Installing
Three steps, one of them slow
Menuet is distributed directly rather than through the Mac App Store, so it is signed with a Developer ID and notarized by Apple. Gatekeeper checks that before the first launch, which is why step two takes longer than it looks like it should.
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Download and open the disk image
The download is a 1.2 MB
.dmg. Double-click it and a window opens showing the app beside your Applications folder. -
Drag Menuet into Applications
Drop the icon onto the Applications shortcut in that window. Running the app from the disk image itself works, but it won't survive ejecting the image.
That first copy can stall for a few minutes. macOS is verifying a newly downloaded app, and it shows no progress while it does. It happens once — later launches are instant. Don't cancel it. -
Launch it, and allow local network access
Open Menuet from Applications. macOS asks for permission to find devices on your local network — that permission is the app working, since it talks to your speakers directly and to nothing else. Say yes, and your rooms appear.
There is no Dock icon and no window. Menuet lives entirely in the menu bar — look for the speaker icon at the top-right of your screen. If your menu bar is full, macOS may have nowhere to draw it; ⌘-drag the icon to a free spot and Menuet remembers it.
How it works
Your Mac talks to your speakers. That's the whole thing.
Every Sonos player runs a small web server on your network, and that is the only thing Menuet ever contacts. No account to create, no service to sign into, nothing leaves your house, and it keeps working when your internet doesn't.
Rooms and groups
Pick any room or group from the top of the menu. Commands are always sent to the group's coordinator, so a grouped set of speakers responds as one.
Your favorites and playlists
Menuet plays what you have saved in Sonos — Sonos Favorites and Sonos Playlists, filtered by music service. It doesn't search Spotify or Apple Music catalogs.
Track lists
Sonos Playlists show their tracks immediately. Streaming playlists don't hand a track list to the speakers, so Menuet offers Show tracks — which loads it into the speaker's queue.
Nothing collected
No analytics, no crash reporting, no account, no server. The app has no reason to reach the internet and doesn't.
When something looks wrong
The usual suspects
Four things account for nearly every report. Worth a look before you write in — though write in anyway if none of them fit.
The menu is empty, or it says no speakers were found
Almost always local network permission. macOS denies it silently — discovery simply returns nothing, with no error — so it looks like the app is broken. Open System Settings → Privacy & Security → Local Network and make sure Menuet is switched on. Also check your Mac is on the same Wi-Fi network as the speakers, not a guest network or a different band that's isolated from them.
If it still finds nothing, the menu offers a manual entry: type any one speaker's IP address and Menuet asks that player to describe the rest of the system. You'll find the address in the Sonos app under Settings → System → About My System.
I can't find the icon in my menu bar
A full menu bar leaves macOS nowhere to draw it — the app is running, the icon just isn't visible. Hold ⌘ and drag menu bar icons to rearrange them, and move Menuet somewhere with room. It remembers the position after that. Quitting an app or two that also lives up there frees space on Macs with a notch, where the usable area is narrower than it looks.
Some favorites are greyed out
That favorite points at a music service your Sonos system is no longer authorized for — usually an account that was unlinked or re-created. The speakers reject it, so Menuet greys it out rather than failing silently when you click. Re-link that service in the Sonos app, or delete the stale favorite there. If a single favorite is dead while others from the same service play fine, it's pointing at an older account and is best deleted.
“Show tracks” replaced what was queued on my speaker
It does, and that's unavoidable rather than a bug. Streaming services don't give the speakers a track list for a playlist until it is actually queued, so the only way to list the tracks is to load it into the queue. That's exactly why it's a button you press and never something that happens just from browsing. Playlists you save as Sonos Playlists list their tracks without touching the queue at all.
Contact
If it breaks, please tell me
Menuet controls your speakers through an interface Sonos doesn't document or support. It's the same interface essentially every third-party Sonos integration uses, and it's stable in practice — but a firmware update could change it at any time, and I would have no way of knowing unless someone says so.
One person, one inbox
There's no ticket system and no forum. This goes straight to me, and I read all of it.
- What you were doing, and what happened instead
- Your macOS version, and whether it ever worked before
- The music service involved, if a particular favorite won't play
- Whether the Sonos app itself can still play the same thing