The Sonos voice assistant can work along with Alexa, but not Google Assistant

When Sonos purchased a privacy-focused Snips voice assistant in 2019, it clearly hinted that it planned to build an assistant that would "increase our customers' ease of use and control" rather than go head-to-head with larger assistants from others. big tech companies. Almost two years later, we could be close to using the company's homegrown assistant, as a Reddit user found code in the Sonos app that appears to display voice commands for Sonos Voice Control.

Sonos' icon and Amazon's Alexa icon | Sonos' icon and Google Assistant icon

Based on the code strings, you'll be able to do things like play and pause music, adjust the volume, and check your Sonos battery. The Reddit user also found what appears to be the Sonos Assistant logo and evidence suggesting that you will be able to enable it in conjunction with Amazon's Alexa, but not in conjunction with Google Assistant. He can see the icons in the images below (Sonos's voice assistant icon is similar to Alexa's).

This isn't the first clue that a Sonos-made voice assistant might be imminent - the company released a survey earlier this year about a "potential new product offering" called Sonos Voice Control. According to the survey, to activate the wizard, you would just have to say "Hello Sonos" and all the commands would be processed locally on the device. Sonos Voice Control and Alexa would work on the same speaker, according to the survey.

Sonos is also locked in a legal battle with Google, suing the search giant in January 2020 for allegedly copying its speaker technology. Additionally, Sonos also says that Google gets in the way of allowing Alexa and the Google Assistant to be used side by side on Sonos speakers. By making your offering have its own voice assistant, Sonos could allow customers to have multiple assistants at once.

"We don't comment on rumour or speculation but as we have stated previously, our team is working on ways to improve the voice control experience on Sonos," said a company spokesperson.