Slipmat

Self-hosted control and automation for Sonos.
One tap to put the right music in the right rooms, at the right volumes.

Slipmat runs on your own server and talks to your speakers directly over the local network. There's no cloud and no Sonos account involved, and nothing leaves the house.

Its heart is presets. A preset groups a set of speakers, sets each one's volume, and starts a queue shuffled together from as many playlists, albums and favourites as you like. Start one from the web UI, from a webhook (Shortcuts, Stream Deck, Node-RED), on a schedule, or with a HomeKit switch that also shows whether it's playing.

Everyday playback

• Every room on one screen, with artwork, transport controls and volume.
• Group and ungroup rooms, and set each speaker's volume within a group.
• Pause all stops the music everywhere and leaves TV audio alone.
• Works as well on a phone as on a desktop.

Presets

• Speakers and volumes: pick the rooms, set a volume for each, and choose which one leads.
• Many sources, one queue: Sonos playlists, favourites and your music library, shuffled together, with duplicates removed.
• Rules: change what a preset plays by day, month or time of day. Add Christmas music in December, rotate through a different playlist each day, or play quieter after 9pm. The editor shows what the preset would play right now.
• Starts fast: sound begins within about a second, and the rest of the queue fills in behind it.
• Wind down: start in every room, then carry on in just a few.
• Optional crossfade, repeat, and pausing the rest of the house.

Sources and integrations

• Paste a link to a Spotify or Apple Music playlist, album, artist or track.
• Schedules start or stop presets at set times, with sleep timers, and can pause music when the TV comes on.
• Webhooks for every preset and for Pause All, using GET or POST.
• HomeKit: an optional built-in bridge, with no Homebridge needed, that shows presets as switches in the Home app.
• Blocked music: tracks, artists or albums that should never play, whichever preset queued them.

Running it

Unraid

Install Slipmat from Community Applications. Until it's listed there, fetch the template on the server and pick it from Docker → Add Container → Template:

wget -O /boot/config/plugins/dockerMan/templates-user/my-Slipmat.xml \
  https://raw.githubusercontent.com/alexjsp/unraid-community-apps/main/templates/slipmat.xml

Docker Compose

curl -O https://raw.githubusercontent.com/alexjsp/slipmat/main/compose.yml
docker compose up -d

Settings go in a .env beside it; every one is optional.

Docker

docker run -d --name slipmat \
  --network host \
  -v /path/to/appdata/slipmat:/data \
  ghcr.io/alexjsp/slipmat:latest

Then open http://<host>:5544.

latest is the most recent release. To follow every change on main instead, use edge, or pin a version such as 1.0.0 or 1.0.

--network host is required

Not a convenience — three things depend on it:

• SSDP discovery is multicast and doesn't cross a Docker bridge network.
• UPnP events: the speakers dial back into Slipmat's callback URL, so they need a routable address for it.
• HomeKit (if enabled) advertises over mDNS.

If discovery still can't get through, set SLIPMAT_SEED_IP to any one speaker's IP address — Slipmat finds the rest of the household from there.

Docker Desktop on macOS has no real host networking. Develop natively with just dev instead.

Configuration

See .env.example for the full list. The ones that matter:

Variable	Default	Notes
SLIPMAT_PASSWORD	—	Optional. Setting it turns authentication on; unset means no login.
SLIPMAT_SESSION_SECRET	generated	Signs login sessions. Generated and stored on first run if unset.
SLIPMAT_PORT	5544
SLIPMAT_SEED_IP	—	Discovery fallback.
SLIPMAT_HOMEKIT	0	Set to 1 to enable the embedded HomeKit bridge.
SLIPMAT_HOMEKIT_PIN	generated	Pairing code. Generated on first run if unset, and shown in Settings.
PUID / PGID	10001	User and group the server runs as. /data is handed to them on start.

Authentication is optional

Slipmat runs without a login by default, and that's deliberate rather than an oversight: Sonos has no authentication of its own, so anything already on your network can control the speakers. Putting a password in front of Slipmat wouldn't change that.

Set SLIPMAT_PASSWORD to turn it on. Worth doing if you expose Slipmat beyond the LAN, or if not everyone in the house should be able to edit presets.

Two protections apply either way:

• Webhook URLs always carry a per-preset secret token rather than relying on a session, so they work from Shortcuts, Node-RED and the like. Regenerate a token from the preset editor if one leaks.
• A host-header allowlist blocks DNS rebinding, which is the one thing a browser on your network can do to an open LAN service.

Development

SLIPMAT_FAKE_SONOS=1 runs against an invented household instead of real speakers. It's what the screenshots above were taken from: just readme-images regenerates them.

Requires Node 24+, pnpm and just.

just install
just dev        # API on :5544, UI on :5545 with a proxy to the API
just check      # lint, typecheck, test

⚠️ Tests never touch real speakers. They run against the fake Sonos layer. Anything that would mutate real hardware needs an explicit ask first — see CLAUDE.md.

just release tags a new version, offering the next major, minor or patch, and CI publishes it as latest once the checks pass. Pushes to main publish edge only.

Personal recipes, such as a deploy to your own server, can go in a gitignored local/local.just; the justfile imports it when it exists.

Prior art

jishi/node-sonos-http-api pioneered this shape and its preset semantics were a useful reference. Slipmat is built on @svrooij/sonos instead — actively maintained, fully typed, with the event subscriptions the preset state tracking needs.

License

MIT