Nudge can't find your Sonos speakers (but the Sonos app can)

If the official Sonos app shows your speakers but Nudge says it can't find any, your speakers are fine. This is usually fixable in under two minutes. The fixes below are ordered by how often they solve the problem.

Why this happens

Nudge finds your speakers by talking to them directly over your home WiFi network, the same way you'd reach any device in your house. The official Sonos app has an extra advantage: it can also check in with Sonos's cloud service, so it sometimes shows your speakers even when your phone can't actually reach them locally.

So when Nudge comes up empty while the Sonos app looks fine, it almost always means something on your phone or network is blocking the direct connection: a permission setting, a VPN, or the way your WiFi is set up.

Fix 1: Check Local Network permission

This is the most common cause by far. iOS requires every app to ask permission before it can talk to devices on your home network, and it's easy to tap "Don't Allow" without noticing.

1. Open the iOS Settings app
2. Scroll down and tap Nudge
3. Make sure Local Network is switched on
4. Return to Nudge and rescan

If the toggle was already on, switch it off and back on, then force-quit Nudge (swipe it away in the app switcher) and reopen it.

Fix 2: Make sure you're on the right WiFi

Nudge needs your phone to be connected to the same WiFi network as your speakers.

• Confirm WiFi is on and connected, not cellular. If your phone shows 5G/LTE in the status bar while you're at home, open WiFi settings and reconnect.
• If your home has more than one network name (for example, a main network and a guest network), make sure your phone is on the one your speakers use. Guest networks usually block devices from seeing each other on purpose.
• Separate 2.4GHz and 5GHz names from the same router are fine, as long as they're one network. Nudge finds your system across both.

Fix 3: Turn off your VPN

VPN apps, including work profiles, ad blockers that run in VPN mode, and some privacy tools, can route your phone's traffic away from your home network. That makes your speakers invisible to Nudge even though you're standing next to them.

1. Turn off any VPN app, or check Settings → VPN
2. Force-quit and reopen Nudge
3. Rescan

If you need your VPN on all the time, check whether it offers "Allow local network access" or split tunneling, and enable it.

Fix 4: Restart in the right order

If the three fixes above didn't help, a restart sequence clears most remaining glitches:

1. Toggle WiFi off and on on your phone, then rescan
2. Still nothing? Restart your router, wait two minutes for your speakers to reconnect, then rescan
3. Restart your phone last

There's no need to factory-reset your speakers. If the Sonos app can see them, they're healthy, and resetting them won't help.

Network setups Nudge can't scan

Nudge requires your phone and your speakers to be on the same network segment (the same subnet). This matches Sonos's own system requirements, which call for a single flat home network. Some setups break that assumption:

• VLANs and separate IoT networks. If your speakers live on a separate "smart home" or "IoT" network segment from your phone, Nudge can't reach them. Either move your phone onto the same segment as the speakers, or configure your router to place both on one network.
• Client isolation, also called AP isolation. A router setting, common on guest networks and some mesh systems, that deliberately stops devices from talking to each other. Turn it off for the network your speakers use, or move the speakers off the guest network.
• Large or unusual subnets. Nudge scans the standard home network range (a /24 subnet). On networks using a larger address range, speakers outside that range won't be found.
• Firewalls between devices. Nudge talks to speakers over TCP port 1400. If a firewall on your network filters traffic between devices, allow that port.

We're glad to help confirm which of these applies to you, though we're not able to reconfigure individual routers. Your router's manufacturer or your network administrator is the right contact for those changes.

Still stuck? Send us your debug log

Nudge records exactly what it saw during a scan, which lets us pinpoint the cause without guesswork:

1. In Nudge, go to Settings
2. Tap the build info line at the bottom 7 times
3. Tap Export Debug Logs and share the file with support

The log contains technical details about your network (interface list, WiFi network identifiers, device addresses), your scan results, and Nudge's speaker cache including speaker and system names. It does not include your Sonos password or account credentials. Review the file before sending if you'd like, it's plain text.

If you know your router or mesh brand (eero, UniFi, Orbi, etc.), mention it; that often gets you an answer in a single reply.

Quick reference