Bose has announced it will gift its soon-to-be-discontinued line of SoundTouch speakers to the open-source community, enabling third-party developers and enthusiasts to pick up the mantle of keeping the devices ticking over.
The audio company will cease to update the speakers from May 6 this year, which is a little longer than the originally announced date of February 18. Support will end with an app update that supports non-cloud functionality.
Bose says music streaming from apps via Bluetooth, AirPlay, Spotify Connect and AUX will continue. Remote control and speaker grouping will work. That initially wasn’t the plan when the end-of-life details were first announced.
Not everything survives. Playing music from the SoundTouch app will not. Preset buttons will also cease to function. However, this is not the end of the road, thanks to the API documentation now available to devs.
“We’re making our technical specifications available so that independent developers can create their own SoundTouch-compatible tools and features,” Bose says in a support page.
This is a nice potential bonus for users of the speakers and soundbars, who spent upwards of £500 on these speakers, after they were introduced in 2013. Owners had reacted angrily to news Bose would cease to offer simple bug fixes following the end-of-life deadline. Many swore off buying Bose products for life. The reversal has offered a modicum of respectability.
“Kudos to them on the open sourcing,” wrote one owner on Reddit. “That’s a real investment to prepare an SDK for public release. I’m excited to see what cool features the community cooks up, especially now that vibe-coding is actually viable.”
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