Google Home FAQ

fletch · 12-01-2021 1:11pm

Bluefoam wrote: »

Whenever I ask Google to play music... it plays Muse... very frustrating

Same! I wonder how much additional revenue Muse earn from this

sioda · 12-01-2021 6:16pm

I have a home plug on a uplighter called very imaginatively uplighter and once every so often uplighter on gives me Duran Duran on Spotify.

Raoul · 13-01-2021 10:47am

sioda wrote: »

I have a home plug on a uplighter called very imaginatively uplighter and once every so often uplighter on gives me Duran Duran on Spotify.

What's the problem?

Alkers · 13-01-2021 12:08pm

Moreilly wrote: »

Google homes of various types in most rooms, mix of minis, hubs and hub max and I swear to god sometimes they are head wreaking, 'hey Google turn off the light' power controls not supported, repeat then it works. Play 2fm - Apple music isn't available in ....., Set alarm for 5:30 am - alarm set, turn off the light' - alarm cancelled . Hub max in the kitchen : 'hey google' - no response, move closer - no response, 2ft away it decides to wake up. Play some classical music - correct text comes on the screen so it hasn't misheard me but starts 'tears for fears or starship ext...
I have the Google home system since day oneI was getting much better performance in the past, it all seems very flakey now, so much so that I'd not sure I'd recommend it to anyone over Alexa (and I've never seen a Alexa in operation)

Agreed, our performance has significantly deteriorated but I think it's been going on longer than 7 / 8 weeks

Rowley Birkin QC · 13-01-2021 6:35pm

Alkers wrote: »

Agreed, our performance has significantly deteriorated but I think it's been going on longer than 7 / 8 weeks

You'd wonder is it a familiarity thing or an actual service issue?

As in, are we now all so used to barking orders at the units that the careful pronunciation that we probably all used at the start of ownership has slipped into something more casual and the devices are struggling. I've definitely noticed some frustrations over the last few months compared to when I kitted out the house first.

JimmyVik · 13-01-2021 6:44pm

We have 6 of them all in different rooms. Different google devices too.
They have gone to sh!t the last couple of months.
So much so im thinking of moving to Alex.
Really getting sick of google assistants now. We all find ourselves swearing at it and calling it a fukin idiot.

It was working perfectly up til mid November for the last few years and since then its turning on the wrong devices. Its hearing completely differnt things to what we are asking it.
"Hey Google, Turn on the Kitchen lights". It answers with "Power city blah blah is closed now."
Or it says power options are not available at the moment. Have 3 goes and eventually it turns "something" on or off".

Broadcasting which used to be 100% perfect is hit or miss now. Id say 75% of the time it takes half of what you say, if any of it and broadcasts it. This from different rooms. Always the same rubbish behviour. Even after i factory reset them last week.

JimmyVik · 13-01-2021 6:47pm

Mickeroo wrote: »

I've been getting the "power controls not supported" one a lot lately. Seems to have replaced the "sorry something went wrong" one from a few months ago

This. Im fukin sick of it.

jogdish · 13-01-2021 8:39pm

To echo some of the complaints, notice the last two months, "whats the temp" sorry what are you asking? Repeat myself works fine. Add the various pot luck of the radio issues.

Now I also have an Alexa, purely as a kitchen radio works great on RTE radio 1, snappy and works. However the few times I have asked Alex a question, Directions to a shop/opening times/phone number of a business - it has never worked. Asked was a local shop open, yes a shop by a different name in Hong Kong was indeed open! As much as I am disappointed in G home it is much better than Alexa in terms of actually understanding your questions.

Albeit, it's still not great. Also where the hell is Google calling ? and Duo automated calling ? My home hub keeps telling I can make a call only to tell me that is not available yet the advert is on the screen

copacetic · 14-01-2021 10:11am

Have an extra home hub, new out of the box for an office setup. Greyish, changes to bright White screen on startup and that’s it. Dead out of the box? Google support worse than useless, it was a Christmas present, any option but to try and return it?

Anyone come across the issue, doesn’t seem that common, hardware reset via volume up and down only advice online and doesn’t react to that.

JimmyVik · 14-01-2021 12:23pm

A couple of months ago when i was in a room and would say "turn off the light", it would turn off the light in that room as the light is assigned to that room.
Now 7 out of 10 times it turns off all the lights in the house. Sometimes it will even turn off the sockets too.
The thing is getting dumber by the day.
Ive taken my central heating off of it because it is turning it on sometimes when i ask it to turn on other things. I dont realize it has been turned on til i start sweating. That could get expensive.

timetogo1 · 14-01-2021 1:46pm

I have a few of the nests and a home hub. I don't have many of the issues here.
It might be because I set the language to English US. I did that several months ago as some features are only available to US users e.g. Talk to "ourgroceries" is not available in my language "English UK" but is when I chose "English US"
Also some beta features can be enabled for US users.

I don't know if that is why mine are working OK but might be worth a shot.

https://support.google.com/googlenest/answer/7550584

The stuff that works that I use every day.
Turning off lights in the room I'm in.
All weather / temperature questions.
Routines work pretty well.
Anything from Spotify.

Stuff that's flakey.
The odd Irish radio station.
I get the occasional "Power control not supported" error about once a week and then try again and it works fine.

Setanter · 14-01-2021 9:12pm

Anybody got suggestions for cool things that are available with US English and not on UK English?

timetogo1 · 14-01-2021 9:56pm

Setanter wrote: »

Anybody got suggestions for cool things that are available with US English and not on UK English?

At the time I went to the US version to get this update.
https://9to5google.com/2020/10/27/hands-on-with-the-new-google-nest-hub-and-smart-display-ui-redesign-video/
It's probably updated for everybody by now.

Also the talk to "appname" feature didn't work on UK English. On US English its fine.

maxamillius · 16-01-2021 12:20am

Have to say my google speakers are doin my head in at the moment, wonder what’s going on with them?’ Are google actually investing time and money into making sure they operate flawlessly?!

kenmc · 16-01-2021 10:11am

I thought I was the only one experiencing this sort of sh!t. Google in my house seems to have gone to absolute cack in the last few months. "Hey Google, what's the forecast?" "According to Wikipedia, a weather forecast is blah de blah".

"Ok Google, set a timer for 7 minutes". "New timer for 10 minutes, starting now". FFS. "Ok Google, cancel timer and start new timer for 7 minutes". "I can't determine which timer to cancel" grrrrrr

I don't know if it's deliberately fuking with me to get a replacement, or if I've lost the power of speech.

16-01-2021 11:21am

kenmc wrote: »

I thought I was the only one experiencing this sort of sh!t. Google in my house seems to have gone to absolute cack in the last few months. "Hey Google, what's the forecast?" "According to Wikipedia, a weather forecast is blah de blah".

"Ok Google, set a timer for 7 minutes". "New timer for 10 minutes, starting now". FFS. "Ok Google, cancel timer and start new timer for 7 minutes". "I can't determine which timer to cancel" grrrrrr

I don't know if it's deliberately fuking with me to get a replacement, or if I've lost the power of speech.

If have these issues all the time. My biggest issue is my mini randomly stops playing the radio, I then say Hey google play news talk Fm. I can’t play news from news talk yet. Then starts me pronouncing every word so deliberately I sound like a lunatic. And she might get it wrong two more times before we get there. Later on the radio goes off and we start the dance again.

kenmc · 16-01-2021 1:57pm

MAXFANTANA wrote: »

If have these issues all the time. My biggest issue is my mini randomly stops playing the radio, I then say Hey google play news talk Fm. I can’t play news from news talk yet. Then starts me pronouncing every word so deliberately I sound like a lunatic. And she might get it wrong two more times before we get there. Later on the radio goes off and we start the dance again.

Oh yeah, newstalk causes problems for me too. Then sometimes she understands, but then inquires if I would still like to play that on living room TV like I NEVER HAVE BEFORE FFS WHY WOULD I START NOW?

McMurphy · 18-01-2021 6:58pm

Kintarō Hattori wrote: »

I had a horrendous time with disconnects on my two outdoor camera's. I used some range extenders initially and they worked for a time but didn't fully solve the issue. I then got a Mesh system from Huawei which was better but there was still frequent dropouts. I said feck it, got the Google Wi-Fi and I don't know what magic is in the units but it's been a dream since. There is still the occasional dropout but it's totally acceptable and quite rare.

Ok lads I think I'll admit defeat and possibly shell out on a Google WiFi. The eero system worked for a few days and then started experiencing the same disconnection issues as before.

I eventually sent the eero back to Amazon in the end up.

Funny thing is, my nest cam won't connect to the WiFi network at all when I let the WiFi automatically select the WiFi channel (Virgin), meaning I have to set it manually, I find channel 9 usually works best.

Still subject to random your camera is offline notices though. It's a pain in the hoop.

AngelaRI · 21-01-2021 5:59pm

Glad I'm not the only one with these issues! Definitely been ongoing for more than a few weeks and getting worse by the day. Misheard commands. Randomly dropping or replacing words in a command (I can see the command on my Hubs). Or just ignore - words appear, disappear without response after a few seconds.
My most common usage nowadays "Hey Google, Feedback" - and they've gotten a LOT of feedback from me lately, some rather, er, frustrated...

I think I found the trick for the lights though: if my mini in my office won't respond to 'Hey Google, turn off the lights', it usually responds to 'Hey Google, turn off the f****g lights' :rolleyes:

Bluefoam · 21-01-2021 7:27pm

AngelaRI wrote: »

Glad I'm not the only one with these issues! Definitely been ongoing for more than a few weeks and getting worse by the day. Misheard commands. Randomly dropping or replacing words in a command (I can see the command on my Hubs). Or just ignore - words appear, disappear without response after a few seconds.
My most common usage nowadays "Hey Google, Feedback" - and they've gotten a LOT of feedback from me lately, some rather, er, frustrated...

I think I found the trick for the lights though: if my mini in my office won't respond to 'Hey Google, turn off the lights', it usually responds to 'Hey Google, turn off the f****g lights' :rolleyes:

Google just added '**** off' to my shopping list... I was getting frustrated that it didn't recognise multiple items I had tried to add... At least it understood what I was saying, just not the context

JimmyVik · 22-01-2021 11:27am

AngelaRI wrote: »

Glad I'm not the only one with these issues! Definitely been ongoing for more than a few weeks and getting worse by the day. Misheard commands. Randomly dropping or replacing words in a command (I can see the command on my Hubs). Or just ignore - words appear, disappear without response after a few seconds.
My most common usage nowadays "Hey Google, Feedback" - and they've gotten a LOT of feedback from me lately, some rather, er, frustrated...

I think I found the trick for the lights though: if my mini in my office won't respond to 'Hey Google, turn off the lights', it usually responds to 'Hey Google, turn off the f****g lights' :rolleyes:

Funny. That seems to be the way to get it to work in our house lately too.

22-01-2021 7:09pm

US English works great for me.

TaurenDruid · 22-01-2021 7:15pm

It's funny, my other half can be heard from another room going "HEYGOOGLEMUTERADIO", "HEYGOOGLEMUTETHERADIO", "HEY... GOOGLE... MUTE... THE... RADIO!" and it'll keep on playing, and I walk in and go "hey google, mute" and it gets it right straight away.

kenmc · 22-01-2021 11:14pm

65535 wrote: »

US English works great for me.

Reminder me how to change language please?

22-01-2021 11:21pm

kenmc wrote: »

Reminder me how to change language please?

On my phone - go into Google Home app
Click on your icon up top right
Go to 'Assistant Settings'
Scroll down to Languages and decide there
There is English (Ireland) but it is just the irritating (to me) South East England accent.

22-01-2021 11:23pm

Many other settings for sensitivity of voice, multiple voices etc. can be set but I guess it's set initially to a medium mode which seems to work fine for me.
I did re-label the light to 'The Light' so when I say
turn off the light or lower the light 50% it works ok

kenmc · 23-01-2021 1:04am

I picked the us english, and then asked the forecast. Apparently we're in the middle of a heatwave - a high of 37 tomorrow, and there was me hoping for snow

timetogo1 · 23-01-2021 4:31am

kenmc wrote: »

I picked the us english, and then asked the forecast. Apparently we're in the middle of a heatwave - a high of 37 tomorrow, and there was me hoping for snow

Is your home address set correctly? My language is set to US and my weather forecasts are fine and in Celsius.

killbillvol2 · 23-01-2021 5:37am

kenmc wrote: »

I picked the us english, and then asked the forecast. Apparently we're in the middle of a heatwave - a high of 37 tomorrow, and there was me hoping for snow

It's pretty simple to change the default to Celsius.

kenmc · 23-01-2021 9:14am

killbillvol2 wrote: »

It's pretty simple to change the default to Celsius.

It is and always was set to Celsius for weather units. Only thing I changed was English UK to English usa

kenmc · 23-01-2021 1:25pm

It's all good now, back to winter, 3 degrees today and snow forecast tomorrow.

I made no changes since it announced the heatwave. Stupid thing.

26-01-2021 12:33am

How do you manage routines these days? I have some set but want to change them, but can't see how in the Home app anymore.

bambam26 · 26-01-2021 11:14pm

[Deleted User] wrote: »

How do you manage routines these days? I have some set but want to change them, but can't see how in the Home app anymore.

I had to ask google to Create routine it sent a link to my phone which took me to the settings in the home app,

sioda · 27-01-2021 2:36pm

I have a pink routines icon at the top of my main Google home app page

Machinehead · 27-01-2021 3:20pm

[Deleted User] wrote: »

How do you manage routines these days? I have some set but want to change them, but can't see how in the Home app anymore.

Tap your profile icon top right corner of the screen - Assistant settings - scroll down to shortcuts - scroll to end of page - tap on 'see all routines'. You can customise preset routines or create your own routines from there. Seems like a long way round to get there, can't understand why the routines icon has been removed from the main window in some versions of the app. Also routines don't seem to work for me anymore. Any ones I created were working fine up to about a month ago, now all routines have stopped working & I've tried editing them using suggested commands from within the app but no joy.

JimmyVik · 27-01-2021 3:51pm

Machinehead wrote: »

Tap your profile icon top right corner of the screen - Assistant settings - scroll down to shortcuts - scroll to end of page - tap on 'see all routines'. You can customise preset routines or create your own routines from there. Seems like a long way round to get there, can't understand why the routines icon has been removed from the main window in some versions of the app. Also routines don't seem to work for me anymore. Any ones I created were working fine up to about a month ago, now all routines have stopped working & I've tried editing them using suggested commands from within the app but no joy.

Same for me.

Raoul · 27-01-2021 5:13pm

JimmyVik wrote: »

Same for me.

Yep. Gone to absolute sh1te.

JimmyVik · 28-01-2021 11:35am

Asking google to broadcast is very very hit or miss now.
So much so, that you can assume the message arrived in another room.
Used to be rock solid.

jogdish · 28-01-2021 11:37am

JimmyVik wrote: »

Asking google to broadcast is very very hit or miss now.
So much so, that you can assume the message arrived in another room.
Used to be rock solid.

This is the Google Home in a nutshell - features that are fawless then barely/don't work, updates that give and take and an app that (perhaps this is just me ) is impossible to navigate for all but the very very basics.

The J Stands for Jay · 28-01-2021 11:57am

JimmyVik wrote: »

Asking google to broadcast is very very hit or miss now.
So much so, that you can assume the message arrived in another room.
Used to be rock solid.

Google home - rock solid
Nest mini - works sometimes, no longer broadcasts. I'd be annoyed if I didn't get it for free for having a Google play music free trial active during some offer they had a while back

Bluefoam · 28-01-2021 12:28pm

I have Google Mini x 1, Nest Mini x 1, Hub x 1, Nest WiFi point x 1 (as part of mesh)... All get things wrong on an equal basis...

I've given away a couple of Google Mini's as I have reached saturation point. If I ever get any more, they'll be aimed more towards audio quality and will replace some of the LG speakers that I have... they are Google Audio speakers and work direcly with the rest of the Google Speakers and I have the sound bar and woofer that is also part of the system.

If they would get the commands to work, it'd be an impressive ecosystem.

Clareman · 28-01-2021 12:36pm

What language have you Google Home set to??? I've mine set to English (Ireland) and I'm not having any of these problems that I'm reading about here.

Raoul · 28-01-2021 12:45pm

Clareman wrote: »

What language have you Google Home set to??? I've mine set to English (Ireland) and I'm not having any of these problems that I'm reading about here.

I have English Ireland too.

JimmyVik · 28-01-2021 12:48pm

Raoul wrote: »

I have English Ireland too.

Ive tried different language settings and all have problems.
The biggest issue is things work perfectly for months and then one day they just dont work anymore.
Too much of Google fcuking around and using customers as testers is my guess.

killbillvol2 · 28-01-2021 2:16pm

Open a support ticket with them if you really want to see a sh!tshow.

They'll walk you through the issue for about 10/15 minutes before suddenly realising that they're in the US so their European colleagues should be dealing with you. They'll "escalate" your issue to their European colleagues and you'll get an email telling you that you're a priority but they can't do anything for you right now due to Covid. Then you'll get a number of emails 3-4 months later asking if they've resolved your problem!

TaurenDruid · 28-01-2021 3:52pm

killbillvol2 wrote: »

Open a support ticket with them if you really want to see a sh!tshow.

They'll walk you through the issue for about 10/15 minutes before suddenly realising that they're in the US so their European colleagues should be dealing with you. They'll "escalate" your issue to their European colleagues and you'll get an email telling you that you're a priority but they can't do anything for you right now due to Covid. Then you'll get a number of emails 3-4 months later asking if they've resolved your problem!

You found out how to open a ticket with Google?! Woah, I'm impressed! (I'm actually looking forward to having to subscribe to Google One sometime in the summer so I get elevated "support".)

TaurenDruid · 28-01-2021 3:56pm

JimmyVik wrote: »

Ive tried different language settings and all have problems.
The biggest issue is things work perfectly for months and then one day they just dont work anymore.
Too much of Google fcuking around and using customers as testers is my guess.

This is Google all over.

Get told about a new Google app. Try it out. Like it. It gets updates. It works even better. More of my friends use it. Slowly notice no new updates for a good while. There's a cancellation announcement. Rinse and repeat.

Routines used to work fine for me. Then they changed it so I could only activate one by speaking - which kinda defeats the purpose of a quiet "bedtime" routine, when other people might be asleep. Then they hid the feature for a bit and it's only now - slowly - getting a re-work.

I'd bet money there have been some personnel shuffles in the big G, and this is the fallout.

killbillvol2 · 28-01-2021 6:33pm

I had a routine to turn on my heating. "Hey Google, I'm cold" to turn it on. "Hey Google, I'm too warm" to turn it off. Worked fine up to a month ago. I found out it had stopped working after this exchange:
"Hey Google, I'm too warm"
"Maybe you should go for a swim".

28-01-2021 11:16pm

Machinehead wrote: »

Tap your profile icon top right corner of the screen - Assistant settings - scroll down to shortcuts - scroll to end of page - tap on 'see all routines'. You can customise preset routines or create your own routines from there. Seems like a long way round to get there, can't understand why the routines icon has been removed from the main window in some versions of the app. Also routines don't seem to work for me anymore. Any ones I created were working fine up to about a month ago, now all routines have stopped working & I've tried editing them using suggested commands from within the app but no joy.

I don't have "shortcuts" in Assistant Settings, so I get lost there.

If i ask one of the devices to create a routine as mentioned here too, it sends a link to the assistant app on my phone. Clicking it googles for creating a routine

Raoul · 29-01-2021 10:27am

I have one saying "Hey google, it's Raoul's bedtime routine", it just searches that on google. Even when I add the routine shortcut to my homescreen and then click on it, it just searches that online. Absolutely ridiculous.

Google Home FAQ

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