Play music in any room, right from your menu bar.
Noso is a native Mac app for your Sonos speakers. Pick a room, change the volume, and start a favorite, a Pandora station or a SiriusXM channel in one click.
Free for 14 days, then $9.99 once. Not a subscription. Needs macOS 14 or later.
Why I built Noso
I used the Sonos app on my Mac every day for about ten years. It sat in the Dock, it was quick, and it did what I needed. Over time Sonos moved everyone to its web app, which I find slow and hard to use.
I wanted a real Mac app back, so I built one. Noso lives in the menu bar, opens with one click and talks to the speakers directly on your home network. It’s the app I use every day now.
What is Noso?
Noso is a Mac menu bar app that controls Sonos speakers on your home network. It shows what’s playing in each room, changes the volume, plays your Sonos favorites, Pandora stations and SiriusXM channels, and adjusts each room’s sound. It runs on macOS 14 or later and doesn’t need a Sonos account.
Your rooms, one click away
Click the Noso icon in the menu bar and the panel drops down. Your rooms run across the top. Pick one to see what’s playing, skip, pause or slide the volume.
Underneath are rows of tiles: your favorites, the stations you play most and the ones you played recently. Scroll a row sideways, or hover it and use the arrow keys. Most Played counts what you actually listen to, so a station you tried once and skipped doesn’t take a spot.
The menu bar can show just the icon, the station, the song, or the station and song scrolling by. If you like a Dock icon better, there’s a setting for that.
A Library window for everything you can play
The Library window shows your favorites, Pandora stations and SiriusXM channels as artwork tiles or as a list you can sort. Search by name, play anything in any room, and star a station to add it to your Sonos favorites.
A bar along the bottom always shows what’s playing, with the controls and volume right there. Open it from the panel, or press ⌘ L while the panel is open.
Quick Play: type a station, press Return
Press ⌘ ⇧ Space from any app and Quick Play opens. Type a few letters of a station, press Tab to change the room, then Return to play.
⌘ S saves the selected station to your favorites. If ⌘⇧Space clashes with another app, pick a different shortcut in Settings.
Pandora stations and every SiriusXM channel
Noso lists your Pandora stations and the full SiriusXM lineup. Find a channel you’ve never played, play it in any room, and star it to add it to your Sonos favorites. It shows up in the Sonos app too.
Noso never asks for your SiriusXM password. It plays through the account you already set up in the Sonos app.
- Your Sonos favorites: The stations you've saved in the Sonos app, from any service.
- Pandora: All your stations and when you last played each, after a one-time sign-in on pandora.com.
- SiriusXM: The whole channel directory, with channel numbers where SiriusXM lists them.
- Spotify: Coming in the next version.
- TuneIn: Coming in the next version.
- Amazon Music: Coming in the next version.
Shuffle Favorites when you can’t decide
Shuffle Favorites picks one of your favorites and plays it in the room you choose. After the number of songs you set, it moves on to another one, so an evening of music changes stations by itself.
It stops when you play something yourself. If you pause, it waits for you. And if a station won’t play, it moves on to the next one instead of leaving the room quiet.
Bass, treble and the rest for each room
The Sound window lists your rooms and the speakers in each one. Pick a room to set bass, treble and loudness.
For a home theater setup you also get night mode, speech enhancement, and the sub and surround levels. Each change goes to the speakers as you make it.
What Noso sends, and to whom
Noso controls your speakers over your home network, and most of what it does never leaves your house. There’s no Noso account, no analytics and no tracking.
A few things do go out over the internet: the SiriusXM channel list comes from siriusxm.com, Pandora stations come from Pandora after you sign in on pandora.com, and station artwork loads from the services that host it. Your Pandora sign-in is kept in your Mac’s Keychain. What you listen to stays on your Mac.
The privacy policy has the details.
What Noso costs
Try everything free for 14 days. If you want to keep using Noso after that, it’s a single payment of $9.99. It isn’t a subscription, and there’s nothing else to buy.
$9.99
once, after a 14-day free trial
- Every feature during the trial and after
- All your rooms and speakers
- Updates through the Mac App Store
Questions people ask
Which speakers does Noso work with?
The Sonos speakers you already control with the Sonos app, as long as they're on the same network as your Mac. That includes home theater setups with surrounds and a sub.
Do I need a Sonos account to use Noso?
No. Noso talks to your speakers directly over your home network. You never sign in to Sonos from Noso.
Is Noso made by Sonos?
No. Noso is an independent app, made by one developer who missed having a real Mac app. It isn't affiliated with or endorsed by Sonos, Pandora, SiriusXM, Spotify, TuneIn or Amazon.
Will Noso ask for my SiriusXM password?
Never. Noso plays SiriusXM through the account you already added in the Sonos app. It reads the public channel list from siriusxm.com and doesn't need your login.
Why can't I play a SiriusXM channel yet?
Noso needs one SiriusXM station saved in your Sonos favorites so it can tell which SiriusXM account to use. Save any channel as a favorite in the Sonos app, and the regular channels in Noso become playable. Xtra channels need an Xtra favorite of their own.
What about Spotify, TuneIn and Amazon Music?
They're coming in the next version, which I'm building now. Today you can already play the stations you've saved as Sonos favorites, whatever service they're from. Playlist favorites show up in Noso, but they don't play from it yet.
What does Noso cost?
It's free for 14 days with everything turned on. After that it's $9.99, paid once. There's no subscription.
Which Mac do I need?
Any Mac running macOS 14 Sonoma or later. The first time you open Noso, macOS asks for permission to find devices on your local network. Noso needs that to see your speakers.
Does Noso work when I'm away from home?
No. Your Mac has to be on the same network as your speakers, the same as the Sonos app on your phone.
Get your speakers back on your Mac.
Free for 14 days, then $9.99 once. Not a subscription. Needs macOS 14 or later.