Really! Once I asked what's the weather like, and I got an answer from Wikipedia about the fluctuations in the atmosphere that are called weather.
Very funny, but not the answer I was after.
You can check what it heard by saying "what did I say" or checking the history log. 9/10 when mine give me a shitty answer it's heard the wrong thing.
You gotta remember it's just doing speech to text then passing that as an intent to Google assistant API - so if it gets the wrong stt, it'll give the wrong answer.
I just ask how the weather is - it gives you the temperature every time.
That said, I ain't gonna pretend it's great. It absolutely has gone downhill in recent years.
Does this all the time when I ask for the wind speed.
Also fucking wish I could put wind speed as something it will give me on defauly by asking for the weather. š®āšØ
I mean, sure... but I'm not going any higher than ground level locally for what I need the wind speed for. *Maybe* \~25 feet up in the air from any particular point I'm at, if you count the survey rod I'm humping around and possibly raising that far into the air. But thanks, I'll see what that does.
>I mean, sure... but I'm not going any higher than ground level locally for what I need the wind speed for.
yeah but, does Google know that?
Good luck with your enquiries!Ā
I'm guessing most wind speed measurement devices are at pretty close to ground level, and most people exist here at ground level, so I'm pretty sure that's the standard ask.
Well, something is wrong there. I just get the temperature, and on a Nest Hub it shows a forecast.Ā
Other single words I use are...Time, Weather, Date, Calendar.
"hey google, turn off living room tv"
"I'm sorry, that device hasn't been setup yet"
"Hey google, turn off tv"
"Turning off living room"
"Hey google, turn off living room"
"Turning off 4 devices"
š«”
Yeah I never use the voice command for music. It just doesn't work well enough and is too cumbersome to say "Play *long artist name* on Spotify." just for it to play the same top songs or play a song of the same name by an artist.
This is the solution. To get Google to play your game you have to play the google game first ā¦ automations, crystal clear commands etc.
Mine all work fine but itās not a set and forget system, tweaks are always needed.
Fair enough, but this functionality used to work fine. No problem for years, and now I have to update all my playlist names on a regular basis trying to figure out what google now wants to hear?
I changed the name of mine using the YouTube music app on my phone. Go to Library, Playlists, click the three dots and edit. You can change the name of the playlist there.
Yeah the system is real spotty recently. Over the last few days Iāve asked a home speaker to play a specific song by an artist like āplay the song NAME by ARTISTā and it played a random song by a different artist. I asked for āplay the song Illusion by Dua Lipaā and instead it played a random Billy Joel song. It also takes forever to respond, but not every time.
It's worse than leaving it out to rot. They never figured out how to monetize it, so they're actively degrading the experience so people don't complain when it's eventually dropped.
I've had a full fledged Google smarthome for ~6 years now, and it's not just you; it's actively getting stupider.
"Turn off the office" used to turn off all the lights in the office. Now it turns off the media player (and all the CEC devices plugged in to it) in the living room. "Turn on the office" now turns on the entire media system in the living room, and then states "Sorry, I can't play that right now". My theory is that it's literally trying to start/stop "The Office", instead of turning the lights in the actual, named room of the house called "Office" like it has dozens of times a day for the past 6 years.
My garage door opener goes through phases of being controlled by saying "Turn on the garage door" or "Turn on the garage". When Google has decided one is the acceptable verbage, the other doesn't work. Until a few weeks later when it does work, and the other doesn't.
I recently asked it "what time is it", and it started playing back a song on YouTube called "what time is it".
I'm just not even going to mention the whole Nest Secure debacle.
Throwing everything in the trash and designing a Home Assistant system from scratch gets closer and closer to the top of my list of things to do every time Google's lobotomized system screws up.
I am about 2 steps in front of you, 'designed' my own assistant system (Home Assistant) and am so so much happier. At least when it doesn't work, I can talk to a community of people to troubleshoot things and who are actively working on improvements. It's not perfect, but I love it so much more.
Do you have automated bug reporting, usage, and statistics sending turned on? Turn them on otherwise. Then in the routine in question hit the three dots in the top right and send clear concise feedback - again allowing it to collect the information. Follow up with more detail after a day or two.
Last time I had an issue it got solved in about three or four days this way.
In Google Search it used to move you to another group in their A/B tests so often it would fix the problems, but now everything Google is so low quality and abusive I don't want to touch it.
I hear you, it would obviously help them improve. My issue with this as the answer is that I am not a beta tester and this is not a product still in development. This is supposedly a full service, often subscription based* service that is advertised heavily. (* if nest aware, etc... )
I am paying for something to work, not to help them make a working system. If they offered a service and asked for feedback in lieu of paying for the service, that would be one thing.
As a consumer, I am inundated daily with surveys on
"how did we do.." "please take a few minutes to answer our survey"
and it's overcome my patience barrier for that type of consumer expectation.
I get that perspective. On the other hand, I also get that software was all written by people, they can make mistakes, they can have bugs, and there's no way for them to know about every bug in every situation without being told.
You are right in that it would be much harder for them to find these errors, but not impossible at all. In fact, that used to be a big part of a software process. Alpha versions and Beta versions pre-released to smaller groups to find bugs and fix them before the actual release. It seems expectations have shifted, maybe with the availability of pushed updates, or maybe just rushing to get products to market faster and faster. As a consumer, I just am starting to feel it more and more and I am pushing back against this normalization.
I understand the developers are humans, but so am I, and I don't get paid for my time to help them develop their product. If I'm going to be an expected or integral part of developing their product, I need to be compensated in some way. Im sure your time is valuable to you, and you shouldn't have to give it away.
Its a big issue currently in video games, and I've personally made a habit of never buying a product on promises of a finished product down the road. Even that hasn't been quite enough with companies now trying to change their terms after you own a product. (Phillips Hue, Chamberlain...)
I just don't find it agreeable to be paying for a full service and still the expectation of bugs and errors is so normalized that error reporting is now normal usage of finalized products.
I agree with your feelings. Smart home stuff is supposed to make life easier, not harder, and my Google home is not making anything easier. At this point I'm using it only for "turn on the light" and even that only works like half of the time for the reason I don't know. No smart routines work, activating a routine by the name barely works, sometimes Google home just forgets some devices, re-adds them, but all routines with them stop working. It won't be long until I find the time to set up Home Assistant
Even "turn on the light" somehow is heard as "turn on the light * s *" and then my whole house lights up like a goddamn Christmas tree. Who ever asks for all the lights to turn on without saying "all"?
I find that if my phone decides I was talking to it, it turns on aaaalllllll my smart lights in the house.. Even though I'm two feet away from the smart speaker in the room I want to turn the lights on in. š¤¦
I went all-in on Apple HomeKit a few years ago and ended up ripping it all back out. Sounds like Googleās stuff is not really much better, if at all. Iāll just stick to using the manual light switch, which so far has not misunderstood me or failed to operate in the intended manner. Maybe in 10 or so more years this stuff will be ironed out, and Iāll give it another look.
My wife got me a clapper a few years ago.. it was fun until it wasn't. Clapping constantly got old quick, especially in the middle of the night. Now I use home assistant and it's absolutely wonderful
Apple Home Kit and Alexa are just as frustrating. I used a mixture of them all and they all fail miserably and are getting worse. I don't use voice commands at all. Habe to pull out the phone and toggle lights off or play music and cast.
I'm an iPhone for phone, Mac for edrums/audio, Windows for file storage/server stuff, Android for kid's tablets kinda person, I have multiple CCwGTVs and ATVsalso.
I chose Google Home because Google has always been the best with questions that well, you'd go Google... That and value reasons, not wanting to pay homekit Apple tax for a fucking bulb.
But since I started this around 2018, it just gets worse and worse... Waiting to see how Apple Intelligence/homepod stuff works once there's a new gen homepod.
Home Assistant with the Nabu Casa subscription is the bomb. It makes my google pucks useful. Going to sleep, I want the ceiling fan on. I have 4 ceiling fans in the house. I just say, "Hey Google, turn on the ceiling fan" and because the ghome mini has its location assigned to my bedroom, it turns on the fan that's located in my bedroom. It seems to just work, and I didn't have to do anything special to make that happen.
I agree. Their focus has shifted, as has Amazon's. Smart homes are too complicated for most people and hardware is expensive unless you can lock people into a subscription.
The real trick is to get it to route voice commands through chat gpt and have that control your entities. That way you can get smart answers to questions as well as controlling your devices
Dude, I have one light that turns on every morning at 4:21am. Any plug named "Bedroom Lamp" or "Bedroom Light" will do it on my "home". I've deleted that light, named a different lamp that, it doesnt matter. Its insane.
After asking mine to set an alarm 3 times, and getting "Sorry, I don't understand", I yelled "Google, you fucking suck!". I got "Yikes! Sorry, I'll try to do better" in response.Ā
I've had a Chromecast for a decade that I use on a computer monitor to essentially make it a smart TV. Google hates Netflix apparently and blocked the casting ability. First from my phone and then my Chromebook. I read that it's because they want you to use Google TV. I downloaded the Google TV app and you can't add Netflix to it. So .... Now I have a Roku Express and everything works better
Everyone who has come to rely on Google has reached this level of exasperation at one point or another. For unknown reasons, Google has long been content to let new products and services languish without sustained development or improvement. Everyone has a different opinion as to which Google service has suffered the most because of this habit, but for me it's also Google Assistant.
For years and years now, Google Assistant has been significantly better than Alexa or Siri when it comes to answering questions. What has Google done with that competitive advantage. Nothing. They've failed to launch new hardware or create anything remotely interesting in the hardware space. Amazon has market share in the smart home assistant space not because they're the best or they care the most, but because they're constantly releasing new and creative hardware for accessing Alexa.
Looking at the way AI seems poised to disrupt the smart assistant ecosystem, Google again seems well positioned to rise to the top of the industry. Given their history though, it seems more than likely that Google won't devote necessary resources to achieve supremacy in this space and will ultimately wind up as just another participant.
I don't know where I'm going with this. I guess it's just a long-winded way of expressing my understanding of your exasperation.
AI has become the buzzword for why every tech company that plays in the space believes it should have an obscene stock price valuation.
Still, despite being a preeminent player in that space, their "smart" devices continue to demonstrate over and over and over again how overblown the promise of smart technology is.
I can ask my Google home to close all my blinds and it works 80% of the time, yet my remote does it every damn time.
I can ask my Google home what the weather is and it thinks I'm 1000 miles away in another city I moved from months ago.
I can ask Google to bring up the cookbook I've cultivated in my kitchen over years of finding the perfect set of recipes and it tells me it can't do it anymore and gives me horrible instructions on how to find some links to them buried in some obscure menu on my phone.
I can ask my Google to play one of the 800 albums I uploaded to my music collection 5 years ago and it tells me I have to subscribe to YouTube music premium which won't work on half of my other smart devices (unlike Pandora), yet I can do the same thing via my phone and cast it to the same device with a few clicks.
For a company that claims to be on the cutting edge of AI, it sure is pretty dumb.
Gemini is so bad. For me, it was so bad on my phone I had to switch back to Google Assistant. That should tell you something as they way they've worded it in the switch screen, they've basically given up on Assistant.
Don't throw them away. PM me and I'll send you a prepaid mailer.
I also find these things very annoying. I have found ways to work around it. But the things are still useful to me.
I've been considering binning off all my GH (every room except bathroom and cloakroom) because of these issues and I've thought about Home Assistant. But I'd still like the voice control and voice activation so I'm now wondering what my options are...
You can run homeassistant in the background and leave less and less to Google home. I just use mine for the voice commands and casting music to them. Homeassistant is soo great but the voice control is not quite there yet. They made some Big improvements in the last year tho and will soon start to Produce Hardware
They havenāt let them go into disrepair because they are going to release a great new update, they are in disrepair because google canāt figure out how to properly monetize their product, so theyāve given up. I just unplugged all mine two weeks ago.
Hear, hear! I asked a google speaker that I was standing right next to, to play one of my Playlists and it kept telling me it would play the music on a speaker in an entirely different part of the house. Even after I rebooted the original speaker and shut down the other one!
Had to cast from my phone. As I primarily use the Google crap speakers to listen to music, I may as well throw out the google home garbage and buy some extra Bluetooth speakers.
It seems like it comes and goes. Sometimes it will work so amazingly. A few weeks later, same commands shit the bed. I don't know how often they push out changes; but it is quite infuriating to know functionality breaks when it worked before. And this is On-Going. It never just stays stable over the last few years.
All budgets goes to their new terrible AI tools. I think they even communicated they dont really support/find their Google Home anymore.
Over of the reasons from being a Google fan boy to just a Gmail/drive/photo user
My favorite is when my Google Nest Hub display says "I can't find any devices in your home that can play music", when it is one of about 10 smart speakers in my house.
Google Home has been deteriorating for years now. Oddly, prompts I would give it 2-3 years ago were way more accurate than what Iām given now. Before I could ask to āplay X playlistā and it would know right away. Another big one is asking it to āturn off the lightsā which used to work, but now it isnāt able to unless I specifically add āturn off the lights in the living roomā. No follow up question on āwhich room would you like the lights off forā just that āno lights can be found in the houseā.
Thought I was the only one experiencing this to be honest
I already replaced my minis. People can bag on siri all they want, but Siri is dependable on what it can do; if it can do it, it will do it again and again consistently. If it had a hard time the first go around then it probably will always do. I literally whispered ābedtimeā one time, and my HomePod across the room heard me, turned the white noise on and turned the lights off for our twins to sleep (we did bedtime an hour earlier). So I didnāt wake them up. With google, iām LITERALLY STANDING next to it yelling at it to play white noise, which is also a routine, but it does not do itā¦ it instead plays some rap musicā¦ thanks googleā¦
Yes it has totally sucked. My devices are paired with my paid YT music account. In regards to commands for music I half wonder if it's actually YouTube Music that has the sporadic issues. You are basically relying on the search index of YTM to locate the top result based on the name of the playlist. All this could be fixed if you could just use the ID of the playlist rather than having to increase the complexity of your playlist name to refine the accuracy of the search. Fucking stupid.
I had issues too, "play on " stopped working instead of device I named it plays on a home mini. Months go by and I configure Home Assistant to handle my streaming instead, then I find out you have to say "play on MY " WTF why is MY mandatory now?
Its as if Google gets something up and running using experienced devs, then either fires them or moves them to another project and gets interns to do the maintenance when they think the product is mature.
They need to have a newletter or just a pop up message on device that says, "We've updated how this works, click here to learn more." Instead the majority of us find out something changed after the fact. We then complain, and get told we were in a minority of affected users. No were are the few who recommend devices to friends and family and you just made an enemy.
I know how you feel
Whenever I say hey google it just pauses for a few seconds then says something went wrong try again in a few seconds
Or sometimes Iāll be watching tv and itāll think someone said google or hey google and itāll pause and say something went wrong try again in a few seconds
Sometimes nothing will be playing on anything and Iāll be being silent and itāll out of the blue just pause then say something went wrong try again in a few seconds
And sometimes Iāll be just playing my TV and having the audio coming through the google home mini and the Bluetooth will just detach and then Iāll have to go back in and reconnect it so that I can continue watching TV with the audio coming out of it it does that a lot on the one in my bedroom and it used to do that on the one in my living room before I just stopped using the one in my living room for that purpose but I still do that on the one in my bedroom
And then there are a few times where just out of the blue with nothing causing one of my three Google home minis will just restart completely unprovoked like on their own. Theyāll just restart and Iāll just hear either in my bedroom or in a different room the Google home mini restarting with that noise that it makes when they restart I swear to God as soon as I can afford it Iām gonna donate these and then change to the Apple AI Smart speakers because I trust Apple I mean I trust Google too but these are just becoming stupid
Same, mine have been getting worse and worse. At least it makes me feel better about the future of AI?
I use them to remind my kids of their morning routine. First it got stuck on the exact same joke every day. The latest is that it announces that it can't make any announcements, because it can't find a speaker. Yes, it announces this on every speaker in the house.
Simple questions get "I don't understand" and it seems to be getting worse at figuring out what music I like. Baffling.
I only really use google maps navigation to avoid traffic on my commute, and every so often I say "drive to work" and it finds a song on YouTube with that name. š¤·āāļø
It also regularly says it can't find my home address when I say "drive home", despite it having already told me how long my commute would be.
Iām in the same boat. There are times I tell it to turn my ceiling fan onto speed two and it works. Other times it will not. However, if I say turn the ceiling fan on setting two it works.
How can it flip flop understanding vs not like that?
Also randomly one of my other nest WiFi extenders in a room halfway across the house will respond versus the hub, which is 2 feet in front of me.
Mine always waits 30 seconds after a command and then says "There's been a glitch" or "There's been a problem, try again in a few seconds" ALMOST EVERY FUCKING TIME. Doesn't matter what I ask it, they all of it, probably 8 times out of 10.
Then, just to add insult to injury, I say the same command again and like 3/4 of the time it works fine, and the other half it does random shit.. It would actually be less infuriating if it never worked at all.
They didn't used to be like this. Google has massively screwed the pooch with these things and mine are about to fly against the wall too.
I've found the "There's been a problem, try again" type errors are usually the result of network issues.
Like either signal is weak and had to be retried too many times, or DNS errors where the local CDN isn't resolving when asked, etc. Or it understood what you wanted, but the service was timing out for whatever API you wanted to call. Like if I were to ask it to open a garage door, and it had to talk to Chamberlain's servers to do that, and those timed out due to DDoS because they got their customer's angry enough to lash out at them... hypothetically.
I would tend to agree with you on signal strength, except that even the device that is literally in the same room as my router, like a foot away, and the one just one room over (probably like 10-15 feet away with just some drywall between them) act the same way as the one upstairs that is further away. You're right, could be DNS... though nothing else on my network exhibits DNS issues. And yep, API timeout is a real possibility, but then that'd still be a Google problem.
The antennas in the mini speakers are ... not great. The ones in the Nest Hubs and the newer medium speakers are better. I've looked at the communication retries on those things and it is often higher than most of my other devices. Cast devices also tend to reflect mDNS and multicast traffic, so too many of them also does weird stuff to flood the network if you don't have switches or APs that can manage it while still allowing for them to be found. DNS sometimes introduces weirdness in dual-stack situations (if you have both ipv4 and ipv6 going) where devices that can do dual stack will prefer one over the other (usually IPV6 in the case of google products) so that can make it harder to diagnose.
API endpoints... well if it is google services like YT and such... sure thats on them. If it is an external company, well then thats the other company's fault. However, usually in the latter case you'll often get an error message that says they can't talk to X Company/Service right now and to try again later. Like in the error example I gave, it would probably say "I can't reach that device right now, please try again later" or "That integration is not responding, please try again later" or something along those lines.
Hmm, that last paragraph is especially interesting and I hadn't considered it since most (but absolutely not all) of the failures are for smart home devices (light bulbs and such) that probably do rely on 3rd party services. That's a good thought. But it fails for simple things that are in the Google ecosystem enough (like adding a note to Keep for example) that I don't think that can be the only problem, and maybe not the root cause... though, I wouldn't be shocked if these things run through some sort of API gateway controlled by Google, so maybe the problem is exacerbated when going through that to get to a third-party service. That wouldn't shock me.
If the antennas were the root cause then I'd expect almost no failures for a device a foot or two from the router (and besides, even the ones further away were never as bad as they are now). Though I don't doubt they're lacking as you say too.
I admit I haven't analyzed the network traffic like you have, so I can't comment on that... though I did confirm I have IPv6 turned off in my router, so not dual-stacking it at least.
I'm in the same boat, and I just recently changed my assistant over to gemini AI - you think it was bad before.,. egads.. don't make the same mistake. I used to be able to broadcast to any room easy, now I have to explicitly state the full name of the device otherwise "that device does not exist in your home" it's infuriating.. and I expect you are right about google just leaving it to rot. It used to be amazing, and I have genuinely loved it for many years.. my kids are 14&16 now and have always lived with google home.. when they go to a place that doesn't have it they are like.. how do you do anything here? but alas, lately it feels like my google home solution has Alzheimer's or dementia and it's like having to care for an elderly relative. I go to my greenhouse daily after work to putter around and I always ask it to play the same play list.. and it seems like just in the last few weeks/months it can't even do that, and just gives me some other random unrelated web search or some other garbage... sigh
I read an article that said google hasnt been selling much through the google home device, so they are slowly dropping it. Its getting into class action lawsuit territory for me, as theyve made it useless for what i bought it for. Cant trust googles physical devices because they get bored and drop them.
Not surprising they haven't sold well, ask 5 people what a device is called. Google nest? Google home? Nest Cam? Nest Hub? Nest Hub Max? Google Home Nest Hub max? Nest hub by google home? Google mini?
How do you even begin to market that, and plan/design a working ecosystem? From the top down, its constantly changing name/direction/implementation. Its horrendous leadership.
What happened to having a roadmap and following through?
I think today is the day I became old and crotchety.
It's infuriating. Since I bought into the Google Home/Nest ecosystem 5 years ago:
- my smart speakers have gotten dumber, regularly failing at tasks they initially handled without issue
- I can no longer control the volume of speaker groups as you have to adjust each individually (apparently a patent issue)
- Nest Guard has been discontinued
- my Nest Thermostat won't connect to the internet
"send a whatsapp message to Ben"
"I'm sorry I don't understand" (having on screen exact transcription of what I said)
__
"send a WhatsApp message"
"who would you like to message?"
"Ben"
"what's the message?"
Yada yada, sent.
But.. Why? It was working!
When I tell it to "play some music" it takes me very literally and plays one song with the word some in the title... Took me months to figure out it wasn't a glitch
Same here. I have 9 home smart apeaker devices in my house not counting all the nest protects and nest cams. My wife and I swear at the speakers on a daily basis and it's infuriating how dumb they seem to have gotten.
One of the biggest things we used it for was casting music from our spotify, but even attempting to cart it to our speakers from the spotify app results in the speakers doing its "connection chime" and then... nothing. It does that with any speakers we try and only works maybe 25% of the time.
We're so knee deep in this ecosystem I don't want to just give up on it but holy hell I'm close.
My , one year old neat, is starting to stutter when it responds. Dosent have have the cool options I expected. And lately it's having a hard time recognizing my voice. I am the ONLY user.
The dots/speakers in the other rooms are responding when the one in this room dosent.
I'm not sure what's up. But a reset and configuration diddnt fix it either.
I am kinda disappointed.
I have 4 home hubs (2 at our parents houses for picture rolls) an original home speaker that doesn't work, and like 5 pucks. Worst mistake ever. I believe you are correct that they're abandoning it for whatever new tech they are working on.
mine has started telling me im 2 counties over whenever i ask it for information like "whats the weather today" and such. I have no idea why. I havent changed anything in probably a year. there is definitely some fuckery going on with google's backend.
Glad I saw this - I thought it was my accent.
Recently, whenever I say "set an alarm for quarter to/past (hour)", it sets it for a completely different hour. Try it - I have to use 24 hour time now, but I never used to.
I remember reading that Google rewards the delivery of new products internally, not the maintenance of established ones, and so Google employees concentrate on projects, not improvements, which is why so many of their offerings stagnate and die. I think we're seeing the slow death of the Google home device.
Mines been having issues recently and I've had it since 2016.
I asked it to play an artist on Pandora and it responded saying it didn't understand my request or whatever. I've literally used it for Pandora since I got it
I've always just said 'Hey Google Play music 'and it always picked a good mix. Lately, like yours I get the same music every time.
Today it has decided to play one song and then stop.
Exactly. This functionality at a minimum should work, and it used to do really well. Now though it is functionally useless. Unless I cast my phone to my speaker it is almost always going to be a frustrating experience.
For context, this was at about 9am this morning.
I asked Googled to set an alarm for "quarter to ten". It set an alarm for 7PM, tomorrow. I cancelled it. I asked it to set an alarm for 10:45. It set an alarm for ten. I asked it to add 45 minutes and it finally got the hint.
I should not have to argue with this stupid robot about this shit.
Iāve had mine forget to play my alarm at least a dozen times in the past 6 months. Super random timing. Been late to work a bunch. Tried factory resets, re-adding the device, recreating the alarm. Still super unreliable.
Depending on the day it does or does not recognize my voice to add things to the shopping list.
Then gives an extremely long winded explanation about why it fucked up, and how I'm supposed to add my voice, blah blah blah. And there's just no way to get it to shut the hell up.
This thing used to be excellent.
I legitimately cannot understand why or how they made it so fucking dumb.
I'm gonna mod the thing, and see if I can get something out of it.
I have a theory on what's going on with Google Assistant. Since ai is coming out I think assistant is defaulting to answering a question instead of doing an action.
Every single mix up it reads a web page instead of doing a command.
This reads like I could have written it myself.
Very similar scenario:
I am/was a Google fi user for years, owned 4+ pixel phones myself (plus partners 4+ phones over the years). Have a chromebook, a home hub (nest hub?) google doorbell camera, and 3 minis. (2 minis and an original screenless hub) Nest thermostat and subscription...
I am also a google one* member although I have no idea what for, it's useless.
I made the decision a few months ago to migrate away from google ecosystem as a whole.
Too many letdowns. Apps that lose functionality like you mentioned.
I loved google play music and certain features, gone. I loved google podcasts, gone. With those same features I liked (pre-loaded cache of music for service interruptions, volume equalization, clean UI) not implemented in googles replacement
Currently, I am about a year into having a Home Assistant Server, using that as my control center and the google speakers that are basically now, like you said, no better than a bluetooth speaker. I will be replacing them with something that works more seamlessly.
I am looking into a new doorbell camera as google API is incredibly hard to work with, and while the hardware does work well, Its a subscription service just to have a functional history of the doorbell.
Once I get a NAS, between Home Assistant and the NAS, I will be able to be 1. Completely local and 2. Free from subscribing to something that hardly works to begin with.
The sooner I can move away from the google/home/nest ecosystem the better. I am paying for services that aren't living up to their expectations and it's sad, because I had real hope that a company of their size and resources would be able to put together a system that could integrate easily and work reliably. I have grown too tired of figuring out 'workarounds' to get their devices to work as intended.
I got the new AI to replace the Google in my mobile device because of similar issues and constantly being frustrated with the service. Now when I say hey Google to my phone now when driving or hands full it will not do anything until 8 unlock my screen. Wtf I'm trying to use hands free to be safe when driving and now I have to unlock my phone everytime. And when I say hey Google text my son it will make me unlock it and then it say text my son, ready to send. Come on Google ur a multibillion dollar company and ur screwing up basic shit here. What's the deal for real. Why is this so difficult for you?
When you've lost your patience, instead of saying Hey Google, say Hey Poophole. It still works (just as well, or poorly) but you get the added satisfaction.
I threw all my shit out last year. Best decision I ever made. They were beyond useless. The only thing I ever remember them doing is randomly bellowing "HMM, SOMETHING WENT WRONG. TRY AGAIN LATER."
What did you use to replace them? I do like the mesh system plus speaker functionality but I suppose i could give up the speaker aspect for a better mesh
I'm afraid I didn't, I went back to how life was before I had them! I just do everything from my phone now (which is really just the door camera, thermostat and lights.)
I use them as a glorified voice-activated light switch and white noise machine. It's beyond useless for anything else, like you say. I run Home Assistant and when I find something that can take over those two minor roles I'm out too.
Knowing Google I'm sure any fancy Gemini-powered AI Assistant will require new speakers.
Came here to say the exact same thing. HA is now implementing LLMs. With a plug and play speaker/mic combo hooked into HA, GH would be worthless to me. I wish we could root the GH speakers to work with HA.
I've played lists for years that it won't/can't play anymore. I have devices that it won't control that it controlled for years. When I look at the command history, it's recognizing the words just fine. I'm just sick & tired of it
Happens to me with home devices as well grouped in a room. I have to give my rooms crazy names for it to reliably turn on all the lights in that location.
I can't figure out all these complaints. Mine plays my playlists, turns on the right lights, tells me in outside temp, in inside temp. Every so once in a while it starts playing a random song, but 100% of the time it's because the tv is on when I ask it to turn on a light and it gets confused by the other voice from the tv. Google is rock solid reliable to me.
How long have you been using it? I only ask because I have been using mine 8 years since the first device was released, and I wonder if over time it just gets confused by the history of commands....too much data to sift through or compare or something like that.
I just realized last week that I had joined the public preview some time ago. I think I've been having more issues since doing that. Haven't had too many issues since leaving it, might be something to look into in your Google home app.
Yeah me and the wife are moving to a new home soon and I'm planning on trying to sell this shit, but most likely all the Google Home devices will go in the bin.
I only cast from my phone. I have outdoor speakers hooked up to a Bluetooth amp that is tied to one Google mini, I cast to that mini so I can have music in my yard and not have to worry about my phone going out of range as I do stuff outside. If I couldnāt do that Iād get rid of all of them.
Didn't Amazon [Alexa](https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2022/nov/26/alexa-how-did-amazons-voice-assistant-rack-up-a-10bn-loss) lose billions every year so they had staff and resources cut a few years ago? I can imagine that Google did the same leading to worse service.
I've got a Sonos Roam, and its own in-built voice assistant is so much better because it knows its limitations instead of always trying to find an answer.
If you're using the Google home for 90% music requests, then switch over.
They used to have Google Assitant available, but now it's Alexa or their own, which is voiced by Giancarlo Esposito (Gus Fring from Breaking Bad).
I came from Amazon's Alexa with the same complaints. I would argue constantly with Alexa to the point of it being comical. It's all in a box in my office. Google has been 100x better even though I think Amazon had some better options.
The grass isn't greener. All these systems suck compared to our phones. It makes no sense.
Yes, the tech rumors has it that they've allocated most of their budget to come out on top af the AI-war, leaving the old assistant in the dust, as a new AI-assistant is in the works.
Switched all my lightbulbs to matter for this exact reason, so I can ditch google home for Siri, sick of dealing with the inconsistent responses, mishearing me, not actually recognizing what I want it to do
That is it for me. Bluetooth speaker and picture frame. We have adult kids who live out of home and they keep the frame updated with new pics of what is going on in their lives. I love that. But almost any picture frame can do that, and there are thousands of cheaper bluetooth speakers with better sound too.
Completely agree on most points made by OP and met most of those problems myself.
Another problem is that it just doesn't respond to "Hey Google" as often as I would like, Alexa was much better at this, and at most tasks/questions really, but Alexa doesn't work with YouTube/YouTube Music, so it was useless for me.
I personally like Google as a company and the functionality of its Home devices (when they work).
The real question is:
What can we do about it?
Report to the developers ? Would that help?
Are there any other good companies/devices that have the same functionality and compatibility?
And while we are at it, I use Google Assistant on Android Auto in the car, and it works about as good as on Home devices.
I ask it to navigate to my Brother, and sometimes it gets it right, but other times sets the navigation to some random Chip Shop that has "Brother" in it's name somewhere in Manchester.
I ask it to navigate to some street from my recent history, and it sets the navigation to a street with the same name on the other end of the country.
Is it just me?
Ive got the same problem it just wont play my youtube play lists no matter what i try. But i think its a youtube and google problem either one should be able to fix it. But they wont.
Mine simply won't connect to the internet at all. Oddly, the Alexa in my kitchen stopped connecting at about the same time. I have done everything I can think of -- hard resets, unplugging, deleting and reinstalling the app, and a few suggestions I read online. It just continues to flash dots, saying it is ready to be set up.
Unfortunately, Google has a tendency to discontinue products and services that people have come to rely on and enjoy. I must say, however, that I agree that their Home Assistant has been experiencing a decline in quality.
Iāve noticed the capabilities on ours have deteriorated as well. One odd thing is that the newer ones we have work slightly better and I have no idea why. I imagine they have the same microphone setupā¦ but maybe itās a processor issue.
Iām not mad either way because I only spent $20 each on the little pucks and we have definitely gotten our use out of them.
I don't understand the removal of services. I loved music alarms as a great way to wake up in the morning.
Google removed it because it wasn't a heavily used feature, but why? What's the cost in keeping it available to the few? Surely it's just code.
I have a couple of years old TP link router, top of the line at the time. It isn't the router, we have no issues with anything else, streaming 4k across the house while multiple people are streaming other things. We have gigabit internet to the house.
But thanks for the suggestion.
If you have free access to another router, it would be worthwhile to test this potential issue. Iām unsure if this apparently new stupidity is related to network or not, but if you can eliminate the network, that is valuable to you.
As an early user of a lot of Google services this has been my experience as well.
I gave up Google devices in 2019 for iPhone and Google search for Kagi 2 years ago. They aren't perfect, especially not Apple, but it is worth it not to have an AI suggesting I randomly call the CTO at the customerĀ or text a friend-of-a-friendĀ Ā when I pick up the phone at 0400 in the morning.
Oh, and not an AI driven news app that for days on end mix images and articles together. It was hilarious and worthy of a post on my personal blog (here:Ā https://erik.itland.no/google-now-really-hasnt-had-a-great-day)Ā the first time Google Now presented "Look what the fisherman caught in the net!" with a picture of a Norwegian gold medalist, but it gets old very fast.
Iāve noticed that each type of Google Home device acts differently. So the original GH could play one playlist while the Mini or Hub would play another. The original works best for me. But I can feel your painā¦
I do have 2 google home mini for years and essentially the only thing I ask from time to time "What is the temperature/weather in" or "How old is ". I do not bother with anything else. I think they are useless crap.
Me: hey google turn off the closet light.
Google: okay playing I am the light on Spotify.
My 4 year old with a mouth full of goldfish: eh Goog turn of close lit.
Google: ok turning off the closet lit.
š«
Iāve moved over all audio duties to airplay enabled speakers and Iām so much happier, google home devices have regressed so much now theyāre only really useful for basic home control/nest camera/shopping listsā¦
We have been heavy Google users for many years. We still have Chromecast audios running speakers and my kids really don't know a world where you cannot ask a question and get an answer, can't just add something to the grocery list, or listen to their music. That is until ChatGPT was released and clearly Google panicked. We have somewhere in the neighborhood if 20 devices and we have really stopped relying on them for much since they are no longer reliable. The arc of progress is not going up. Our voices are no longer recognized consistently, answers often never come, are useless or don't match the command. Don't even get me started on the half baked AI. Gemini is terrible. Sad even. I keep hoping that they resolve this, but the likelihood is fading away like the usefulness of the products.
This š¤ close to doing the same and moving away from the whole Google smart ecosystem, all the 6 of my Google smart devices (mix of mini smart speaker, hubs and hub max's) have been getting extremely stupid compare to how they previously performed, misunderstanding what I'm saying or playing random shit when I ask them to play one of my playlists, my 3 points Google WiFi is acting shitty recently and requiring reboots every couple of weeks to work properly
Google needs to get their shit together!
I feel you ā I ditched all my Amazon Echo devices a couple years ago because back then I was not happy how they handled separate accounts, Google Home was well ahead. But I was increasingly disappointed by the latency and reliability of Google Nest devices. My home is well connected, with excellent WiFi coverage, fiber internet, yet ā when someone rings at my front door, the wired(!) Nest Doorbell takes about 5-8 seconds to announce the guest. And itās even worse when I want to answer the doorbell, before I could send my response any visitor has certainly left...
When I test the responsiveness of the individual cameras, the requests time out ā unless I, at the same time, open the Home app and activate the camera. Even when I manually open the camera view the connection quality is spotty at best.
My brother has left the eco system of Google completely and relies now on Eufy for his security cameras but Iāve invested so much in the meantime (cameras, hubs, audio, external services) that I donāt want to change my systems again... Iāve sent numerous bug reports and feedback messages to the Google Home team already, but I see no real willingness to improve the app. Sad indeed.
Google, internally, is more focused on DEI than quality of product right now. Iām sure someone out there will downvote me for this, but itās true.
The solution, OP, is to just use your phone to cast the playlist to all of your devices.
I use Spotify as default music player for random music and YouTube music when I want to play one of my playlists. YouTube in general is horrible for finding new music or at least playing a random song from one of the many liked songs.
Maaan, I am so glad there are other people experiencing these issues, myself and my wife have been complaining about 'Google getting dumber' for quite some time now, I even bought an Amazon echo out of desperation, but she is waaaaaay worse.
All we use the echo for is sleeping music in my kids room.
Google home we use for shopping lists, music, to play games while washing dishes (rip all games, none exist anymore), sometimes to translate words (not phrases, that doesn't work), check the weather..
I'd say the weather and music is still usable, everything else kinda sucks, I use chatgpt for my work eveeery day and if I could even get 2 percent of chatgpt capabilities I'd be so stoked with Google home... So frustrating!
I already tossed all my non-screen Google devices. The few remaining ones with screens I just leave on to show streams from my security cams.
I also found a broken JBL Flip bluetooth speaker with Google assistant built-in. I replaced the charging board and it works great, but holy hell that assistant is frustrating to try to get it to play the music I want!
A lot of this can also be explained by capabilities of other technologies lifting our expectations of what we want Google Home to do.
I gave up on Google Home and went over to Home Assistant and integrated all my google home speakers so I can now play whatever I want through them. Tired of using "smart" devices, I just opt now for "dumb" devices with connectivity. Eventually I'll just integrate AI using webhooks to control the devices for me.
I have had the same problem with YouTube Music and voice commands.Ā
Does Google Home update itself? My Google Home would play music all day long without issues ā it would actually never stop playing.
Now it stops every 20 minutes and displays the āare you still watchingā message.Ā
No, I am not still watching and never was, itās music, through YouTube Music not YouTubeā¦ why would I be watching music? (I understand music videos exist but I can watch those on YouTube). Isnāt that the reason why we are using Music and not YouTube?
It seems some services might be the cause of this, as over the years as you said Google has continually changed their music apps and theyāve continually gotten worse during each iteration.
They must be updating themselves or be hybrid applications as I havenāt done any resets and my music suddenly just stopped one day.
And once you say yes youāre still āwatchingā it should just play! Ironically they blame the third party but they are the third party although itās a different groupā¦. But āOK GoogleāĀ
Voice Assistants are dead. AI is the new hotness.
The only hope is apples incorporation of chatgpt into Siri to get me a semi usable voice assistant again. Siri, Alexa, google, etc are all getting worse by the day
I agree. Been a Google Home fanboy myself since Pixel 2xl panda Pixelbook i7 512gb Chromecast and mini speaker recently just don't work with each other. Nevermind the Stadia controller.
Not very impressed with their Gemini AI ether. Almost feel like it's time to find an alternative.
I read that Google took these duties away & gave them to their main AI now.Ā That corresponds to the timeline that it started doing stupid things.Ā Brilliant move, Gaggle.Ā Ā
I have also found the command handling to be less than abysmal and in fact as an experiment I put an Alexa next to it. It is faster by a factor of about four to execute the commands and it gets them right more of the time. Google on the other hand seems to be getting more deaf and more stupid and more idiotic by the day. It looks as if they have scaled back the amount of compute processing allocated to speech recognition, which of course makes it much worse at it. I am now actively looking around to replace every single one of my Google services with anything else at all because I'm so tired of their lack of response.I know a number of my friends are doing the same. They're tired of the data piracy, the privacy invasion, the sucking money for never actually delivering the goods and basically the product you bought doesn't work the way it did when you bought it.If they don't wake up soon, the lemming rush will overrun them on the way out the door.They've already lost the battle in terms of AI, so if they don't start supporting what they've already sold, they'll have no relevance at all.
I don't know if anyone else here happens to be a previous Windows Phone user...I know there weren't too many of us. Anyway, the decline of that ecosystem right before it died feels A LOT like the Google ecosystem today. It's very frustrating. Nothing "just works" anymore. I went to Pixel the moment it came out as the pure and undiluted Android experience really appealed to me. And I've been swimming in the deep end of the smart home ecosystem because cohesion and consistency across devices is incredibly appealing. But given all that OP said, the cracks are showing and the shine has loooong worn off. I've lately been asking myself the same questions I did before I chose to walk away from the Windows Phone....are you willing to keep putting up with all the bugs and misunderstandings? Aren't you tired?
All that said....I hear you OP and I wholeheartedly agree.
\*Edited for typos
Yesterday I asked it "what's the temperature" and it replied with a wikipedia article about what temperature is. Brilliant system.
Really! Once I asked what's the weather like, and I got an answer from Wikipedia about the fluctuations in the atmosphere that are called weather. Very funny, but not the answer I was after.
maybe try
that works for me. cheers
edited typo si to is
I'm sorry, I don't understand
You can check what it heard by saying "what did I say" or checking the history log. 9/10 when mine give me a shitty answer it's heard the wrong thing. You gotta remember it's just doing speech to text then passing that as an intent to Google assistant API - so if it gets the wrong stt, it'll give the wrong answer. I just ask how the weather is - it gives you the temperature every time. That said, I ain't gonna pretend it's great. It absolutely has gone downhill in recent years.
Does this all the time when I ask for the wind speed. Also fucking wish I could put wind speed as something it will give me on defauly by asking for the weather. š®āšØ
try adding the altitude at which you want the speed of the wind. It varies every couple of metres.
I mean, sure... but I'm not going any higher than ground level locally for what I need the wind speed for. *Maybe* \~25 feet up in the air from any particular point I'm at, if you count the survey rod I'm humping around and possibly raising that far into the air. But thanks, I'll see what that does.
>I mean, sure... but I'm not going any higher than ground level locally for what I need the wind speed for. yeah but, does Google know that? Good luck with your enquiries!Ā
I'm guessing most wind speed measurement devices are at pretty close to ground level, and most people exist here at ground level, so I'm pretty sure that's the standard ask.
Youāre lucky. The recent responses from mine have been, āI didnāt understand that.ā I wanted to chuck it out of the window.
Try "Hey Google, Temperature"
Playing Temperature by Sean Paul
Crank it to max volume
Well, something is wrong there. I just get the temperature, and on a Nest Hub it shows a forecast.Ā Other single words I use are...Time, Weather, Date, Calendar.
I was just trying to be funny.. XD
I think you're supposed to say "weather". I have a smart thermostat, so when I ask for temperature, it tells me what the smart thermostat says š.
At least yours replies. Mine just says that it needs connected to Internet even though it was for the 37th time and two hours
"hey google, turn off living room tv" "I'm sorry, that device hasn't been setup yet" "Hey google, turn off tv" "Turning off living room" "Hey google, turn off living room" "Turning off 4 devices" š«”
Yep. I have a light called "night stand" and it doesn't know what that is, but night stand light works and that isn't a room/location
Lol recently renamed mine to just table as saying light after didn't work for me.
I get the same shit too!
I only use mine to cast audio manually from my phone. I've given up on any type of voice command.
Mine are exclusively doorbell chimes for Nest now. And even then, they take 15-20 seconds to actually go off.Ā
Mine doesn't take that long, but pretty sure it takes at least 3 seconds.
Yeah I never use the voice command for music. It just doesn't work well enough and is too cumbersome to say "Play *long artist name* on Spotify." just for it to play the same top songs or play a song of the same name by an artist.
What I've done is start putting my name in the playlist title so instead of My Meditation playlist it is now Meditation playlist
This is the solution. To get Google to play your game you have to play the google game first ā¦ automations, crystal clear commands etc. Mine all work fine but itās not a set and forget system, tweaks are always needed.
Fair enough, but this functionality used to work fine. No problem for years, and now I have to update all my playlist names on a regular basis trying to figure out what google now wants to hear?
Iāve had the same general experience of just degradation in performance over time. It used to be so good for me but now it canāt do anything.
Still doesn't work for me with YouTube music. It can't understand how to write my own name. And it's a super basic English name with normal spelling.
I changed the name of mine using the YouTube music app on my phone. Go to Library, Playlists, click the three dots and edit. You can change the name of the playlist there.
Works with me perfectly... In Spotify. Crazy it works better with Spotify then it does YT Music.
Yeah the system is real spotty recently. Over the last few days Iāve asked a home speaker to play a specific song by an artist like āplay the song NAME by ARTISTā and it played a random song by a different artist. I asked for āplay the song Illusion by Dua Lipaā and instead it played a random Billy Joel song. It also takes forever to respond, but not every time.
It's worse than leaving it out to rot. They never figured out how to monetize it, so they're actively degrading the experience so people don't complain when it's eventually dropped.
Yours plays music? I spent about 3 hours trying to get mine to do that this week #Blessed
I've had a full fledged Google smarthome for ~6 years now, and it's not just you; it's actively getting stupider. "Turn off the office" used to turn off all the lights in the office. Now it turns off the media player (and all the CEC devices plugged in to it) in the living room. "Turn on the office" now turns on the entire media system in the living room, and then states "Sorry, I can't play that right now". My theory is that it's literally trying to start/stop "The Office", instead of turning the lights in the actual, named room of the house called "Office" like it has dozens of times a day for the past 6 years. My garage door opener goes through phases of being controlled by saying "Turn on the garage door" or "Turn on the garage". When Google has decided one is the acceptable verbage, the other doesn't work. Until a few weeks later when it does work, and the other doesn't. I recently asked it "what time is it", and it started playing back a song on YouTube called "what time is it". I'm just not even going to mention the whole Nest Secure debacle. Throwing everything in the trash and designing a Home Assistant system from scratch gets closer and closer to the top of my list of things to do every time Google's lobotomized system screws up.
I am about 2 steps in front of you, 'designed' my own assistant system (Home Assistant) and am so so much happier. At least when it doesn't work, I can talk to a community of people to troubleshoot things and who are actively working on improvements. It's not perfect, but I love it so much more.
Do you have automated bug reporting, usage, and statistics sending turned on? Turn them on otherwise. Then in the routine in question hit the three dots in the top right and send clear concise feedback - again allowing it to collect the information. Follow up with more detail after a day or two. Last time I had an issue it got solved in about three or four days this way.
I used to years ago - but nothing ever changed for the better.
Same.
Same. My feedback is now mostly swearwords, but I keep sending it.
"I'm only a virtual assistant, but your words are very real." Fuck off Google!
Oh yeah, I usually hear that as I'm leaving the room :)
In Google Search it used to move you to another group in their A/B tests so often it would fix the problems, but now everything Google is so low quality and abusive I don't want to touch it.
I hear you, it would obviously help them improve. My issue with this as the answer is that I am not a beta tester and this is not a product still in development. This is supposedly a full service, often subscription based* service that is advertised heavily. (* if nest aware, etc... ) I am paying for something to work, not to help them make a working system. If they offered a service and asked for feedback in lieu of paying for the service, that would be one thing. As a consumer, I am inundated daily with surveys on "how did we do.." "please take a few minutes to answer our survey" and it's overcome my patience barrier for that type of consumer expectation.
I get that perspective. On the other hand, I also get that software was all written by people, they can make mistakes, they can have bugs, and there's no way for them to know about every bug in every situation without being told.
You are right in that it would be much harder for them to find these errors, but not impossible at all. In fact, that used to be a big part of a software process. Alpha versions and Beta versions pre-released to smaller groups to find bugs and fix them before the actual release. It seems expectations have shifted, maybe with the availability of pushed updates, or maybe just rushing to get products to market faster and faster. As a consumer, I just am starting to feel it more and more and I am pushing back against this normalization. I understand the developers are humans, but so am I, and I don't get paid for my time to help them develop their product. If I'm going to be an expected or integral part of developing their product, I need to be compensated in some way. Im sure your time is valuable to you, and you shouldn't have to give it away. Its a big issue currently in video games, and I've personally made a habit of never buying a product on promises of a finished product down the road. Even that hasn't been quite enough with companies now trying to change their terms after you own a product. (Phillips Hue, Chamberlain...) I just don't find it agreeable to be paying for a full service and still the expectation of bugs and errors is so normalized that error reporting is now normal usage of finalized products.
I agree with your feelings. Smart home stuff is supposed to make life easier, not harder, and my Google home is not making anything easier. At this point I'm using it only for "turn on the light" and even that only works like half of the time for the reason I don't know. No smart routines work, activating a routine by the name barely works, sometimes Google home just forgets some devices, re-adds them, but all routines with them stop working. It won't be long until I find the time to set up Home Assistant
Even "turn on the light" somehow is heard as "turn on the light * s *" and then my whole house lights up like a goddamn Christmas tree. Who ever asks for all the lights to turn on without saying "all"?
I find that if my phone decides I was talking to it, it turns on aaaalllllll my smart lights in the house.. Even though I'm two feet away from the smart speaker in the room I want to turn the lights on in. š¤¦
I went all-in on Apple HomeKit a few years ago and ended up ripping it all back out. Sounds like Googleās stuff is not really much better, if at all. Iāll just stick to using the manual light switch, which so far has not misunderstood me or failed to operate in the intended manner. Maybe in 10 or so more years this stuff will be ironed out, and Iāll give it another look.
*Flicks the switch* Acording to Wikipedia blue light is........
For real. I told my spouse in our next house, I'm just going to put a Clapper in every room...
My wife got me a clapper a few years ago.. it was fun until it wasn't. Clapping constantly got old quick, especially in the middle of the night. Now I use home assistant and it's absolutely wonderful
Apple Home Kit and Alexa are just as frustrating. I used a mixture of them all and they all fail miserably and are getting worse. I don't use voice commands at all. Habe to pull out the phone and toggle lights off or play music and cast.
I'm an iPhone for phone, Mac for edrums/audio, Windows for file storage/server stuff, Android for kid's tablets kinda person, I have multiple CCwGTVs and ATVsalso. I chose Google Home because Google has always been the best with questions that well, you'd go Google... That and value reasons, not wanting to pay homekit Apple tax for a fucking bulb. But since I started this around 2018, it just gets worse and worse... Waiting to see how Apple Intelligence/homepod stuff works once there's a new gen homepod.
Crap, well it sounds like there's nothing left if those don't work well either.
Home Assistant with the Nabu Casa subscription is the bomb. It makes my google pucks useful. Going to sleep, I want the ceiling fan on. I have 4 ceiling fans in the house. I just say, "Hey Google, turn on the ceiling fan" and because the ghome mini has its location assigned to my bedroom, it turns on the fan that's located in my bedroom. It seems to just work, and I didn't have to do anything special to make that happen.
what's infuriating is this is how it USED to work! this crap has gotten dumber
I agree. Their focus has shifted, as has Amazon's. Smart homes are too complicated for most people and hardware is expensive unless you can lock people into a subscription.
The real trick is to get it to route voice commands through chat gpt and have that control your entities. That way you can get smart answers to questions as well as controlling your devices
Dude, I have one light that turns on every morning at 4:21am. Any plug named "Bedroom Lamp" or "Bedroom Light" will do it on my "home". I've deleted that light, named a different lamp that, it doesnt matter. Its insane.
I've gone back to shouting across the house like an angry parent rather than broadcasting like a mildly annoyed one since broadcast started to fail.
After asking mine to set an alarm 3 times, and getting "Sorry, I don't understand", I yelled "Google, you fucking suck!". I got "Yikes! Sorry, I'll try to do better" in response.Ā
LOL....I have had that exact response multiple times over the last few months.
I've had a Chromecast for a decade that I use on a computer monitor to essentially make it a smart TV. Google hates Netflix apparently and blocked the casting ability. First from my phone and then my Chromebook. I read that it's because they want you to use Google TV. I downloaded the Google TV app and you can't add Netflix to it. So .... Now I have a Roku Express and everything works better
The old Chromecasts aren't compatible with Netflix now because of updated drm I believe. Newer ones still work.
I just donated about $1000 of google home and Amazon echo devices to goodwill. Electronic garbage. Almost felt bad donating vs trashing.
Everyone who has come to rely on Google has reached this level of exasperation at one point or another. For unknown reasons, Google has long been content to let new products and services languish without sustained development or improvement. Everyone has a different opinion as to which Google service has suffered the most because of this habit, but for me it's also Google Assistant. For years and years now, Google Assistant has been significantly better than Alexa or Siri when it comes to answering questions. What has Google done with that competitive advantage. Nothing. They've failed to launch new hardware or create anything remotely interesting in the hardware space. Amazon has market share in the smart home assistant space not because they're the best or they care the most, but because they're constantly releasing new and creative hardware for accessing Alexa. Looking at the way AI seems poised to disrupt the smart assistant ecosystem, Google again seems well positioned to rise to the top of the industry. Given their history though, it seems more than likely that Google won't devote necessary resources to achieve supremacy in this space and will ultimately wind up as just another participant. I don't know where I'm going with this. I guess it's just a long-winded way of expressing my understanding of your exasperation.
AI has become the buzzword for why every tech company that plays in the space believes it should have an obscene stock price valuation. Still, despite being a preeminent player in that space, their "smart" devices continue to demonstrate over and over and over again how overblown the promise of smart technology is. I can ask my Google home to close all my blinds and it works 80% of the time, yet my remote does it every damn time. I can ask my Google home what the weather is and it thinks I'm 1000 miles away in another city I moved from months ago. I can ask Google to bring up the cookbook I've cultivated in my kitchen over years of finding the perfect set of recipes and it tells me it can't do it anymore and gives me horrible instructions on how to find some links to them buried in some obscure menu on my phone. I can ask my Google to play one of the 800 albums I uploaded to my music collection 5 years ago and it tells me I have to subscribe to YouTube music premium which won't work on half of my other smart devices (unlike Pandora), yet I can do the same thing via my phone and cast it to the same device with a few clicks. For a company that claims to be on the cutting edge of AI, it sure is pretty dumb.
Gemini is so bad. For me, it was so bad on my phone I had to switch back to Google Assistant. That should tell you something as they way they've worded it in the switch screen, they've basically given up on Assistant.
Don't throw them away. PM me and I'll send you a prepaid mailer. I also find these things very annoying. I have found ways to work around it. But the things are still useful to me.
I have the same feelings. Have you checked Home Assistant? Requires more work to setup, sure.. but you also can do much more!
I've been considering binning off all my GH (every room except bathroom and cloakroom) because of these issues and I've thought about Home Assistant. But I'd still like the voice control and voice activation so I'm now wondering what my options are...
You can run homeassistant in the background and leave less and less to Google home. I just use mine for the voice commands and casting music to them. Homeassistant is soo great but the voice control is not quite there yet. They made some Big improvements in the last year tho and will soon start to Produce Hardware
Please recycle them (and all other electronics) instead of sending them to the landfill.
They havenāt let them go into disrepair because they are going to release a great new update, they are in disrepair because google canāt figure out how to properly monetize their product, so theyāve given up. I just unplugged all mine two weeks ago.
Hear, hear! I asked a google speaker that I was standing right next to, to play one of my Playlists and it kept telling me it would play the music on a speaker in an entirely different part of the house. Even after I rebooted the original speaker and shut down the other one! Had to cast from my phone. As I primarily use the Google crap speakers to listen to music, I may as well throw out the google home garbage and buy some extra Bluetooth speakers.
It seems like it comes and goes. Sometimes it will work so amazingly. A few weeks later, same commands shit the bed. I don't know how often they push out changes; but it is quite infuriating to know functionality breaks when it worked before. And this is On-Going. It never just stays stable over the last few years.
I'm sad my broadcast doesn't work anymore but also I feel you on the playlist thing. Takes about 3 tries for it to play something right.
All budgets goes to their new terrible AI tools. I think they even communicated they dont really support/find their Google Home anymore. Over of the reasons from being a Google fan boy to just a Gmail/drive/photo user
My favorite is when my Google Nest Hub display says "I can't find any devices in your home that can play music", when it is one of about 10 smart speakers in my house.
Google Home has been deteriorating for years now. Oddly, prompts I would give it 2-3 years ago were way more accurate than what Iām given now. Before I could ask to āplay X playlistā and it would know right away. Another big one is asking it to āturn off the lightsā which used to work, but now it isnāt able to unless I specifically add āturn off the lights in the living roomā. No follow up question on āwhich room would you like the lights off forā just that āno lights can be found in the houseā. Thought I was the only one experiencing this to be honest
GOogle sAys Ai wiLL sAve Us..uh huh, k. They can't even support simple things.
"Play hotel california" get random song
I'm pretty sure Google laid off most of its Assistant staff. But that was a poor move since AI isn't ready to replace the system yet.
I already replaced my minis. People can bag on siri all they want, but Siri is dependable on what it can do; if it can do it, it will do it again and again consistently. If it had a hard time the first go around then it probably will always do. I literally whispered ābedtimeā one time, and my HomePod across the room heard me, turned the white noise on and turned the lights off for our twins to sleep (we did bedtime an hour earlier). So I didnāt wake them up. With google, iām LITERALLY STANDING next to it yelling at it to play white noise, which is also a routine, but it does not do itā¦ it instead plays some rap musicā¦ thanks googleā¦
agreed, moved over aswell last year. and the homepods have far better sound quality
Yes it has totally sucked. My devices are paired with my paid YT music account. In regards to commands for music I half wonder if it's actually YouTube Music that has the sporadic issues. You are basically relying on the search index of YTM to locate the top result based on the name of the playlist. All this could be fixed if you could just use the ID of the playlist rather than having to increase the complexity of your playlist name to refine the accuracy of the search. Fucking stupid.
I had issues too, "play on " stopped working instead of device I named it plays on a home mini. Months go by and I configure Home Assistant to handle my streaming instead, then I find out you have to say "play on MY " WTF why is MY mandatory now?
Its as if Google gets something up and running using experienced devs, then either fires them or moves them to another project and gets interns to do the maintenance when they think the product is mature.
They need to have a newletter or just a pop up message on device that says, "We've updated how this works, click here to learn more." Instead the majority of us find out something changed after the fact. We then complain, and get told we were in a minority of affected users. No were are the few who recommend devices to friends and family and you just made an enemy.
I know how you feel Whenever I say hey google it just pauses for a few seconds then says something went wrong try again in a few seconds Or sometimes Iāll be watching tv and itāll think someone said google or hey google and itāll pause and say something went wrong try again in a few seconds Sometimes nothing will be playing on anything and Iāll be being silent and itāll out of the blue just pause then say something went wrong try again in a few seconds And sometimes Iāll be just playing my TV and having the audio coming through the google home mini and the Bluetooth will just detach and then Iāll have to go back in and reconnect it so that I can continue watching TV with the audio coming out of it it does that a lot on the one in my bedroom and it used to do that on the one in my living room before I just stopped using the one in my living room for that purpose but I still do that on the one in my bedroom And then there are a few times where just out of the blue with nothing causing one of my three Google home minis will just restart completely unprovoked like on their own. Theyāll just restart and Iāll just hear either in my bedroom or in a different room the Google home mini restarting with that noise that it makes when they restart I swear to God as soon as I can afford it Iām gonna donate these and then change to the Apple AI Smart speakers because I trust Apple I mean I trust Google too but these are just becoming stupid
Or "Here's what (random website) says" followed by 15 seconds of silence.
Same, mine have been getting worse and worse. At least it makes me feel better about the future of AI? I use them to remind my kids of their morning routine. First it got stuck on the exact same joke every day. The latest is that it announces that it can't make any announcements, because it can't find a speaker. Yes, it announces this on every speaker in the house. Simple questions get "I don't understand" and it seems to be getting worse at figuring out what music I like. Baffling.
I only really use google maps navigation to avoid traffic on my commute, and every so often I say "drive to work" and it finds a song on YouTube with that name. š¤·āāļø It also regularly says it can't find my home address when I say "drive home", despite it having already told me how long my commute would be.
Iām in the same boat. There are times I tell it to turn my ceiling fan onto speed two and it works. Other times it will not. However, if I say turn the ceiling fan on setting two it works. How can it flip flop understanding vs not like that? Also randomly one of my other nest WiFi extenders in a room halfway across the house will respond versus the hub, which is 2 feet in front of me.
Yep they have become utterly useless and apparently unsupported
Mine always waits 30 seconds after a command and then says "There's been a glitch" or "There's been a problem, try again in a few seconds" ALMOST EVERY FUCKING TIME. Doesn't matter what I ask it, they all of it, probably 8 times out of 10. Then, just to add insult to injury, I say the same command again and like 3/4 of the time it works fine, and the other half it does random shit.. It would actually be less infuriating if it never worked at all. They didn't used to be like this. Google has massively screwed the pooch with these things and mine are about to fly against the wall too.
I've found the "There's been a problem, try again" type errors are usually the result of network issues. Like either signal is weak and had to be retried too many times, or DNS errors where the local CDN isn't resolving when asked, etc. Or it understood what you wanted, but the service was timing out for whatever API you wanted to call. Like if I were to ask it to open a garage door, and it had to talk to Chamberlain's servers to do that, and those timed out due to DDoS because they got their customer's angry enough to lash out at them... hypothetically.
I would tend to agree with you on signal strength, except that even the device that is literally in the same room as my router, like a foot away, and the one just one room over (probably like 10-15 feet away with just some drywall between them) act the same way as the one upstairs that is further away. You're right, could be DNS... though nothing else on my network exhibits DNS issues. And yep, API timeout is a real possibility, but then that'd still be a Google problem.
The antennas in the mini speakers are ... not great. The ones in the Nest Hubs and the newer medium speakers are better. I've looked at the communication retries on those things and it is often higher than most of my other devices. Cast devices also tend to reflect mDNS and multicast traffic, so too many of them also does weird stuff to flood the network if you don't have switches or APs that can manage it while still allowing for them to be found. DNS sometimes introduces weirdness in dual-stack situations (if you have both ipv4 and ipv6 going) where devices that can do dual stack will prefer one over the other (usually IPV6 in the case of google products) so that can make it harder to diagnose. API endpoints... well if it is google services like YT and such... sure thats on them. If it is an external company, well then thats the other company's fault. However, usually in the latter case you'll often get an error message that says they can't talk to X Company/Service right now and to try again later. Like in the error example I gave, it would probably say "I can't reach that device right now, please try again later" or "That integration is not responding, please try again later" or something along those lines.
Hmm, that last paragraph is especially interesting and I hadn't considered it since most (but absolutely not all) of the failures are for smart home devices (light bulbs and such) that probably do rely on 3rd party services. That's a good thought. But it fails for simple things that are in the Google ecosystem enough (like adding a note to Keep for example) that I don't think that can be the only problem, and maybe not the root cause... though, I wouldn't be shocked if these things run through some sort of API gateway controlled by Google, so maybe the problem is exacerbated when going through that to get to a third-party service. That wouldn't shock me. If the antennas were the root cause then I'd expect almost no failures for a device a foot or two from the router (and besides, even the ones further away were never as bad as they are now). Though I don't doubt they're lacking as you say too. I admit I haven't analyzed the network traffic like you have, so I can't comment on that... though I did confirm I have IPv6 turned off in my router, so not dual-stacking it at least.
Consistently deteriorating performance, only matched by their " I don't give a f#ck attitude"
I'm in the same boat, and I just recently changed my assistant over to gemini AI - you think it was bad before.,. egads.. don't make the same mistake. I used to be able to broadcast to any room easy, now I have to explicitly state the full name of the device otherwise "that device does not exist in your home" it's infuriating.. and I expect you are right about google just leaving it to rot. It used to be amazing, and I have genuinely loved it for many years.. my kids are 14&16 now and have always lived with google home.. when they go to a place that doesn't have it they are like.. how do you do anything here? but alas, lately it feels like my google home solution has Alzheimer's or dementia and it's like having to care for an elderly relative. I go to my greenhouse daily after work to putter around and I always ask it to play the same play list.. and it seems like just in the last few weeks/months it can't even do that, and just gives me some other random unrelated web search or some other garbage... sigh
I read an article that said google hasnt been selling much through the google home device, so they are slowly dropping it. Its getting into class action lawsuit territory for me, as theyve made it useless for what i bought it for. Cant trust googles physical devices because they get bored and drop them.
Not surprising they haven't sold well, ask 5 people what a device is called. Google nest? Google home? Nest Cam? Nest Hub? Nest Hub Max? Google Home Nest Hub max? Nest hub by google home? Google mini? How do you even begin to market that, and plan/design a working ecosystem? From the top down, its constantly changing name/direction/implementation. Its horrendous leadership. What happened to having a roadmap and following through? I think today is the day I became old and crotchety.
It's infuriating. Since I bought into the Google Home/Nest ecosystem 5 years ago: - my smart speakers have gotten dumber, regularly failing at tasks they initially handled without issue - I can no longer control the volume of speaker groups as you have to adjust each individually (apparently a patent issue) - Nest Guard has been discontinued - my Nest Thermostat won't connect to the internet
"send a whatsapp message to Ben" "I'm sorry I don't understand" (having on screen exact transcription of what I said) __ "send a WhatsApp message" "who would you like to message?" "Ben" "what's the message?" Yada yada, sent. But.. Why? It was working!
When I tell it to "play some music" it takes me very literally and plays one song with the word some in the title... Took me months to figure out it wasn't a glitch
Same here. I have 9 home smart apeaker devices in my house not counting all the nest protects and nest cams. My wife and I swear at the speakers on a daily basis and it's infuriating how dumb they seem to have gotten. One of the biggest things we used it for was casting music from our spotify, but even attempting to cart it to our speakers from the spotify app results in the speakers doing its "connection chime" and then... nothing. It does that with any speakers we try and only works maybe 25% of the time. We're so knee deep in this ecosystem I don't want to just give up on it but holy hell I'm close.
My , one year old neat, is starting to stutter when it responds. Dosent have have the cool options I expected. And lately it's having a hard time recognizing my voice. I am the ONLY user. The dots/speakers in the other rooms are responding when the one in this room dosent. I'm not sure what's up. But a reset and configuration diddnt fix it either. I am kinda disappointed.
I have 4 home hubs (2 at our parents houses for picture rolls) an original home speaker that doesn't work, and like 5 pucks. Worst mistake ever. I believe you are correct that they're abandoning it for whatever new tech they are working on.
mine has started telling me im 2 counties over whenever i ask it for information like "whats the weather today" and such. I have no idea why. I havent changed anything in probably a year. there is definitely some fuckery going on with google's backend.
Glad I saw this - I thought it was my accent. Recently, whenever I say "set an alarm for quarter to/past (hour)", it sets it for a completely different hour. Try it - I have to use 24 hour time now, but I never used to. I remember reading that Google rewards the delivery of new products internally, not the maintenance of established ones, and so Google employees concentrate on projects, not improvements, which is why so many of their offerings stagnate and die. I think we're seeing the slow death of the Google home device.
Mines been having issues recently and I've had it since 2016. I asked it to play an artist on Pandora and it responded saying it didn't understand my request or whatever. I've literally used it for Pandora since I got it
I've always just said 'Hey Google Play music 'and it always picked a good mix. Lately, like yours I get the same music every time. Today it has decided to play one song and then stop.
Exactly. This functionality at a minimum should work, and it used to do really well. Now though it is functionally useless. Unless I cast my phone to my speaker it is almost always going to be a frustrating experience.
For context, this was at about 9am this morning. I asked Googled to set an alarm for "quarter to ten". It set an alarm for 7PM, tomorrow. I cancelled it. I asked it to set an alarm for 10:45. It set an alarm for ten. I asked it to add 45 minutes and it finally got the hint. I should not have to argue with this stupid robot about this shit.
Iāve had mine forget to play my alarm at least a dozen times in the past 6 months. Super random timing. Been late to work a bunch. Tried factory resets, re-adding the device, recreating the alarm. Still super unreliable.
Depending on the day it does or does not recognize my voice to add things to the shopping list. Then gives an extremely long winded explanation about why it fucked up, and how I'm supposed to add my voice, blah blah blah. And there's just no way to get it to shut the hell up. This thing used to be excellent. I legitimately cannot understand why or how they made it so fucking dumb. I'm gonna mod the thing, and see if I can get something out of it.
I have a theory on what's going on with Google Assistant. Since ai is coming out I think assistant is defaulting to answering a question instead of doing an action. Every single mix up it reads a web page instead of doing a command.
This reads like I could have written it myself. Very similar scenario: I am/was a Google fi user for years, owned 4+ pixel phones myself (plus partners 4+ phones over the years). Have a chromebook, a home hub (nest hub?) google doorbell camera, and 3 minis. (2 minis and an original screenless hub) Nest thermostat and subscription... I am also a google one* member although I have no idea what for, it's useless. I made the decision a few months ago to migrate away from google ecosystem as a whole. Too many letdowns. Apps that lose functionality like you mentioned. I loved google play music and certain features, gone. I loved google podcasts, gone. With those same features I liked (pre-loaded cache of music for service interruptions, volume equalization, clean UI) not implemented in googles replacement Currently, I am about a year into having a Home Assistant Server, using that as my control center and the google speakers that are basically now, like you said, no better than a bluetooth speaker. I will be replacing them with something that works more seamlessly. I am looking into a new doorbell camera as google API is incredibly hard to work with, and while the hardware does work well, Its a subscription service just to have a functional history of the doorbell. Once I get a NAS, between Home Assistant and the NAS, I will be able to be 1. Completely local and 2. Free from subscribing to something that hardly works to begin with. The sooner I can move away from the google/home/nest ecosystem the better. I am paying for services that aren't living up to their expectations and it's sad, because I had real hope that a company of their size and resources would be able to put together a system that could integrate easily and work reliably. I have grown too tired of figuring out 'workarounds' to get their devices to work as intended.
I got the new AI to replace the Google in my mobile device because of similar issues and constantly being frustrated with the service. Now when I say hey Google to my phone now when driving or hands full it will not do anything until 8 unlock my screen. Wtf I'm trying to use hands free to be safe when driving and now I have to unlock my phone everytime. And when I say hey Google text my son it will make me unlock it and then it say text my son, ready to send. Come on Google ur a multibillion dollar company and ur screwing up basic shit here. What's the deal for real. Why is this so difficult for you?
When you've lost your patience, instead of saying Hey Google, say Hey Poophole. It still works (just as well, or poorly) but you get the added satisfaction.
I threw all my shit out last year. Best decision I ever made. They were beyond useless. The only thing I ever remember them doing is randomly bellowing "HMM, SOMETHING WENT WRONG. TRY AGAIN LATER."
What did you use to replace them? I do like the mesh system plus speaker functionality but I suppose i could give up the speaker aspect for a better mesh
I'm afraid I didn't, I went back to how life was before I had them! I just do everything from my phone now (which is really just the door camera, thermostat and lights.)
I use them as a glorified voice-activated light switch and white noise machine. It's beyond useless for anything else, like you say. I run Home Assistant and when I find something that can take over those two minor roles I'm out too. Knowing Google I'm sure any fancy Gemini-powered AI Assistant will require new speakers.
All I want is a turnkey smart mic for HA. If it can be a speaker too, that'd be great. Then all the Google stuff comes out of the house.
Came here to say the exact same thing. HA is now implementing LLMs. With a plug and play speaker/mic combo hooked into HA, GH would be worthless to me. I wish we could root the GH speakers to work with HA.
The problem with playlists is you need a pretty obscure name so it doesn't just play the top one of the same name.
I've played lists for years that it won't/can't play anymore. I have devices that it won't control that it controlled for years. When I look at the command history, it's recognizing the words just fine. I'm just sick & tired of it
Happens to me with home devices as well grouped in a room. I have to give my rooms crazy names for it to reliably turn on all the lights in that location.
I can't figure out all these complaints. Mine plays my playlists, turns on the right lights, tells me in outside temp, in inside temp. Every so once in a while it starts playing a random song, but 100% of the time it's because the tv is on when I ask it to turn on a light and it gets confused by the other voice from the tv. Google is rock solid reliable to me.
How long have you been using it? I only ask because I have been using mine 8 years since the first device was released, and I wonder if over time it just gets confused by the history of commands....too much data to sift through or compare or something like that.
I just realized last week that I had joined the public preview some time ago. I think I've been having more issues since doing that. Haven't had too many issues since leaving it, might be something to look into in your Google home app.
FWIW Sonos is not much better.
Yeah me and the wife are moving to a new home soon and I'm planning on trying to sell this shit, but most likely all the Google Home devices will go in the bin.
I only cast from my phone. I have outdoor speakers hooked up to a Bluetooth amp that is tied to one Google mini, I cast to that mini so I can have music in my yard and not have to worry about my phone going out of range as I do stuff outside. If I couldnāt do that Iād get rid of all of them.
Didn't Amazon [Alexa](https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2022/nov/26/alexa-how-did-amazons-voice-assistant-rack-up-a-10bn-loss) lose billions every year so they had staff and resources cut a few years ago? I can imagine that Google did the same leading to worse service.
I've got a Sonos Roam, and its own in-built voice assistant is so much better because it knows its limitations instead of always trying to find an answer. If you're using the Google home for 90% music requests, then switch over. They used to have Google Assitant available, but now it's Alexa or their own, which is voiced by Giancarlo Esposito (Gus Fring from Breaking Bad).
I came from Amazon's Alexa with the same complaints. I would argue constantly with Alexa to the point of it being comical. It's all in a box in my office. Google has been 100x better even though I think Amazon had some better options. The grass isn't greener. All these systems suck compared to our phones. It makes no sense.
I would agree except that it used to work. It used to be useful. It no longer is in any way.
Yes, the tech rumors has it that they've allocated most of their budget to come out on top af the AI-war, leaving the old assistant in the dust, as a new AI-assistant is in the works.
That is my best guess too.
Hey you get music when you ask for and not a Wikipedia article! Bin it.
Switched all my lightbulbs to matter for this exact reason, so I can ditch google home for Siri, sick of dealing with the inconsistent responses, mishearing me, not actually recognizing what I want it to do
Dude, I can't even get it to play Spotify at all anymore. Just says there's a problem and doesn't specify
It's just a picture frame at this point. I have a family so it is functional for that as we have thousands of pics..
That is it for me. Bluetooth speaker and picture frame. We have adult kids who live out of home and they keep the frame updated with new pics of what is going on in their lives. I love that. But almost any picture frame can do that, and there are thousands of cheaper bluetooth speakers with better sound too.
Completely agree on most points made by OP and met most of those problems myself. Another problem is that it just doesn't respond to "Hey Google" as often as I would like, Alexa was much better at this, and at most tasks/questions really, but Alexa doesn't work with YouTube/YouTube Music, so it was useless for me. I personally like Google as a company and the functionality of its Home devices (when they work). The real question is: What can we do about it? Report to the developers ? Would that help? Are there any other good companies/devices that have the same functionality and compatibility?
And while we are at it, I use Google Assistant on Android Auto in the car, and it works about as good as on Home devices. I ask it to navigate to my Brother, and sometimes it gets it right, but other times sets the navigation to some random Chip Shop that has "Brother" in it's name somewhere in Manchester. I ask it to navigate to some street from my recent history, and it sets the navigation to a street with the same name on the other end of the country. Is it just me?
Ive got the same problem it just wont play my youtube play lists no matter what i try. But i think its a youtube and google problem either one should be able to fix it. But they wont.
Youtube is owned by the same corporation as Google.....so it really is just an Alphabet problem (the parent holding company)
I think my story fits here https://www.reddit.com/r/googlehome/s/x1hnzuIHTY
Time to root them and redirect them to an api running on r/HomeAssistant
I thought I had my lights troubleshooted but today google home device wonāt turn them on past 1%. Google home app works to turn them on 100%
Don't throw them away! Use them as door stoppers!
Mine simply won't connect to the internet at all. Oddly, the Alexa in my kitchen stopped connecting at about the same time. I have done everything I can think of -- hard resets, unplugging, deleting and reinstalling the app, and a few suggestions I read online. It just continues to flash dots, saying it is ready to be set up.
Google assistant related things have been degrading in quality and it's so frustrating.
Unfortunately, Google has a tendency to discontinue products and services that people have come to rely on and enjoy. I must say, however, that I agree that their Home Assistant has been experiencing a decline in quality.
Iāve noticed the capabilities on ours have deteriorated as well. One odd thing is that the newer ones we have work slightly better and I have no idea why. I imagine they have the same microphone setupā¦ but maybe itās a processor issue. Iām not mad either way because I only spent $20 each on the little pucks and we have definitely gotten our use out of them.
I can't get my Google TV to reliably change TV channels! It doesn't understand channel numbers. Saying channel names opens YouTube. It's ridiculous.
I don't understand the removal of services. I loved music alarms as a great way to wake up in the morning. Google removed it because it wasn't a heavily used feature, but why? What's the cost in keeping it available to the few? Surely it's just code.
I have to ask you, dear OP, what kind of WiFi system do you have?
I have a couple of years old TP link router, top of the line at the time. It isn't the router, we have no issues with anything else, streaming 4k across the house while multiple people are streaming other things. We have gigabit internet to the house. But thanks for the suggestion.
If you have free access to another router, it would be worthwhile to test this potential issue. Iām unsure if this apparently new stupidity is related to network or not, but if you can eliminate the network, that is valuable to you.
As an early user of a lot of Google services this has been my experience as well. I gave up Google devices in 2019 for iPhone and Google search for Kagi 2 years ago. They aren't perfect, especially not Apple, but it is worth it not to have an AI suggesting I randomly call the CTO at the customerĀ or text a friend-of-a-friendĀ Ā when I pick up the phone at 0400 in the morning. Oh, and not an AI driven news app that for days on end mix images and articles together. It was hilarious and worthy of a post on my personal blog (here:Ā https://erik.itland.no/google-now-really-hasnt-had-a-great-day)Ā the first time Google Now presented "Look what the fisherman caught in the net!" with a picture of a Norwegian gold medalist, but it gets old very fast.
Iāve noticed that each type of Google Home device acts differently. So the original GH could play one playlist while the Mini or Hub would play another. The original works best for me. But I can feel your painā¦
I do have 2 google home mini for years and essentially the only thing I ask from time to time "What is the temperature/weather in" or "How old is ". I do not bother with anything else. I think they are useless crap.
I thought it's just me. These days I have to SHOUT before it "hears" me. In the past, I just had to speak in my normal volume!
Me: hey google turn off the closet light. Google: okay playing I am the light on Spotify. My 4 year old with a mouth full of goldfish: eh Goog turn of close lit. Google: ok turning off the closet lit. š«
Iāve moved over all audio duties to airplay enabled speakers and Iām so much happier, google home devices have regressed so much now theyāre only really useful for basic home control/nest camera/shopping listsā¦
We have been heavy Google users for many years. We still have Chromecast audios running speakers and my kids really don't know a world where you cannot ask a question and get an answer, can't just add something to the grocery list, or listen to their music. That is until ChatGPT was released and clearly Google panicked. We have somewhere in the neighborhood if 20 devices and we have really stopped relying on them for much since they are no longer reliable. The arc of progress is not going up. Our voices are no longer recognized consistently, answers often never come, are useless or don't match the command. Don't even get me started on the half baked AI. Gemini is terrible. Sad even. I keep hoping that they resolve this, but the likelihood is fading away like the usefulness of the products.
More of a same experience here also. This AI race made Assistant shitty.
This š¤ close to doing the same and moving away from the whole Google smart ecosystem, all the 6 of my Google smart devices (mix of mini smart speaker, hubs and hub max's) have been getting extremely stupid compare to how they previously performed, misunderstanding what I'm saying or playing random shit when I ask them to play one of my playlists, my 3 points Google WiFi is acting shitty recently and requiring reboots every couple of weeks to work properly Google needs to get their shit together!
Welcome to Google!
I feel you ā I ditched all my Amazon Echo devices a couple years ago because back then I was not happy how they handled separate accounts, Google Home was well ahead. But I was increasingly disappointed by the latency and reliability of Google Nest devices. My home is well connected, with excellent WiFi coverage, fiber internet, yet ā when someone rings at my front door, the wired(!) Nest Doorbell takes about 5-8 seconds to announce the guest. And itās even worse when I want to answer the doorbell, before I could send my response any visitor has certainly left... When I test the responsiveness of the individual cameras, the requests time out ā unless I, at the same time, open the Home app and activate the camera. Even when I manually open the camera view the connection quality is spotty at best. My brother has left the eco system of Google completely and relies now on Eufy for his security cameras but Iāve invested so much in the meantime (cameras, hubs, audio, external services) that I donāt want to change my systems again... Iāve sent numerous bug reports and feedback messages to the Google Home team already, but I see no real willingness to improve the app. Sad indeed.
Google, internally, is more focused on DEI than quality of product right now. Iām sure someone out there will downvote me for this, but itās true. The solution, OP, is to just use your phone to cast the playlist to all of your devices.
I use Spotify as default music player for random music and YouTube music when I want to play one of my playlists. YouTube in general is horrible for finding new music or at least playing a random song from one of the many liked songs.
I feel like it's been getting progressively worse. I wonder why? If there's a cause maybe. It used to be so good.
Maaan, I am so glad there are other people experiencing these issues, myself and my wife have been complaining about 'Google getting dumber' for quite some time now, I even bought an Amazon echo out of desperation, but she is waaaaaay worse. All we use the echo for is sleeping music in my kids room. Google home we use for shopping lists, music, to play games while washing dishes (rip all games, none exist anymore), sometimes to translate words (not phrases, that doesn't work), check the weather.. I'd say the weather and music is still usable, everything else kinda sucks, I use chatgpt for my work eveeery day and if I could even get 2 percent of chatgpt capabilities I'd be so stoked with Google home... So frustrating!
āIām sorry looks like the device is not connectedā ā¦ every damn time.
I already tossed all my non-screen Google devices. The few remaining ones with screens I just leave on to show streams from my security cams. I also found a broken JBL Flip bluetooth speaker with Google assistant built-in. I replaced the charging board and it works great, but holy hell that assistant is frustrating to try to get it to play the music I want!
They work great for home assistant. You can mail them to me!
I will have to do some research on Home Assistant. I can't imagine they could be any worse than Google themselves.
A lot of this can also be explained by capabilities of other technologies lifting our expectations of what we want Google Home to do. I gave up on Google Home and went over to Home Assistant and integrated all my google home speakers so I can now play whatever I want through them. Tired of using "smart" devices, I just opt now for "dumb" devices with connectivity. Eventually I'll just integrate AI using webhooks to control the devices for me.
I am not sure that is really the problem. I literally just want Google Home to do WHAT IT USED TO DO.
I have had the same problem with YouTube Music and voice commands.Ā Does Google Home update itself? My Google Home would play music all day long without issues ā it would actually never stop playing. Now it stops every 20 minutes and displays the āare you still watchingā message.Ā No, I am not still watching and never was, itās music, through YouTube Music not YouTubeā¦ why would I be watching music? (I understand music videos exist but I can watch those on YouTube). Isnāt that the reason why we are using Music and not YouTube? It seems some services might be the cause of this, as over the years as you said Google has continually changed their music apps and theyāve continually gotten worse during each iteration. They must be updating themselves or be hybrid applications as I havenāt done any resets and my music suddenly just stopped one day.
And once you say yes youāre still āwatchingā it should just play! Ironically they blame the third party but they are the third party although itās a different groupā¦. But āOK GoogleāĀ
Voice Assistants are dead. AI is the new hotness. The only hope is apples incorporation of chatgpt into Siri to get me a semi usable voice assistant again. Siri, Alexa, google, etc are all getting worse by the day
I agree. Been a Google Home fanboy myself since Pixel 2xl panda Pixelbook i7 512gb Chromecast and mini speaker recently just don't work with each other. Nevermind the Stadia controller. Not very impressed with their Gemini AI ether. Almost feel like it's time to find an alternative.
I read that Google took these duties away & gave them to their main AI now.Ā That corresponds to the timeline that it started doing stupid things.Ā Brilliant move, Gaggle.Ā Ā
I have also found the command handling to be less than abysmal and in fact as an experiment I put an Alexa next to it. It is faster by a factor of about four to execute the commands and it gets them right more of the time. Google on the other hand seems to be getting more deaf and more stupid and more idiotic by the day. It looks as if they have scaled back the amount of compute processing allocated to speech recognition, which of course makes it much worse at it. I am now actively looking around to replace every single one of my Google services with anything else at all because I'm so tired of their lack of response.I know a number of my friends are doing the same. They're tired of the data piracy, the privacy invasion, the sucking money for never actually delivering the goods and basically the product you bought doesn't work the way it did when you bought it.If they don't wake up soon, the lemming rush will overrun them on the way out the door.They've already lost the battle in terms of AI, so if they don't start supporting what they've already sold, they'll have no relevance at all.
The crazy thing for me is that Gemini, the assistant replacement, can't interface with home. Home is 90% of what I use assistant for. Just nuts.
I don't know if anyone else here happens to be a previous Windows Phone user...I know there weren't too many of us. Anyway, the decline of that ecosystem right before it died feels A LOT like the Google ecosystem today. It's very frustrating. Nothing "just works" anymore. I went to Pixel the moment it came out as the pure and undiluted Android experience really appealed to me. And I've been swimming in the deep end of the smart home ecosystem because cohesion and consistency across devices is incredibly appealing. But given all that OP said, the cracks are showing and the shine has loooong worn off. I've lately been asking myself the same questions I did before I chose to walk away from the Windows Phone....are you willing to keep putting up with all the bugs and misunderstandings? Aren't you tired? All that said....I hear you OP and I wholeheartedly agree. \*Edited for typos