13 ms·

Bose has released API docs and opened the API for its EoL SoundTouch speakers

2532 points by rayrey 9mo ago

MSFT_Edging 9mo ago
Some good news
ForHackernews 9mo ago
Good for them! I own two sets of noise-cancelling Bose headphones and a (dumb) speaker, and they've all been pretty solid, and for half the price of equivalent Apple headphones.
- dominicrose 9mo ago
  I'm still using stereo speakers even though the local store seems to only sell single units. They have bluetooth but I don't see why they would need to be "smarter" than this.
inetknght 9mo ago
I recently posted a comment [0] critical of Bose for needing an app, and it's nice to see that Bose decided to take a much better approach to end-of-life. [0]: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45373200 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45373200
- utopiah 9mo ago
  Does it though? I'm using my QC on my phone without any app, just BT. Sure I can't adjust all settings but enough to be usable. Also FWIW first step for QC35 support on https://gadgetbridge.org/gadgets/headphones/bose/?h=bose https://gadgetbridge.org/gadgets/headphones/bose/?h=bose which is IMHO the way to go.
fkarg 9mo ago
it's sad that this is not the default behaviour. hopefully the stop killing games movement will put something similar into law with potentially further-reaching side-effects eventually. Because frankly, sunsetting products like this should be common sense, not the exception it currently is.
port3000 9mo ago
Good for them. Makes me more likely to consider buying a Bose in future, not just because I know it won't be bricked, but also for the environmental impact of this. Kudos.
- ebiester 9mo ago
  If only their sound signature was a bit better... they went all in on engineering tricks to make things small and cheap to produce, but it shows in their sound quality. Their QC headphones are the best in noise cancellation, and the sound quality is good enough that they're my pair of wireless headphones.
  - bbminner 9mo ago
    A long while ago i heard something (that might have been a urban myth) about Bose putting useless weight into their headphones to make them appear more "substantially professional". Is that a myth or they have pivoted towards actual quality since early days?
    - randall 9mo ago
      There used to be a whole culture of bose kind of being a-holes. (Like 20 years ago.) I used to work at CNET back then and there was a kind of "yeah bose is ok" kind of vibe but it was always tinged with "but they want to sue you if you say mean things" whether they did or not. As far as I know now, things have changed substantially. I would assume this includes engineering quality and honesty. This bricking avoidance seems like another note in that positive direction.
    - Onavo 9mo ago
      Their aviation headsets are infamous for being heavy and the latest generation of the A30s haven't changed much except it's much lighter because they swapped out some metal parts for plastic.
    - rootusrootus 9mo ago
      That was Beats. Pre acquisition IIRC, it was years ago.
turblety 9mo ago
This is amazing, and I hope this sets a precedent for other companies. Stuff like this would definitely sway my buying decision, if I know when a product becomes EOL I can tinker with it.
ktg0215 9mo ago
This is how "end of support" should be handled. Instead of turning devices into e-waste, open-source them and let the community extend their life. Kudos to Bose for setting a good example. More companies should follow this approach - especially as right-to-repair becomes a bigger issue.
- jeffwask 9mo ago
  This def needs to be celebrated and rewarded. I am more likely to purchase Bose now.
  - cipehr 9mo ago
    Agree. This is huge. Definitely makes me want to buy more Bose products for my house.
    - dominick-cc 9mo ago
      Not huge, they didn't open source any code
  - riedel 9mo ago
    Just to mention: Teufel has been even moving further with their fully open hardware design of MYND [0]. Hope others will follow. [0] https://teufel.de/mynd-107002004 https://teufel.de/mynd-107002004
    - FredFS456 9mo ago
      I bought one just this week because of this. They really went above and beyond: - mechanical CAD, schematic and PCB files: https://docs.teufel.de/download/MYND/Open_Source_Hardware_Files.zip https://docs.teufel.de/download/MYND/Open_Source_Hardware_Fi... - firmware: https://github.com/teufelaudio/mynd-firmware https://github.com/teufelaudio/mynd-firmware - Bluetooth API documentation: https://cdn.teufelaudio.com/image/upload/v1748589486/products/MYND/pdf/OA2302-MYND_OPEN_SOURCE-App-SW-Requirements-2025-05-23.pdf https://cdn.teufelaudio.com/image/upload/v1748589486/product... - battery repair/replacement guide: https://cdn.teufelaudio.com/products/MYND/pdf/Teufel_MYND_RM_DE_V1.0_PD.pdf https://cdn.teufelaudio.com/products/MYND/pdf/Teufel_MYND_RM... I believe that they designed the mechanical parts to be 3D-printable as well.
ninjaoxygen 9mo ago
Respect to Bose for taking a better stance on this. I still remember Sonos implementing "Recycle Mode" that they thankfully backtracked on.
- allarm 9mo ago
  Backtracked or not I won't ever buy Sonos because of that move.
  - freedomben 9mo ago
    Yeah, I couldn't even get the damn thing to work reliably when it was new. Oh but you can rest assured that it had no problem exfiltrating all that precious data of mine about what I was doing, and any other things they could suck out of my Android phone. No way in hell will I EVER buy another Sonos product.
    - jjtheblunt 9mo ago
      we've got a pair of Sonos One speakers airplay(2?) connected to our Apple TV (recent generation): the sound is excellent but connection over airplay regularly is dropped, which might be Apple's doing, since they may well favor device testing with homepods. it drives some here to anger...it is a pisser because the sound quality is great. I noticed Sonos speakers are featured in some upscale cars now, Audi for example.
- deleted 9mo ago
  [deleted]
charlesabarnes 9mo ago
I'm in the market for speakers and Bose definitely has rose higher on my list
BikiniPrince 9mo ago
The rest api was taken apart years ago for my old Sonos. They had originally promised to add AirPlay support later said, “Just kidding. Why don’t you brick it instead.” At that point I was finished with closed ecosystems for audio. At least someone made an AirPlay agent that lives on the home server. That speaker has survived many years too.
freedomben 9mo ago
https://archive.ph/Fzrqe https://archive.ph/Fzrqe
thesh4d0w 9mo ago
Providing API specs is not open-sourcing them. Where's the source code?
- adrianN 9mo ago
  Maybe Bose doesn’t have all the rights necessary to open source their code, eg because they rely on libraries.
- dTal 9mo ago
  Yeah, it's kinda sad how much applause this is garnering when publishing API specs should be bare minimum for any smart device, never mind EoL concerns.
  - dahcryn 9mo ago
    what more do you actually need? Unless you want to actually develop ON the device (and build binaries etc...), this completely allows you to use the device and connect it to whatever, so I don't know what more we should expect. No one else is doing this, so yeay applause
    - nemomarx 9mo ago
      Open sourcing the server code would make getting your own instance of it way easier, and maybe opening the app code so people should change the controls?
  - freedomben 9mo ago
    Don't let perfect be the the enemy of good. I fully agree with you on what the bare minimum should be, but the reality is that our definition of bare minimum is currently a fantasy. Any steps taken toward our vision is good and should be applauded IMHO. Especially when it's a major player like Bose that hopefully sets a positive precedent and gets other manufacturers to realize this is not only possible but leads to applause and hopefully more sales. Evolution v. Revolution. I'd prefer the latter, but realistically the former is the more likely to succeed short of people like us getting control of regulatory bodies and forcing it.
freedomben 9mo ago
This might sound crazy to some people, but I think this is much better than ongoing support. Removal of reliance on cloud alone is a massive feature that gets me interested in buying one of these (I don't currently own one). And the fact it has an API I can hit myself? Awesome!!!
- ryandrake 9mo ago
  Not crazy. I would be much more willing to buy a device, in general, if it was advertised as NOT cloud-dependent rather than cloud-dependent.
neoCrimeLabs 9mo ago
This makes me more likely to buy Bose. Why would I buy something that a vendor intends to kill off in an attempt to make me buy again?
wrxd 9mo ago
Happy to see this happening. You know what would make me even happier? Having open source alternatives available to use as soon as I buy the device, not only after it's discontinued
neogodless 9mo ago
Very nice! One time I got a free Harman Kardon bluetooth speaker from Microsoft (the Invoke from 2017). They were $100* but went on sale for $50 and I snagged one. Then Microsoft discontinued Cortana for it, but they didn't kill the speaker. They released firmware that turned it into a perfectly good bluetooth speaker (which I still use today.) And they sent me a $50 gift card* to buy something else from Microsoft. Good will! I was a big fan of Microsoft hardware. Shame about the software... * Apparently $200 initially but they had some steep sales because Cortana as a voice assistant wasn't reviewing well. Reviews are a bit negative on the sound quality. Probably true enough at $200, but for $0-50, I think it's actually really good sound quality. * https://news.harman.com/releases/releases-20200730 https://news.harman.com/releases/releases-20200730
- richarme 9mo ago
  Cool to see the Invoke getting mentioned! I was the engineering lead on that product, and built a SW platform from scratch for it (Microsoft provided an SDK to Cortana which they developed in parallel.) The internal build could actually run Cortana, Alexa and Google Assistant simultaneously and you could e.g. set an alarm with one of them and query it with another, and they could interrupt each other based on priority. Obviously nobody wanted that feature, but it was hella cool that it worked. Oh, and you could make Skype calls from across the room, and the microphone array lived up to Skype's tough certification requirements which took weeks of testing in Microsoft's anechoic chamber for the DSP/algorithm team to fine tune. I tried to push for open-sourcing the platform but it was tricky because 1) the director of engineering in Harman didn't know what open source meant and for a hardware focused business to understand the value was a hard sell, 2) it used a HW module that came with a SW stack I mostly got rid off but a few parts were remaining that would need to be replaced which would require additional resources, 3) I was burned out at that point and had limited energy left to fight the good fight. Really too bad, it could have been a cool voice agent development platform, and I honestly think it would have sold in large volumes as a developer-friendly device. Glad you like it, sorry about the remaining Bluetooth bugs nobody got around to fix, since it basically flopped instantly.
ricardonunez 9mo ago
This should be standard practice. Some companies have terrible policies around bricking their products. When my kid was born, I bought a brand-new Snoo. After six months, I wanted to sell it since we no longer needed it. That's when I discovered stories of people whose used Snoos had been bricked by the company. For such an expensive product, that is such a waste. If I'd known about this beforehand, I never would have made the purchase in the first place.
smallvariance 9mo ago
Great move Bose! I hope this trend continues - it's really nice to see a vibrant market for used/vintage electronic products in some categories (e.g. old iPods) rather than them just contributing to more e-waste.
lysace 9mo ago
The released documentation: https://assets.bosecreative.com/m/496577402d128874/original/SoundTouch-Web-API.pdf https://assets.bosecreative.com/m/496577402d128874/original/... From a quick glance it looks like you are just able to do high level playback controls, similar to what you'd do using their on-device UI. Perhaps that's enough?
- Almondsetat 9mo ago
  I mean, suppose a CD player only used proprietary CDs. If the company dropped support and opened it to every other CD brand, would you complain that you can't load cassettes? Or burn ISOs with it?
- ljosa 9mo ago
  The speakers have a telnet interface and DLNA support, but no documentation and I was not able to make it work with MiniDLNA in a couple of hours of trying.
onemoresoop 9mo ago
I think it would be a good idea to tax companies significatnly when bricking their devices, it's creating e-waste. Open sourcing them like this would be a way for them to avoid fines.
Ergotamine 9mo ago
Meanwhile they "bricked" the login in their app for some countries arbitrarily: https://www.reddit.com/r/bose/s/ijKcvl09FW https://www.reddit.com/r/bose/s/ijKcvl09FW Now users like me can't configure their devices (because the login is mandatory for using anything in the app). Some users report they aren't even able to use it with a VPN. The over-reliance on closed source apps with mandatory logins for configuring devices you own must come to an end.
esskay 9mo ago
Hey Sonos, this is how you handle old products, and this is why most of us wont touch your hardware ever again.
- s_dev 9mo ago
  I have my fathers Sonos soundbar and a pair of speakers at home that I bought for him as Christmas gifts years ago. I still can't believe they knowingly released an app that bricked older devices. I have to try and get them working again. The only solution I've heard of is to get an old version of the Sonos app APK, a dedicated old single purpose Android phone to acts as a bridge between your speakers and phone and connect that way. Stay away from Sonos.
  - snide 9mo ago
    I have 2012 Sonos hardware. You can still get the original Sonos S1 controller, which works with old stuff. It's pretty annoying that all the new stuff is S2 (and that app is better supported), but it's not as hard as you're describing it. You can get it off Google Play and just use it. The quality of the software, and the fact that it isn't really updated, is another thing, but the actual software availability is there.
    - esskay 9mo ago
      _Some_ of the software is there. They randomly intentionally broke the desktop apps for S1 devices.
bentt 9mo ago
Take that Sonos!
Hasz 9mo ago
Hopefully, someone from Bose sees these comments. There is a serious segment of the pro and prosumer audio market that values open-source, interoperability, long service life, and is willing to pay a bit more for it. I hope Bose continues to do this for future products and is rewarded financially for it.
isolli 9mo ago
Nice. This reminds me of Logitech who open sourced LMS (Logitech Media Server) when they discontinued their multiroom product (known as Squeezebox before they bought it). Still a fantastic multi-room setup to this day... I run a server as well as a client from a Raspberry Pi.
Fiveplus 9mo ago
The hardware on the soundtouch 10/20/30 series was always surprisingly over engineered with heavy magnets, decent power supplies, and good enclosures but let down by a sluggish app and flaky mDNS implementation. With this, they just became the best value proposition on the used market. Flashing these with a minimal distro running snapclient (for multiroom audio) and shairport-sync (AirPlay 2) makes them infinitely better than they were on stock firmware. eBay prices are probably going to double by tomorrow morning.
- monocasa 9mo ago
  Except they didn't open source anything. They just published a simple API spec to allow play/pause/next button support over http.
- poolnoodle 9mo ago
  I have used a ST10 as my tv speaker for years and despite being mono it has such a clear and full sound. Spectacular little box.
  - Fiveplus 9mo ago
    They hardware always been and continues to be finessed. Worth the extra premium imho.
hkt 9mo ago
I'm glad this has happened, but I'm be gladder if this was a legal requirement.
encypruon 9mo ago
Reword a public announcement [1], slap on a misleading title, put it behind a cookie banner and paywall and boom - Journalism! "Bose is releasing documentation for EOL smart speaker HTTP API" would be more apt. Not even Bose is claiming that anything has been open-sourced in their statement. Titling the section "Open-source options for the community" is as close as they come to that. Still, props to Bose for actively helping to keep their old devices usable. [1] https://www.bose.com/soundtouch-end-of-life https://www.bose.com/soundtouch-end-of-life
dspillett 9mo ago
This is not open sourcing any actual software or hardware it is “open-sourcing the API documentation for its SoundTouch smart speakers”. You might be able to point them at an alternative back-end¹ if you want the cloud features, but that will need to be written from scratch rather than being forked from code provided by Sonos. > When cloud support ends, an update to the SoundTouch app will add local controls to retain as much functionality as possible without cloud services This is a far bigger move than releasing API information, IMO bigger than if they had actually open sourced the software & hardware, from the point of view of most end users - they can keep using the local features without needing anyone else to maintain a version. -------- [1] TFA doesn't state that this will be possible, but opening the API makes no sense if it isn't.
- danw1979 9mo ago
  The question on my mind is will the SoundTouch app continue to be supported on new mobile OS versions ? Is it the same app that caters for other speakers too ? If it is, and Bose continue to include their old speakers on the functionality of the app, then I can hardly see how this is a true EoL. They’re really continuing to support the speakers in their app, at least.
  - egwor 9mo ago
    Considering that new speakers don't use SoundTouch, I wonder too. I hope that they keep the app running for a while. This kit is expensive and it can't have a short life time!
  - 0xbadcafebee 9mo ago
    They're discontinuing support for SoundTouch Speakers. The SoundTouch App controls SoundTouch Speakers. Put two and two together... From their announcement: What will no longer work: • Presets (preset buttons on the product and in the app) • Browsing or playing music services directly from the SoundTouch app Important note: Your system will no longer receive security and software updates. Please make sure to always use your system on a secure, private network.
- 9mo ago
mrcwinn 9mo ago
Good job Bose!
nunez 9mo ago
The folks on /r/bose were complaining loudly about this. I'm glad that Bose heard them and is allowing SoundTouch app development to continue!
- embedding-shape 9mo ago
  You know, it's human to err sometimes, and since corporations apparently are people too, so can they err, this was written. Sometimes companies fuck up, what's really refreshing is to see a company backpedal on a shit choice, and decide to do better. Nicely done Bose!
walterbell 9mo ago
Thanks Bose for opencycling Bose hardware into OSS audio ecosystems that could support multiple vendors. https://github.com/captivus/bose-soundtouch https://github.com/captivus/bose-soundtouch This library provides a clean, Pythonic interface to control SoundTouch speakers over your local network, ensuring your speakers remain fully functional even after cloud services end. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lyrion_Music_Server https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lyrion_Music_Server Lyrion Music Server (LMS) is a streaming audio server supported by the LMS community and formerly supported by Logitech, developed in particular to support their Squeezebox [discontinued in 2012] range of digital audio receivers.. [LMS] also works with networked music players, such as the Roku SoundBridge M1001, Chumby, O2 Joggler, RPi and the SqueezeAMP open source hardware player.
- utopiah 9mo ago
  > opencycling Is that a word? Seems interesting but never read it before.
  - walterbell 9mo ago
    If more vendors follow the lead of Logitech and Bose, opencycling would be a subset of https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Upcycling https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Upcycling
- cssinate 9mo ago
  I've just created a TypeScript version of the same API as the Python interface. https://github.com/cssinate/bose-soundtouch https://github.com/cssinate/bose-soundtouch
deleted 9mo ago
[deleted]
idiotsecant 9mo ago
The headline is somewhat questionable, but that's not Bose's fault.
d--b 9mo ago
"Smart" things get old quickly... I think I bought one of these ten years ago. My parents' sound system is from the mid 90s
aeturnum 9mo ago
Oh cool! I got a set of SoundTouch speakers years ago because they supported simultaneous Bluetooth playback as well as synced cloud service playback. This was in 2018 so options were more limited then. Since it became clear Bose was shutting them down I've moved over to Wiims[1] for managing playback (the SoundTouch app was always kind of odd and hard to manage) - but allowing local control is really nice. Currently you need to hit a button to enable playing from AUX on the soundtouches - they won't stay on the "dumb speaker" mode unless music is playing. Hopefully after this I'll be able to set them up as permanent speakers driven by the wiims. [1] https://www.wiimhome.com/ https://www.wiimhome.com/
zippyman55 9mo ago
I am not a big fan of Bose for personal reasons, but they get my respect for this action.
wg0 9mo ago
This is where EU needs to put its weight and at least in Europe - if you sell something but not willing to support - open source client, server and device all sorts of software.
niuzeta 9mo ago
I got my first Bose headphone in 2008 or so. It was a treat for myself as a poor university student after a paycheque. I loved the headphone and one day it broke down after several years of heavy abuse. I called their customer service for repairs and how much it would cost. Rather than recommending me to just buy a new one, the customer support agent asked questions about the model, what the issue was, and offered a replacement. I've loved their product and support ever since. Glad to see this happening as well. Kudos.
rdiddly 9mo ago
It's sad how surprised the author and all of us are. Has it really become the norm to create crap that you pay for, that just stops working one day and becomes e-waste? If that ever happens to me, that's a company I'm never giving money to again, ever.
teejmya 9mo ago
I really hope Logitech is paying attention, because when Harmony finally dies, I'm not sure how I'm going to replace it.
0xWTF 9mo ago
Really glad to hear this, I've been so close to throwing out my SoundTouch 20, which makes me sad because it looks great and sounds better than my Google Nest speaker (placement issue? hard to say). Has anyone found or started related github repos?
eduction 9mo ago
On the one hand it’s great Bose is doing this — on the other it sucks that this is so remarkable. Having stuff you bought that does not actually need the cloud continue to work should be the default.
hardlianotion 9mo ago
Something Sonos could learn from perhaps (sorry - I have an interest here).
bri3d 9mo ago
They're not really "open-sourcing" anything in the sense that I would think about it. As far as I can tell they're doing two things: * Removing cloud-server dependency from the app. * Publishing API documentation for the speaker. I actually think this is worth noting not so much in a "well aktshully it's not open source!" kind of way, but as a good lesson for other manufacturers - because this is meaningfully good without needing to do any of the things manufacturers hate: * They didn't have to publish any Super Secret First or Third Party Proprietary IP. * They didn't have to release any signing keys or firmware tools. * They get to remove essentially all maintenance costs and relegate everything to a "community." But yet people are happy! Manufacturers should take note that they don't have to do much to make customers much happier with their products at end of life.
LastTrain 9mo ago
As others have said already, they are just un-obscuring the server API and restoring local control to your speakers when they discontinue the service. There is nothing noble about this, it is almost least they could do. I walked away from a large investment in Sonos gear over forcing legacy equipment into the cloud, this sort of thing is why.
- 0xbadcafebee 9mo ago
  It's the speaker API, not the server API
mayneack 9mo ago
Fun fact: Bose is 51% owned by MIT (non voting shares) https://news.mit.edu/2011/bose-gift https://news.mit.edu/2011/bose-gift
GaryBluto 9mo ago
I wish Apple did this with the older iPhone models that can't even connect to cellular networks anymore.
orefalo 9mo ago
Great move Bose Shame on you, Google. You disabled my Nest thermostat and Nest Secure alarm — I will never buy your products again.
dominick-cc 9mo ago
From https://www.bose.com/soundtouch-end-of-life https://www.bose.com/soundtouch-end-of-life: > Open-source options for the community > We’re making our technical specifications available so that independent developers can create their own SoundTouch-compatible tools and features. The documentation is available here: SoundTouch API Documentation (https://assets.bosecreative.com/m/496577402d128874/original/SoundTouch-Web-API.pdf https://assets.bosecreative.com/m/496577402d128874/original/...). AFAIK, the soundtouch web API was already accessible via some bose developer portal. It doesn't seem like they are open sourcing anything. This API just allows you to make basic requests to do things like change volume on the speaker. To support the smart features of the SoundTouch speakers, we would the soundtouch user management service. Speakers connect to this very frequently and its where refresh tokens for music services and presets are stored. The speaker firmware itself has lots of source code, including the bit to handle music services and playback. There is an abstraction layer for music service APIs. There is a process on the speaker that reaches out to a music service registry, which is an index of bose music service adapters. Each of these adapters essentially proxies a music service like tunein, spotify, and even the "stream a custom station" feature. If bose open-sourced the speaker firmware, we could make a firmware build which talks to a 3rd party user management service, and reaches out to a 3rd party music service registry. Then we could add and maintain music service playback for the community. But there is no open sourcing of any actual code here and this soundtouch web api cannot change the URLs on the existing firmware of the user management service or the music service registry. So to my eye this story seems misleading and just some PR nonsense. It's a little frustrating reading all of the "great job, Bose!" comments here like anything was actually done... Disclaimer: I used to work at Bose.
- deleted 9mo ago
  [deleted]
sublinear 9mo ago
This is a great PR move for Bose in a market that doesn't care about name brands like it used to. Maybe they can win some customers back and be considered cool again.
QuantumNomad_ 9mo ago
Direct link to the announcement (from the article): https://www.bose.com/soundtouch-end-of-life https://www.bose.com/soundtouch-end-of-life SoundTouch API Documentation (pdf) linked from the announcement: https://assets.bosecreative.com/m/496577402d128874/original/SoundTouch-Web-API.pdf https://assets.bosecreative.com/m/496577402d128874/original/...
patja 9mo ago
On a related note, I'm eternally grateful for the conversion to open source of the Squeezebox platform (now known as Lyrion Music Server) and SageTV. I use both of these every day.
- interroboink 9mo ago
  Hear hear. I'm also a daily LMS/squeezebox user, across many years. In fact, given the full-throated open source nature of that platform (you can even build your own player with a raspberry pi[1]), I doubt I'll ever need to use anything else for the rest of my life for playing music in my home, even as my devices die and need replacement over time. ... which does make me wonder: that's great for me, but I can definitely see it as a deterrent for companies to do similar. If they want to make a competing future product, they'll be competing against an open-sourced version of their past selves, too. [1] https://www.picoreplayer.org/ https://www.picoreplayer.org/
stivatron 9mo ago
That's very good, props to Bose.
drnick1 9mo ago
Why are these devices connecting to the Internet at all? Aren't they supposed to be connected to phones and TVs via cable or bluetooth? I would never allow any "smart" anything device to speak to the Internet in the first place.
- poolnoodle 9mo ago
  They can play Spotify and radio over the internet.
- dominick-cc 9mo ago
  You used to be able to walk over to a speaker and with 1 button click play music from a preset on a music service like Tunein or spotify. Now will need to fiddle with your phone to connect with bluetooth or something.
ycombadmin2 9mo ago
[dead]
adolph 9mo ago
ianal and kudos to Bose for their relatively graceful hardware depreciation approach and releasing their API documentation; the license for said documentation does not appear to be easily recognized as "open source" by using a standard GPL, MIT, Apache, etc license. Has anyone read the API documentation EULA and can comment on if it really meets some recognizable standard for "open source?"
noname120 9mo ago
While laudable, the release of the documentation is completely useless. The protocol is rather simple and was completely reverse engineered already many years ago. In fact it’s already integrated into several open-source home management tools e.g. Home Assistant. https://github.com/CharlesBlonde/libsoundtouch https://github.com/CharlesBlonde/libsoundtouch
- dominick-cc 9mo ago
  It was already released under the Bose developer portal. I don't see anything new here.
cantalopes 9mo ago
Finally someone!
kn100 9mo ago
and suddenly Bose is on the list of consumer products I will consider for my home. Good job!
easyKL 9mo ago
Unrelated to Bose's open hardware: The project Gadgetbridge has headsets and earplugs from various brands, but almost no Bose. https://gadgetbridge.org/gadgets/headphones/bose/ https://gadgetbridge.org/gadgets/headphones/bose/ The community show interest, but still nothing. https://codeberg.org/Freeyourgadget/Gadgetbridge/issues?state=open&q=bose https://codeberg.org/Freeyourgadget/Gadgetbridge/issues?stat...
css_apologist 9mo ago
this should be required by law
calflegal 9mo ago
The arguments in this thread about sound quality crack me up. Reminds me of when a famous mix engineer was in a best buy and the guy said 'These sound just like it did in the studio!' He said, no it doesn't. We used NS10s.
deleted 9mo ago
[deleted]
fallat 9mo ago
How do I upvote 3 times
dashzebra 9mo ago
Well done Bose! This puts you higher on the list for my next purchase. I don't understand why so many comments here are negative. This is a nice move, and Bose should be thanked and encouraged to do similar moves again. It's a step in the right direction!
wkoszek 9mo ago
This is an amazing idea - whoever came up with it, should get a promotion. I'd not be surprised that if this continues, Bose could be what e.g.: ThinkPad became and will have a steady customer and fan base
aizk 9mo ago
Sadly this is not the norm, but this is a great step in the right direction.
NL807 9mo ago
Legends. Open source, create a community of hackers around your products, everyone is happy.
BenWebbProject 9mo ago
Interesting article - most products are treated as “delivered” the moment they ship. A project manager hands over, success is declared, and the organisation moves on. But physical products with embedded software don’t stop being systems just because the project ends — they keep accumulating risk, cost, and user impact right through to end-of-life. What usually gets missed is that end-of-life is still part of the project, even if it sits years downstream. When software support is withdrawn without a transition path, the hardware doesn’t just lose features — it loses trust. That’s not a technical failure, it’s a lifecycle planning failure. Open-sourcing at sunset is interesting because it’s one of the few mechanisms that acknowledges this gap. It doesn’t help most users directly, but it at least hands control back instead of silently bricking capability. I’m curious whether we’ll start seeing project managers and product teams treat “exit conditions” as a first-class deliverable — with explicit decisions about data, firmware, APIs, and ownership once commercial support ends — rather than treating end-of-life as someone else’s problem.
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cssinate 9mo ago
Just a separate post in case people found this helpful. Here are some APIs available so you can build your own apps: - Python: https://github.com/captivus/bose-soundtouch https://github.com/captivus/bose-soundtouch - TypeScript: https://github.com/cssinate/bose-soundtouch https://github.com/cssinate/bose-soundtouch
yoavm 9mo ago
After my last Sonos, I gave up on smart speakers. Recently I discovered Squeezelite-ESP32 / piCorePlayer and I'm not going back. I'm free to choose my own speakers (and people sell great 2nd hand dumb speakers for nothing!), I can stream, sync, etc - and they integrate great with Home Assistant. No more proprietary protocol for me, thank you...
wwweston 9mo ago
Putting software in long lived components — screens, speakers, whatever — is shortsighted as the industrial short term and barely engineered mindset. Maybe in an era where software can be carefully engineered to a point of actual completion it will make sense, but for now it’s mostly stupid. Open sourcing potential ongoing support and tinkering is good, but it doesn’t get the core problem that it wad probably never the right thing to put the smarts in the speakers in the first place.
gigel82 9mo ago
Ooh, I might consider actually buying Bose products now. Way to go!
awesome_dude 9mo ago
API Documentation https://cdn.arstechnica.net/wp-content/uploads/2026/01/2025.12.18-SoundTouch-Web-API.pdf https://cdn.arstechnica.net/wp-content/uploads/2026/01/2025.... Bose official announcement https://www.bose.com/soundtouch-end-of-life https://www.bose.com/soundtouch-end-of-life
_yb2s 9mo ago
Why would anyone want a smart speaker, when every speaker acts as one when hooked to the sound output of a phone, wirelessly or wired? I'll admit, I don't want or use 'smart' anything, and am currently trying to disable smart devices that were already present in my home from the previous owner.
- hdgvhicv 9mo ago
  I have a speaker in the lounge and kitchen. Wr want to be able to listen to the same thing whichever room we’re in. Or perhaps we don’t. Being able to say “play this stream in room 1,3,6 and this in room 4 and nothing in room 2,5,7” is a valuable feature for people who don’t live alone in a studio flat.
compounding_it 9mo ago
The one thing I’d love to have is repairable Bose headphones. I’ve used different ones but Bose with proper EQ settings are extremely good. The comfort levels on those is exceptional. In my entire life I’ve never seen headphones this comfortable. But once the battery wears out getting it repaired seems to include soldering. Should’ve been easily swappable. Also their Bluetooth can be finicky. One more area that needs improvement.
- EvanAnderson 9mo ago
  I don't understand why consumer goods can't use 18650 cells to make devices long-term viable instead of soon-to-be e-waste. There are fewer and fewer devices I'm willing to buy because interchangeable batteries seem to be going away.
  - compounding_it 9mo ago
    Devices want to be portable. the competition for weight and size is very high. It's ironic how as usage of phones increased considerably with social apps, people seem to not have a problem with thicker iPhones for larger battery. The current iPhone 17 Pro is a chonk that would probably have been considered bulky and backwards 10 years ago. The trends decide the standard. Many EVs use 18650 but I can see that for competition and weight reduction they may switch to a more proprietary standard like blade batteries in BYD for competition. It all depends on where the competition is going with it. For earwear, I would say that portability and weight is a big area for competition.
    - EvanAnderson 9mo ago
      Eyeware and EVs have different requirements than headphones or speakers. Why do headphones need to be disposable? An 18650, or even a Nokia BL-5C (which might as well be a standardized cell, what with the availability) would give them the ability to have their batteries easily replaced by the end user.
- BikiniPrince 9mo ago
  Repairing the QC 35 was not difficult. It’s just a shame it requires soldering on a new battery pack. Even the drivers are replaceable with that little tool. A few years ago I gave mine an affordable overhaul with a new battery and replaced the earmuffs. Right as rain now.
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borborigmus 9mo ago
If the software gains traction in a public git repo this could be a good purchase for someone wanting a cost effective, great sounding, customisable, retro styled speaker.
neilv 9mo ago
I actually found a nice SoundTouch 20 discarded on the curb, a couple months ago. I assumed it was probably discarded due to the frequent situation here, of student who is moving away, and who doesn't want the hassle or expense of moving things that don't fit in their luggage. Now I wonder whether it was discarded because the owner heard it was being bricked, so not worth moving with them. (Don't worry, I'm a curb Jawa master. I carried it home, realized it was IoT that required an icky closed app thing to use it, and so gave it to an MIT student. I just emailed them the URL of this good news. Possible bummer for the previous owner, though.)
dathinab 9mo ago
love it, but I'm surprised after the experiences I had with Bose in the past
micheloosterhof 9mo ago
All they did was republish their old developer API, here you can find an old copy, version 1.1.0: https://www.power-home.com/uploads/smarty/2017-02-13_123201_Part%201-SoundTouchAPI_WebServices_v1%201%200.pdf https://www.power-home.com/uploads/smarty/2017-02-13_123201_... Now there used to be a way to play music (notifications, if I remember correctly) directly to the speaker, but that required an App_Key. Bose stopped handing out App_key's quite a while ago when they shutdown down their developer forums, see also: https://www.reddit.com/r/bose/comments/102ptjg/is_there_any_way_to_get_a_developer_api_key/ https://www.reddit.com/r/bose/comments/102ptjg/is_there_any_...
jgbuddy 9mo ago
Great on bose for doing this, but this is some of the funniest documentation I have ever seen. PDF with structs cut in half on page breaks lol
bschmidt240 9mo ago
[dead]
voidblackmedia 9mo ago
I dont own any of these but this is a great example to lead by. More companies need to do this
crabl 9mo ago
i'm curious to see whether this creates a large secondary market for EoL'd devices!
skiing_crawling 9mo ago
An interesting point is, SoundTouch has always had a local API available (publicly documented) on a web server that runs on a speaker (at least for the last 10+ years).
sysworld 9mo ago
I wish they had done the same with there Soundlink mini series. They are amazing little speakers, but have some weird bugs with the battery. API docs probably wouldn't help here so much, as open sourcing it's firmware. One can dream.
- mjs7231 9mo ago
  I feel like I'm on borrowed time with my SoundLink Mini II. Once a year or so I need to use their website to open a diagnostics tool and clear the logs on the system to get it working.
callamdelaney 9mo ago
It should be law for software that if there is a server component which requires hosting, or any such limitation, the company must opensource the code and protocols such that somebody could host it themselves after support is stopped. Applies to games, hardware, whatever - if it isn’t economically viable to run, let the users.
utf_8x 9mo ago
Bose continues to be an extremely consumer-friendly company (especially by today's standards). I remember back when the QC35s were THE noise cancelling headphones, the bridge* snapped on mine, I contacted Bose support asking if it could be fixed and they offered me a free replacement, no questions asked, a year after my warranty ended. * Is that what it's called? The top part that goes over your head...

2532 points by rayrey 9mo ago

Some good news

Good for them! I own two sets of noise-cancelling Bose headphones and a (dumb) speaker, and they've all been pretty solid, and for half the price of equivalent Apple headphones.

dominicrose 9mo ago
I'm still using stereo speakers even though the local store seems to only sell single units. They have bluetooth but I don't see why they would need to be "smarter" than this.

inetknght 9mo ago

I recently posted a comment [0] critical of Bose for needing an app, and it's nice to see that Bose decided to take a much better approach to end-of-life. [0]: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45373200 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45373200

utopiah 9mo ago
Does it though? I'm using my QC on my phone without any app, just BT. Sure I can't adjust all settings but enough to be usable. Also FWIW first step for QC35 support on https://gadgetbridge.org/gadgets/headphones/bose/?h=bose https://gadgetbridge.org/gadgets/headphones/bose/?h=bose which is IMHO the way to go.

fkarg 9mo ago

it's sad that this is not the default behaviour. hopefully the stop killing games movement will put something similar into law with potentially further-reaching side-effects eventually. Because frankly, sunsetting products like this should be common sense, not the exception it currently is.

port3000 9mo ago

Good for them. Makes me more likely to consider buying a Bose in future, not just because I know it won't be bricked, but also for the environmental impact of this. Kudos.

ebiester 9mo ago
If only their sound signature was a bit better... they went all in on engineering tricks to make things small and cheap to produce, but it shows in their sound quality. Their QC headphones are the best in noise cancellation, and the sound quality is good enough that they're my pair of wireless headphones.
- bbminner 9mo ago
  A long while ago i heard something (that might have been a urban myth) about Bose putting useless weight into their headphones to make them appear more "substantially professional". Is that a myth or they have pivoted towards actual quality since early days?
  - randall 9mo ago
    There used to be a whole culture of bose kind of being a-holes. (Like 20 years ago.) I used to work at CNET back then and there was a kind of "yeah bose is ok" kind of vibe but it was always tinged with "but they want to sue you if you say mean things" whether they did or not. As far as I know now, things have changed substantially. I would assume this includes engineering quality and honesty. This bricking avoidance seems like another note in that positive direction.
  - Onavo 9mo ago
    Their aviation headsets are infamous for being heavy and the latest generation of the A30s haven't changed much except it's much lighter because they swapped out some metal parts for plastic.
  - rootusrootus 9mo ago
    That was Beats. Pre acquisition IIRC, it was years ago.

turblety 9mo ago

This is amazing, and I hope this sets a precedent for other companies. Stuff like this would definitely sway my buying decision, if I know when a product becomes EOL I can tinker with it.

ktg0215 9mo ago

This is how "end of support" should be handled. Instead of turning devices into e-waste, open-source them and let the community extend their life. Kudos to Bose for setting a good example. More companies should follow this approach - especially as right-to-repair becomes a bigger issue.

jeffwask 9mo ago
This def needs to be celebrated and rewarded. I am more likely to purchase Bose now.
- cipehr 9mo ago
  Agree. This is huge. Definitely makes me want to buy more Bose products for my house.
  - dominick-cc 9mo ago
    Not huge, they didn't open source any code
- riedel 9mo ago
  Just to mention: Teufel has been even moving further with their fully open hardware design of MYND [0]. Hope others will follow. [0] https://teufel.de/mynd-107002004 https://teufel.de/mynd-107002004
  - FredFS456 9mo ago
    I bought one just this week because of this. They really went above and beyond: - mechanical CAD, schematic and PCB files: https://docs.teufel.de/download/MYND/Open_Source_Hardware_Files.zip https://docs.teufel.de/download/MYND/Open_Source_Hardware_Fi... - firmware: https://github.com/teufelaudio/mynd-firmware https://github.com/teufelaudio/mynd-firmware - Bluetooth API documentation: https://cdn.teufelaudio.com/image/upload/v1748589486/products/MYND/pdf/OA2302-MYND_OPEN_SOURCE-App-SW-Requirements-2025-05-23.pdf https://cdn.teufelaudio.com/image/upload/v1748589486/product... - battery repair/replacement guide: https://cdn.teufelaudio.com/products/MYND/pdf/Teufel_MYND_RM_DE_V1.0_PD.pdf https://cdn.teufelaudio.com/products/MYND/pdf/Teufel_MYND_RM... I believe that they designed the mechanical parts to be 3D-printable as well.

ninjaoxygen 9mo ago

Respect to Bose for taking a better stance on this. I still remember Sonos implementing "Recycle Mode" that they thankfully backtracked on.

allarm 9mo ago
Backtracked or not I won't ever buy Sonos because of that move.
- freedomben 9mo ago
  Yeah, I couldn't even get the damn thing to work reliably when it was new. Oh but you can rest assured that it had no problem exfiltrating all that precious data of mine about what I was doing, and any other things they could suck out of my Android phone. No way in hell will I EVER buy another Sonos product.
  - jjtheblunt 9mo ago
    we've got a pair of Sonos One speakers airplay(2?) connected to our Apple TV (recent generation): the sound is excellent but connection over airplay regularly is dropped, which might be Apple's doing, since they may well favor device testing with homepods. it drives some here to anger...it is a pisser because the sound quality is great. I noticed Sonos speakers are featured in some upscale cars now, Audi for example.
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charlesabarnes 9mo ago

I'm in the market for speakers and Bose definitely has rose higher on my list

BikiniPrince 9mo ago

The rest api was taken apart years ago for my old Sonos. They had originally promised to add AirPlay support later said, “Just kidding. Why don’t you brick it instead.” At that point I was finished with closed ecosystems for audio. At least someone made an AirPlay agent that lives on the home server. That speaker has survived many years too.

freedomben 9mo ago

https://archive.ph/Fzrqe https://archive.ph/Fzrqe

thesh4d0w 9mo ago

Providing API specs is not open-sourcing them. Where's the source code?

adrianN 9mo ago
Maybe Bose doesn’t have all the rights necessary to open source their code, eg because they rely on libraries.
dTal 9mo ago
Yeah, it's kinda sad how much applause this is garnering when publishing API specs should be bare minimum for any smart device, never mind EoL concerns.
- dahcryn 9mo ago
  what more do you actually need? Unless you want to actually develop ON the device (and build binaries etc...), this completely allows you to use the device and connect it to whatever, so I don't know what more we should expect. No one else is doing this, so yeay applause
  - nemomarx 9mo ago
    Open sourcing the server code would make getting your own instance of it way easier, and maybe opening the app code so people should change the controls?
- freedomben 9mo ago
  Don't let perfect be the the enemy of good. I fully agree with you on what the bare minimum should be, but the reality is that our definition of bare minimum is currently a fantasy. Any steps taken toward our vision is good and should be applauded IMHO. Especially when it's a major player like Bose that hopefully sets a positive precedent and gets other manufacturers to realize this is not only possible but leads to applause and hopefully more sales. Evolution v. Revolution. I'd prefer the latter, but realistically the former is the more likely to succeed short of people like us getting control of regulatory bodies and forcing it.

freedomben 9mo ago

This might sound crazy to some people, but I think this is much better than ongoing support. Removal of reliance on cloud alone is a massive feature that gets me interested in buying one of these (I don't currently own one). And the fact it has an API I can hit myself? Awesome!!!

ryandrake 9mo ago
Not crazy. I would be much more willing to buy a device, in general, if it was advertised as NOT cloud-dependent rather than cloud-dependent.

neoCrimeLabs 9mo ago

This makes me more likely to buy Bose. Why would I buy something that a vendor intends to kill off in an attempt to make me buy again?

wrxd 9mo ago

Happy to see this happening. You know what would make me even happier? Having open source alternatives available to use as soon as I buy the device, not only after it's discontinued

neogodless 9mo ago

Very nice! One time I got a free Harman Kardon bluetooth speaker from Microsoft (the Invoke from 2017). They were $100* but went on sale for $50 and I snagged one. Then Microsoft discontinued Cortana for it, but they didn't kill the speaker. They released firmware that turned it into a perfectly good bluetooth speaker (which I still use today.) And they sent me a $50 gift card* to buy something else from Microsoft. Good will! I was a big fan of Microsoft hardware. Shame about the software... * Apparently $200 initially but they had some steep sales because Cortana as a voice assistant wasn't reviewing well. Reviews are a bit negative on the sound quality. Probably true enough at $200, but for $0-50, I think it's actually really good sound quality. * https://news.harman.com/releases/releases-20200730 https://news.harman.com/releases/releases-20200730

richarme 9mo ago
Cool to see the Invoke getting mentioned! I was the engineering lead on that product, and built a SW platform from scratch for it (Microsoft provided an SDK to Cortana which they developed in parallel.) The internal build could actually run Cortana, Alexa and Google Assistant simultaneously and you could e.g. set an alarm with one of them and query it with another, and they could interrupt each other based on priority. Obviously nobody wanted that feature, but it was hella cool that it worked. Oh, and you could make Skype calls from across the room, and the microphone array lived up to Skype's tough certification requirements which took weeks of testing in Microsoft's anechoic chamber for the DSP/algorithm team to fine tune. I tried to push for open-sourcing the platform but it was tricky because 1) the director of engineering in Harman didn't know what open source meant and for a hardware focused business to understand the value was a hard sell, 2) it used a HW module that came with a SW stack I mostly got rid off but a few parts were remaining that would need to be replaced which would require additional resources, 3) I was burned out at that point and had limited energy left to fight the good fight. Really too bad, it could have been a cool voice agent development platform, and I honestly think it would have sold in large volumes as a developer-friendly device. Glad you like it, sorry about the remaining Bluetooth bugs nobody got around to fix, since it basically flopped instantly.

ricardonunez 9mo ago

This should be standard practice. Some companies have terrible policies around bricking their products. When my kid was born, I bought a brand-new Snoo. After six months, I wanted to sell it since we no longer needed it. That's when I discovered stories of people whose used Snoos had been bricked by the company. For such an expensive product, that is such a waste. If I'd known about this beforehand, I never would have made the purchase in the first place.

smallvariance 9mo ago

Great move Bose! I hope this trend continues - it's really nice to see a vibrant market for used/vintage electronic products in some categories (e.g. old iPods) rather than them just contributing to more e-waste.

lysace 9mo ago

The released documentation: https://assets.bosecreative.com/m/496577402d128874/original/SoundTouch-Web-API.pdf https://assets.bosecreative.com/m/496577402d128874/original/... From a quick glance it looks like you are just able to do high level playback controls, similar to what you'd do using their on-device UI. Perhaps that's enough?

Almondsetat 9mo ago
I mean, suppose a CD player only used proprietary CDs. If the company dropped support and opened it to every other CD brand, would you complain that you can't load cassettes? Or burn ISOs with it?
ljosa 9mo ago
The speakers have a telnet interface and DLNA support, but no documentation and I was not able to make it work with MiniDLNA in a couple of hours of trying.

onemoresoop 9mo ago

I think it would be a good idea to tax companies significatnly when bricking their devices, it's creating e-waste. Open sourcing them like this would be a way for them to avoid fines.

Ergotamine 9mo ago

Meanwhile they "bricked" the login in their app for some countries arbitrarily: https://www.reddit.com/r/bose/s/ijKcvl09FW https://www.reddit.com/r/bose/s/ijKcvl09FW Now users like me can't configure their devices (because the login is mandatory for using anything in the app). Some users report they aren't even able to use it with a VPN. The over-reliance on closed source apps with mandatory logins for configuring devices you own must come to an end.

esskay 9mo ago

Hey Sonos, this is how you handle old products, and this is why most of us wont touch your hardware ever again.

s_dev 9mo ago
I have my fathers Sonos soundbar and a pair of speakers at home that I bought for him as Christmas gifts years ago. I still can't believe they knowingly released an app that bricked older devices. I have to try and get them working again. The only solution I've heard of is to get an old version of the Sonos app APK, a dedicated old single purpose Android phone to acts as a bridge between your speakers and phone and connect that way. Stay away from Sonos.
- snide 9mo ago
  I have 2012 Sonos hardware. You can still get the original Sonos S1 controller, which works with old stuff. It's pretty annoying that all the new stuff is S2 (and that app is better supported), but it's not as hard as you're describing it. You can get it off Google Play and just use it. The quality of the software, and the fact that it isn't really updated, is another thing, but the actual software availability is there.
  - esskay 9mo ago
    _Some_ of the software is there. They randomly intentionally broke the desktop apps for S1 devices.

bentt 9mo ago

Take that Sonos!

Hasz 9mo ago

Hopefully, someone from Bose sees these comments. There is a serious segment of the pro and prosumer audio market that values open-source, interoperability, long service life, and is willing to pay a bit more for it. I hope Bose continues to do this for future products and is rewarded financially for it.

isolli 9mo ago

Nice. This reminds me of Logitech who open sourced LMS (Logitech Media Server) when they discontinued their multiroom product (known as Squeezebox before they bought it). Still a fantastic multi-room setup to this day... I run a server as well as a client from a Raspberry Pi.

Fiveplus 9mo ago

The hardware on the soundtouch 10/20/30 series was always surprisingly over engineered with heavy magnets, decent power supplies, and good enclosures but let down by a sluggish app and flaky mDNS implementation. With this, they just became the best value proposition on the used market. Flashing these with a minimal distro running snapclient (for multiroom audio) and shairport-sync (AirPlay 2) makes them infinitely better than they were on stock firmware. eBay prices are probably going to double by tomorrow morning.

monocasa 9mo ago
Except they didn't open source anything. They just published a simple API spec to allow play/pause/next button support over http.
poolnoodle 9mo ago
I have used a ST10 as my tv speaker for years and despite being mono it has such a clear and full sound. Spectacular little box.
- Fiveplus 9mo ago
  They hardware always been and continues to be finessed. Worth the extra premium imho.

hkt 9mo ago

I'm glad this has happened, but I'm be gladder if this was a legal requirement.

encypruon 9mo ago

Reword a public announcement [1], slap on a misleading title, put it behind a cookie banner and paywall and boom - Journalism! "Bose is releasing documentation for EOL smart speaker HTTP API" would be more apt. Not even Bose is claiming that anything has been open-sourced in their statement. Titling the section "Open-source options for the community" is as close as they come to that. Still, props to Bose for actively helping to keep their old devices usable. [1] https://www.bose.com/soundtouch-end-of-life https://www.bose.com/soundtouch-end-of-life

dspillett 9mo ago

This is not open sourcing any actual software or hardware it is “open-sourcing the API documentation for its SoundTouch smart speakers”. You might be able to point them at an alternative back-end¹ if you want the cloud features, but that will need to be written from scratch rather than being forked from code provided by Sonos. > When cloud support ends, an update to the SoundTouch app will add local controls to retain as much functionality as possible without cloud services This is a far bigger move than releasing API information, IMO bigger than if they had actually open sourced the software & hardware, from the point of view of most end users - they can keep using the local features without needing anyone else to maintain a version. -------- [1] TFA doesn't state that this will be possible, but opening the API makes no sense if it isn't.

danw1979 9mo ago
The question on my mind is will the SoundTouch app continue to be supported on new mobile OS versions ? Is it the same app that caters for other speakers too ? If it is, and Bose continue to include their old speakers on the functionality of the app, then I can hardly see how this is a true EoL. They’re really continuing to support the speakers in their app, at least.
- egwor 9mo ago
  Considering that new speakers don't use SoundTouch, I wonder too. I hope that they keep the app running for a while. This kit is expensive and it can't have a short life time!
- 0xbadcafebee 9mo ago
  They're discontinuing support for SoundTouch Speakers. The SoundTouch App controls SoundTouch Speakers. Put two and two together... From their announcement: What will no longer work: • Presets (preset buttons on the product and in the app) • Browsing or playing music services directly from the SoundTouch app Important note: Your system will no longer receive security and software updates. Please make sure to always use your system on a secure, private network.
9mo ago

mrcwinn 9mo ago

Good job Bose!

nunez 9mo ago

The folks on /r/bose were complaining loudly about this. I'm glad that Bose heard them and is allowing SoundTouch app development to continue!

embedding-shape 9mo ago
You know, it's human to err sometimes, and since corporations apparently are people too, so can they err, this was written. Sometimes companies fuck up, what's really refreshing is to see a company backpedal on a shit choice, and decide to do better. Nicely done Bose!

walterbell 9mo ago

Thanks Bose for opencycling Bose hardware into OSS audio ecosystems that could support multiple vendors. https://github.com/captivus/bose-soundtouch https://github.com/captivus/bose-soundtouch This library provides a clean, Pythonic interface to control SoundTouch speakers over your local network, ensuring your speakers remain fully functional even after cloud services end. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lyrion_Music_Server https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lyrion_Music_Server Lyrion Music Server (LMS) is a streaming audio server supported by the LMS community and formerly supported by Logitech, developed in particular to support their Squeezebox [discontinued in 2012] range of digital audio receivers.. [LMS] also works with networked music players, such as the Roku SoundBridge M1001, Chumby, O2 Joggler, RPi and the SqueezeAMP open source hardware player.

utopiah 9mo ago
> opencycling Is that a word? Seems interesting but never read it before.
- walterbell 9mo ago
  If more vendors follow the lead of Logitech and Bose, opencycling would be a subset of https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Upcycling https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Upcycling
cssinate 9mo ago
I've just created a TypeScript version of the same API as the Python interface. https://github.com/cssinate/bose-soundtouch https://github.com/cssinate/bose-soundtouch

deleted 9mo ago

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idiotsecant 9mo ago

The headline is somewhat questionable, but that's not Bose's fault.

d--b 9mo ago

"Smart" things get old quickly... I think I bought one of these ten years ago. My parents' sound system is from the mid 90s

aeturnum 9mo ago

Oh cool! I got a set of SoundTouch speakers years ago because they supported simultaneous Bluetooth playback as well as synced cloud service playback. This was in 2018 so options were more limited then. Since it became clear Bose was shutting them down I've moved over to Wiims[1] for managing playback (the SoundTouch app was always kind of odd and hard to manage) - but allowing local control is really nice. Currently you need to hit a button to enable playing from AUX on the soundtouches - they won't stay on the "dumb speaker" mode unless music is playing. Hopefully after this I'll be able to set them up as permanent speakers driven by the wiims. [1] https://www.wiimhome.com/ https://www.wiimhome.com/

zippyman55 9mo ago

I am not a big fan of Bose for personal reasons, but they get my respect for this action.

wg0 9mo ago

This is where EU needs to put its weight and at least in Europe - if you sell something but not willing to support - open source client, server and device all sorts of software.

niuzeta 9mo ago

I got my first Bose headphone in 2008 or so. It was a treat for myself as a poor university student after a paycheque. I loved the headphone and one day it broke down after several years of heavy abuse. I called their customer service for repairs and how much it would cost. Rather than recommending me to just buy a new one, the customer support agent asked questions about the model, what the issue was, and offered a replacement. I've loved their product and support ever since. Glad to see this happening as well. Kudos.

rdiddly 9mo ago

It's sad how surprised the author and all of us are. Has it really become the norm to create crap that you pay for, that just stops working one day and becomes e-waste? If that ever happens to me, that's a company I'm never giving money to again, ever.

teejmya 9mo ago

I really hope Logitech is paying attention, because when Harmony finally dies, I'm not sure how I'm going to replace it.

0xWTF 9mo ago

Really glad to hear this, I've been so close to throwing out my SoundTouch 20, which makes me sad because it looks great and sounds better than my Google Nest speaker (placement issue? hard to say). Has anyone found or started related github repos?

eduction 9mo ago

On the one hand it’s great Bose is doing this — on the other it sucks that this is so remarkable. Having stuff you bought that does not actually need the cloud continue to work should be the default.

hardlianotion 9mo ago

Something Sonos could learn from perhaps (sorry - I have an interest here).

bri3d 9mo ago

They're not really "open-sourcing" anything in the sense that I would think about it. As far as I can tell they're doing two things: * Removing cloud-server dependency from the app. * Publishing API documentation for the speaker. I actually think this is worth noting not so much in a "well aktshully it's not open source!" kind of way, but as a good lesson for other manufacturers - because this is meaningfully good without needing to do any of the things manufacturers hate: * They didn't have to publish any Super Secret First or Third Party Proprietary IP. * They didn't have to release any signing keys or firmware tools. * They get to remove essentially all maintenance costs and relegate everything to a "community." But yet people are happy! Manufacturers should take note that they don't have to do much to make customers much happier with their products at end of life.

LastTrain 9mo ago

As others have said already, they are just un-obscuring the server API and restoring local control to your speakers when they discontinue the service. There is nothing noble about this, it is almost least they could do. I walked away from a large investment in Sonos gear over forcing legacy equipment into the cloud, this sort of thing is why.

0xbadcafebee 9mo ago
It's the speaker API, not the server API

mayneack 9mo ago

Fun fact: Bose is 51% owned by MIT (non voting shares) https://news.mit.edu/2011/bose-gift https://news.mit.edu/2011/bose-gift

GaryBluto 9mo ago

I wish Apple did this with the older iPhone models that can't even connect to cellular networks anymore.

orefalo 9mo ago

Great move Bose Shame on you, Google. You disabled my Nest thermostat and Nest Secure alarm — I will never buy your products again.

dominick-cc 9mo ago

From https://www.bose.com/soundtouch-end-of-life https://www.bose.com/soundtouch-end-of-life: > Open-source options for the community > We’re making our technical specifications available so that independent developers can create their own SoundTouch-compatible tools and features. The documentation is available here: SoundTouch API Documentation (https://assets.bosecreative.com/m/496577402d128874/original/SoundTouch-Web-API.pdf https://assets.bosecreative.com/m/496577402d128874/original/...). AFAIK, the soundtouch web API was already accessible via some bose developer portal. It doesn't seem like they are open sourcing anything. This API just allows you to make basic requests to do things like change volume on the speaker. To support the smart features of the SoundTouch speakers, we would the soundtouch user management service. Speakers connect to this very frequently and its where refresh tokens for music services and presets are stored. The speaker firmware itself has lots of source code, including the bit to handle music services and playback. There is an abstraction layer for music service APIs. There is a process on the speaker that reaches out to a music service registry, which is an index of bose music service adapters. Each of these adapters essentially proxies a music service like tunein, spotify, and even the "stream a custom station" feature. If bose open-sourced the speaker firmware, we could make a firmware build which talks to a 3rd party user management service, and reaches out to a 3rd party music service registry. Then we could add and maintain music service playback for the community. But there is no open sourcing of any actual code here and this soundtouch web api cannot change the URLs on the existing firmware of the user management service or the music service registry. So to my eye this story seems misleading and just some PR nonsense. It's a little frustrating reading all of the "great job, Bose!" comments here like anything was actually done... Disclaimer: I used to work at Bose.

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sublinear 9mo ago

This is a great PR move for Bose in a market that doesn't care about name brands like it used to. Maybe they can win some customers back and be considered cool again.

QuantumNomad_ 9mo ago

Direct link to the announcement (from the article): https://www.bose.com/soundtouch-end-of-life https://www.bose.com/soundtouch-end-of-life SoundTouch API Documentation (pdf) linked from the announcement: https://assets.bosecreative.com/m/496577402d128874/original/SoundTouch-Web-API.pdf https://assets.bosecreative.com/m/496577402d128874/original/...

patja 9mo ago

On a related note, I'm eternally grateful for the conversion to open source of the Squeezebox platform (now known as Lyrion Music Server) and SageTV. I use both of these every day.

interroboink 9mo ago
Hear hear. I'm also a daily LMS/squeezebox user, across many years. In fact, given the full-throated open source nature of that platform (you can even build your own player with a raspberry pi[1]), I doubt I'll ever need to use anything else for the rest of my life for playing music in my home, even as my devices die and need replacement over time. ... which does make me wonder: that's great for me, but I can definitely see it as a deterrent for companies to do similar. If they want to make a competing future product, they'll be competing against an open-sourced version of their past selves, too. [1] https://www.picoreplayer.org/ https://www.picoreplayer.org/

stivatron 9mo ago

That's very good, props to Bose.

drnick1 9mo ago

Why are these devices connecting to the Internet at all? Aren't they supposed to be connected to phones and TVs via cable or bluetooth? I would never allow any "smart" anything device to speak to the Internet in the first place.

poolnoodle 9mo ago
They can play Spotify and radio over the internet.
dominick-cc 9mo ago
You used to be able to walk over to a speaker and with 1 button click play music from a preset on a music service like Tunein or spotify. Now will need to fiddle with your phone to connect with bluetooth or something.

ycombadmin2 9mo ago

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adolph 9mo ago

ianal and kudos to Bose for their relatively graceful hardware depreciation approach and releasing their API documentation; the license for said documentation does not appear to be easily recognized as "open source" by using a standard GPL, MIT, Apache, etc license. Has anyone read the API documentation EULA and can comment on if it really meets some recognizable standard for "open source?"

noname120 9mo ago

While laudable, the release of the documentation is completely useless. The protocol is rather simple and was completely reverse engineered already many years ago. In fact it’s already integrated into several open-source home management tools e.g. Home Assistant. https://github.com/CharlesBlonde/libsoundtouch https://github.com/CharlesBlonde/libsoundtouch

dominick-cc 9mo ago
It was already released under the Bose developer portal. I don't see anything new here.

cantalopes 9mo ago

Finally someone!

kn100 9mo ago

and suddenly Bose is on the list of consumer products I will consider for my home. Good job!

easyKL 9mo ago

Unrelated to Bose's open hardware: The project Gadgetbridge has headsets and earplugs from various brands, but almost no Bose. https://gadgetbridge.org/gadgets/headphones/bose/ https://gadgetbridge.org/gadgets/headphones/bose/ The community show interest, but still nothing. https://codeberg.org/Freeyourgadget/Gadgetbridge/issues?state=open&q=bose https://codeberg.org/Freeyourgadget/Gadgetbridge/issues?stat...

css_apologist 9mo ago

this should be required by law

calflegal 9mo ago

The arguments in this thread about sound quality crack me up. Reminds me of when a famous mix engineer was in a best buy and the guy said 'These sound just like it did in the studio!' He said, no it doesn't. We used NS10s.

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fallat 9mo ago

How do I upvote 3 times

dashzebra 9mo ago

Well done Bose! This puts you higher on the list for my next purchase. I don't understand why so many comments here are negative. This is a nice move, and Bose should be thanked and encouraged to do similar moves again. It's a step in the right direction!

wkoszek 9mo ago

This is an amazing idea - whoever came up with it, should get a promotion. I'd not be surprised that if this continues, Bose could be what e.g.: ThinkPad became and will have a steady customer and fan base

aizk 9mo ago

Sadly this is not the norm, but this is a great step in the right direction.

NL807 9mo ago

Legends. Open source, create a community of hackers around your products, everyone is happy.

BenWebbProject 9mo ago

Interesting article - most products are treated as “delivered” the moment they ship. A project manager hands over, success is declared, and the organisation moves on. But physical products with embedded software don’t stop being systems just because the project ends — they keep accumulating risk, cost, and user impact right through to end-of-life. What usually gets missed is that end-of-life is still part of the project, even if it sits years downstream. When software support is withdrawn without a transition path, the hardware doesn’t just lose features — it loses trust. That’s not a technical failure, it’s a lifecycle planning failure. Open-sourcing at sunset is interesting because it’s one of the few mechanisms that acknowledges this gap. It doesn’t help most users directly, but it at least hands control back instead of silently bricking capability. I’m curious whether we’ll start seeing project managers and product teams treat “exit conditions” as a first-class deliverable — with explicit decisions about data, firmware, APIs, and ownership once commercial support ends — rather than treating end-of-life as someone else’s problem.

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cssinate 9mo ago

Just a separate post in case people found this helpful. Here are some APIs available so you can build your own apps: - Python: https://github.com/captivus/bose-soundtouch https://github.com/captivus/bose-soundtouch - TypeScript: https://github.com/cssinate/bose-soundtouch https://github.com/cssinate/bose-soundtouch

yoavm 9mo ago

After my last Sonos, I gave up on smart speakers. Recently I discovered Squeezelite-ESP32 / piCorePlayer and I'm not going back. I'm free to choose my own speakers (and people sell great 2nd hand dumb speakers for nothing!), I can stream, sync, etc - and they integrate great with Home Assistant. No more proprietary protocol for me, thank you...

wwweston 9mo ago

Putting software in long lived components — screens, speakers, whatever — is shortsighted as the industrial short term and barely engineered mindset. Maybe in an era where software can be carefully engineered to a point of actual completion it will make sense, but for now it’s mostly stupid. Open sourcing potential ongoing support and tinkering is good, but it doesn’t get the core problem that it wad probably never the right thing to put the smarts in the speakers in the first place.

gigel82 9mo ago

Ooh, I might consider actually buying Bose products now. Way to go!

awesome_dude 9mo ago

API Documentation https://cdn.arstechnica.net/wp-content/uploads/2026/01/2025.12.18-SoundTouch-Web-API.pdf https://cdn.arstechnica.net/wp-content/uploads/2026/01/2025.... Bose official announcement https://www.bose.com/soundtouch-end-of-life https://www.bose.com/soundtouch-end-of-life

_yb2s 9mo ago

Why would anyone want a smart speaker, when every speaker acts as one when hooked to the sound output of a phone, wirelessly or wired? I'll admit, I don't want or use 'smart' anything, and am currently trying to disable smart devices that were already present in my home from the previous owner.

hdgvhicv 9mo ago
I have a speaker in the lounge and kitchen. Wr want to be able to listen to the same thing whichever room we’re in. Or perhaps we don’t. Being able to say “play this stream in room 1,3,6 and this in room 4 and nothing in room 2,5,7” is a valuable feature for people who don’t live alone in a studio flat.

compounding_it 9mo ago

The one thing I’d love to have is repairable Bose headphones. I’ve used different ones but Bose with proper EQ settings are extremely good. The comfort levels on those is exceptional. In my entire life I’ve never seen headphones this comfortable. But once the battery wears out getting it repaired seems to include soldering. Should’ve been easily swappable. Also their Bluetooth can be finicky. One more area that needs improvement.

EvanAnderson 9mo ago
I don't understand why consumer goods can't use 18650 cells to make devices long-term viable instead of soon-to-be e-waste. There are fewer and fewer devices I'm willing to buy because interchangeable batteries seem to be going away.
- compounding_it 9mo ago
  Devices want to be portable. the competition for weight and size is very high. It's ironic how as usage of phones increased considerably with social apps, people seem to not have a problem with thicker iPhones for larger battery. The current iPhone 17 Pro is a chonk that would probably have been considered bulky and backwards 10 years ago. The trends decide the standard. Many EVs use 18650 but I can see that for competition and weight reduction they may switch to a more proprietary standard like blade batteries in BYD for competition. It all depends on where the competition is going with it. For earwear, I would say that portability and weight is a big area for competition.
  - EvanAnderson 9mo ago
    Eyeware and EVs have different requirements than headphones or speakers. Why do headphones need to be disposable? An 18650, or even a Nokia BL-5C (which might as well be a standardized cell, what with the availability) would give them the ability to have their batteries easily replaced by the end user.
BikiniPrince 9mo ago
Repairing the QC 35 was not difficult. It’s just a shame it requires soldering on a new battery pack. Even the drivers are replaceable with that little tool. A few years ago I gave mine an affordable overhaul with a new battery and replaced the earmuffs. Right as rain now.

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borborigmus 9mo ago

If the software gains traction in a public git repo this could be a good purchase for someone wanting a cost effective, great sounding, customisable, retro styled speaker.

neilv 9mo ago

I actually found a nice SoundTouch 20 discarded on the curb, a couple months ago. I assumed it was probably discarded due to the frequent situation here, of student who is moving away, and who doesn't want the hassle or expense of moving things that don't fit in their luggage. Now I wonder whether it was discarded because the owner heard it was being bricked, so not worth moving with them. (Don't worry, I'm a curb Jawa master. I carried it home, realized it was IoT that required an icky closed app thing to use it, and so gave it to an MIT student. I just emailed them the URL of this good news. Possible bummer for the previous owner, though.)

dathinab 9mo ago

love it, but I'm surprised after the experiences I had with Bose in the past

micheloosterhof 9mo ago

All they did was republish their old developer API, here you can find an old copy, version 1.1.0: https://www.power-home.com/uploads/smarty/2017-02-13_123201_Part%201-SoundTouchAPI_WebServices_v1%201%200.pdf https://www.power-home.com/uploads/smarty/2017-02-13_123201_... Now there used to be a way to play music (notifications, if I remember correctly) directly to the speaker, but that required an App_Key. Bose stopped handing out App_key's quite a while ago when they shutdown down their developer forums, see also: https://www.reddit.com/r/bose/comments/102ptjg/is_there_any_way_to_get_a_developer_api_key/ https://www.reddit.com/r/bose/comments/102ptjg/is_there_any_...

jgbuddy 9mo ago

Great on bose for doing this, but this is some of the funniest documentation I have ever seen. PDF with structs cut in half on page breaks lol

bschmidt240 9mo ago

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voidblackmedia 9mo ago

I dont own any of these but this is a great example to lead by. More companies need to do this

crabl 9mo ago

i'm curious to see whether this creates a large secondary market for EoL'd devices!

skiing_crawling 9mo ago

An interesting point is, SoundTouch has always had a local API available (publicly documented) on a web server that runs on a speaker (at least for the last 10+ years).

sysworld 9mo ago

I wish they had done the same with there Soundlink mini series. They are amazing little speakers, but have some weird bugs with the battery. API docs probably wouldn't help here so much, as open sourcing it's firmware. One can dream.

mjs7231 9mo ago
I feel like I'm on borrowed time with my SoundLink Mini II. Once a year or so I need to use their website to open a diagnostics tool and clear the logs on the system to get it working.

callamdelaney 9mo ago

It should be law for software that if there is a server component which requires hosting, or any such limitation, the company must opensource the code and protocols such that somebody could host it themselves after support is stopped. Applies to games, hardware, whatever - if it isn’t economically viable to run, let the users.

utf_8x 9mo ago

Bose continues to be an extremely consumer-friendly company (especially by today's standards). I remember back when the QC35s were THE noise cancelling headphones, the bridge* snapped on mine, I contacted Bose support asking if it could be fixed and they offered me a free replacement, no questions asked, a year after my warranty ended. * Is that what it's called? The top part that goes over your head...