands for privacy as you speak to your speakers.
Sonos speakers have always been able to talk to one another over a wireless network, but now you can talk to them directly with your own voice. Focused on better privacy features than Google Assistant or Amazon Alexa, Sonos Voice Control arrived as promised on June 1, 2022, giving users the ability to control their sound system with their voice rather than through the app, with all processing done on-device rather than in the cloud. It’ll work with any Alexa or Assistant-compatible Sonos speaker that is connected to the same network and, hand in hand with that, Sonos can still be controlled with either Google or Amazon’s services. Sonos Voice Control will work with several different music streaming services, including Sonos Radio, Apple Music, Pandora, Amazon Music, and Danzer. Spotify and YouTube Music are conspicuous by their absence, unfortunately, at least for the moment. Assuming you can work around that limitation, you’ll need to make sure your Sonos network is up and running properly first.
