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Google Assistant automation routines have improved

  • July 2, 2026
  • 2 replies
  • 20 views

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Google Assistant went through a rocky period over the last year while Google was attempting a rather confusing re-organization of how their automation routines work. They managed to break most existing automation routines, and at times it seemed like nothing was working properly. This not only affected Sonos speakers supporting Google Assistant, but Sonos saw more impact than native Google speakers. I pretty much gave up on them and moved most of my automations to Alexa.

But Google finally seems to have gotten their act together, and automation routines are working again, including those which failed on Sonos previously. The earlier flaw that automation routines can’t speak any custom text on Sonos remains, but it’s worth trying Google automation routines again if it was the more recent failures that led to abandoning Google Assistant.

2 replies

Airgetlam

Note: Sonos merely sends your voice to the Google servers for processing, which then sends back the (digital) command sequence back to your Sonos system. There is no processing beyond recognizing the wake word being done by Sonos.

So kudos to Google for cleaning up what they’d messed up!


106rallye
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  • July 4, 2026

Hmmm. Just tried my good morning routine (that works fine on my Nest Mini) - the news still only gets “sorry, I didn’t understand this” via Sonos.