Four Sonos speakers live in this house. An Era 300 anchors the office, a Move 2 follows me between the kitchen and the back patio, a Roam 2 has come paddleboarding more than once and somehow keeps working, and an old Sonos Five holds down the living room. For years I controlled all four through some combination of the Sonos app, AirPlay from a Mac, and Spotify Connect from a phone. Then I added them to Home Assistant, and the constant app-switching went away. This guide covers the current setup as of April 2026, running Home Assistant Core 2026.4 and HAOS 17.2 on a Synology NAS.
Table of Contents
- Key Takeaways
- What I’m Running
- Sonos Integration
- AirSonos: Home Assistant Add-On
- Sonos Dashboard Cards
- What’s Worth Setting Up, What Isn’t
- Frequently Asked Questions
- Does the Sonos integration require a Sonos cloud account?
- Will I lose features in the Sonos app after connecting to Home Assistant?
- Does the integration work with Sonos S1 firmware?
- Can I group Sonos speakers from a Home Assistant automation?
- Why is AirPlay laggy through AirSonos?
- Can I use Home Assistant to play Spotify on Sonos?
- Does this work with Sonos Sub or Sonos Amp?
- What happens during a Sonos cloud outage?
- Article Updates
Key Takeaways
- The native Sonos integration auto-discovers any speaker on your WiFi. No tokens, no manual IPs, no fiddling.
- All meaningful controls work: play, pause, volume, grouping, EQ, alarms, status light, surround settings, subwoofer levels.
- Older speakers without native AirPlay 2 (the original Five, Play:1, Play:5 Gen 1) need the AirSonos add-on. Expect a 5 to 10 second delay on track changes.
- Battery sensors on the Move and Roam expose to Home Assistant, so you can build automations like “tell me when the Roam drops below 20 percent.”
- The community Sonos Card on HACS is worth the ten minutes it takes to install. The stock media player tile gets the job done but looks like 2014.
- If Home Assistant is not running yet, this pairs cleanly with a Synology install. Roughly an hour from start to first speaker showing up.
What I’m Running
This is the stack as of the date on this update:
- Home Assistant Core 2026.4 (released April 1, 2026)
- Home Assistant Operating System 17.2 (released April 7, 2026)
- AirSonos community add-on v5.1.1 (April 11, 2026)
- custom-sonos-card v10.6.7 (April 21, 2026)
The Sonos integration ships with Home Assistant by default. There is no HACS step and no YAML editing required to get the basic setup working. The two optional pieces (AirSonos and the custom card) come later in this guide.
This is the same Home Assistant instance that handles other devices on the network, including a Mitsubishi heat pump on an ecobee Premium thermostat running through the limited HomeKit Device integration since the ecobee API shut down to new users. The Sonos side has been the easy part.
Speakers in This Household
Here is what I tested against, what surfaces in Home Assistant, and where each speaker sits on the AirPlay question. Use this as a reality check before you start, especially if you are mixing newer and older Sonos hardware.
| Speaker | Native AirPlay 2 | Battery Sensor in HA | Notes |
|---|---|---|---|
| Era 300 | Yes | No (mains powered) | Full feature support including surround pairing. |
| Move 2 | Yes | Yes | Battery percentage and power state both expose. |
| Roam 2 | Yes | Yes | Same battery telemetry as Move. Tiny but loud. |
| Sonos Five | No | No | Needs AirSonos for AirPlay. Sounds enormous in stereo. |
Links go to Amazon, click here if you want to pick them up at Best Buy. I receive a commission from both.
Sonos Integration
Open Settings, then Devices & Services. If your Sonos system is already on the same WiFi as Home Assistant, it shows up at the top under Discovered. This is the easy path. If nothing appears, the integration can be added manually under Add Integration, but I have never had to do that on a flat home network.
Official documentation: https://www.home-assistant.io/integrations/sonos
Click Configure, and you will be asked if you want to set up Sonos. Hit Submit.
You will then be presented with an option to configure each Sonos device on your network. The first screen might only show one. As soon as you click through, every speaker on the system populates so you can label them by room.
Now that each device is connected, you can control all of these features from each speaker.
CONTROLLABLE FEATURES
- All devices: Alarms, Bass, Treble, Loudness, Crossfade, Status Light, Touch Controls
- Home theater devices: Audio Delay (Lip Sync), Night Sound, Speech Enhancement, Surround Enabled, Surround Music Full Volume (Full/Ambient), Surround Level (TV Level), Music Surround Level
- When paired with a sub: Subwoofer Enabled, Subwoofer Gain, Subwoofer Crossover Frequency (Sonos Amp only)
SENSORS
- Each Sonos system: Sonos Favorites
- Devices with battery: Battery level, Power state
- Home theater devices: Audio Input Format
- Voice-enabled devices: Microphone Enabled
Here’s an example of what part of my Home Screen looks like with the default settings.
You can drive each speaker from Home Assistant and see what is playing where. Glancing at battery levels in one place beats opening the Sonos app for every device. If you connect Spotify, cover art shows up automatically.
AirSonos: Home Assistant Add-On
Most Sonos hardware sold after 2018 supports AirPlay 2 directly. The Era 300, Move 2, Roam 2, Beam, Arc, and Arc Ultra all show up in the AirPlay menu on a Mac or iPhone with no help from Home Assistant. If your whole system is post-2018, you can skip this section.
The older speakers, including my living room Sonos Five and any Play:1 or Play:5 Gen 1, do not have AirPlay built in. The community AirSonos add-on bridges that gap. It detects Sonos players on your network and creates virtual AirPlay devices for each one, so the Five looks like an AirPlay target even though it cannot natively act like one.
Official documentation: https://community.home-assistant.io/t/home-assistant-community-add-on-airsonos/36796
Click Install. Once installed, options appear for Start, Start on Boot, and Watchdog. Turn Start on Boot and Watchdog on, then click Start.
Once it is running, the resource usage shows up and a green dot confirms the service is alive.
That’s it. From the AirPlay menu on a Mac or iPhone, you will see duplicate entries with AirPlay icons next to them. The icon-marked entries are the bridged ones from AirSonos.
The Latency Tradeoff
To be completely transparent, AirSonos is not a perfect bridge. Track changes and source switches take five to ten seconds longer than they would on a speaker with native AirPlay 2. Once music is actually playing, audio is steady and in sync. The lag is on the control surface, not the audio itself.
I also discovered I can stop music from Home Assistant when AirSonos is the source, but I cannot start it from there. Starting playback still has to come from the AirPlay client. If you switch back to the Era 300 or any post-2018 speaker and use Spotify, all of the expected start/stop/queue controls return.
If your only older Sonos unit is something you rarely use, the value of installing AirSonos is real but not huge. If, like me, you have a Five doing serious work in the main living space, it is worth the install.
Sonos Dashboard Cards
The default media player tile in Home Assistant is fine. It plays. It pauses. It groups. It also looks like a Bootstrap form from a decade ago. The community Sonos Card by Johan Frick is the dashboard upgrade that takes about ten minutes to install and changes how you actually use Home Assistant for music.
The card adds proper grouping controls (drag a speaker into a group, drag it back out), a queue view, sleep timer support, and a clean favorites list pulled directly from the Sonos Favorites sensor that the integration already exposes. Repository: github.com/johanfrick/custom-sonos-card.
Quick HACS Install
- Install HACS if you haven’t already. The official guide is at hacs.xyz.
- In Home Assistant, open HACS and search “Custom Sonos Card.”
- Click Download. HACS handles adding the resource for you.
- Edit any dashboard, hit Add Card, and look for “Custom: Sonos Card.”
- Drop it on the dashboard. The card auto-discovers every Sonos media_player entity. No YAML required for the basic config.
If HACS is not your thing, the original community thread covers manual install and YAML configuration: community.home-assistant.io/t/dashboard-sonos-card/393620. General dashboard documentation is at home-assistant.io/dashboards.
What’s Worth Setting Up, What Isn’t
If you only do one thing from this guide, run the native integration. The auto-discovery flow is genuinely fast, the controls are deep, and the battery sensors alone justify the five minutes it takes. Build a single dashboard tile per speaker and you have already replaced ninety percent of what you used to open the Sonos app for.
The custom Sonos Card is the second-best return on time. Ten minutes of HACS work, a much better daily-driver dashboard.
AirSonos is conditional. If your whole system is post-2018, do not bother. If you have a beloved old Five, Play:5 Gen 1, or Play:1 doing actual work, it earns its keep despite the latency on track changes.
Frequently Asked Questions
Does the Sonos integration require a Sonos cloud account?
No. The integration talks to your speakers locally over your WiFi. You only need a Sonos account during initial setup of the speakers themselves, the way Sonos has always required. Once they are on your network, Home Assistant communicates with them directly without going through Sonos cloud servers.
Will I lose features in the Sonos app after connecting to Home Assistant?
No. The Sonos app keeps working exactly as before. Home Assistant is read-and-control on top of the existing system, not a replacement. You can drive a speaker from Home Assistant, the Sonos app, AirPlay, and Spotify Connect at the same time without conflicts.
Does the integration work with Sonos S1 firmware?
Yes, but with caveats. Both S1 and S2 are supported. S1 systems can have less reliable battery reporting and limited text-to-speech and announce features. If you have not migrated yet and your hardware supports S2, migrating tightens up the Home Assistant experience.
Can I group Sonos speakers from a Home Assistant automation?
Yes. The integration exposes media_player.join and media_player.unjoin services. A typical pattern is “when motion in the office at 7 a.m., group the Era 300 with the Move 2 in the kitchen and play the morning playlist.” That is a five-line automation in YAML or a few clicks in the visual editor.
Why is AirPlay laggy through AirSonos?
AirSonos creates a virtual AirPlay endpoint that re-encodes and forwards audio to the Sonos protocol. That extra step is what costs five to ten seconds on track changes. Once the stream is established, audio playback is steady. The latency lives in the control plane, not in continuous playback.
Can I use Home Assistant to play Spotify on Sonos?
Yes. Add the Spotify integration in Home Assistant alongside the Sonos integration. Once both are connected, you can target a Sonos speaker as a Spotify Connect destination and trigger playback from automations or scripts. Cover art and track metadata pass through to the dashboard.
Does this work with Sonos Sub or Sonos Amp?
Yes for both. A Sub paired with a soundbar or stereo pair shows up as a child of its parent and exposes Subwoofer Enabled, Subwoofer Gain, and Subwoofer Crossover Frequency in Home Assistant. Sonos Amp adds the Crossover Frequency control, which the wireless speakers do not.
What happens during a Sonos cloud outage?
Most Home Assistant control still works because the integration is local. Streaming services that depend on the Sonos cloud (the streaming part, not the device control part) can have issues during a Sonos outage, but local AirPlay through AirSonos and any local media library playback continue. This is one of the underrated reasons to have the integration in place.
Affiliate Disclosure: Some links in this article are affiliate links. If you buy through them, I may earn a commission at no extra cost to you. I only recommend hardware and software I have actually run in this house.
Article Updates
- April 24, 2026: Full refresh. Updated to Home Assistant Core 2026.4 and Operating System 17.2. Added Key Takeaways, speaker comparison table, and a frequently asked questions section. Expanded the Dashboard Cards section to recommend the custom Sonos Card via HACS with a quick install walkthrough. General editorial cleanup.
- September 10, 2025: Minor tune-up.
- June 10, 2024: Original article published.
