Google Assistant completely useless now

  • 7 September 2020
  • 37 replies
  • 3899 views

Userlevel 1

So over the last year Google Assistance on sonos (regarding spotify in particular) has been pretty buggy.. now it's completely useless. 

The response to any/every question I ask now, mainly regarding spotify, is "I'm sorry, I dont know how to help with that" 

I have 3 other google devices, if I ask them to play spotify on the sonos, no problem, works perfectly. 

Any way to fix this? Pretty frustrating that the $50 google speaker works flawlessly compared to this $600+ speaker


37 replies

I too am experiencing issues of a similar nature and have narrowed the issue down to sonos, not google. Can someone from Sonos please address this systemic issue. Paying this much for a device to be useless is insulting. 

Userlevel 7
Badge +17

It would help if you could explain what you have found, so Sonos can use that to clear this problem.

I too am experiencing issues of a similar nature and have narrowed the issue down to sonos, not google. Can someone from Sonos please address this systemic issue. Paying this much for a device to be useless is insulting. 

Issues

  • when i ask what’s the weather, google says sorry, I don’t understand 
  • when i ask what is the time, it gives me the Wikipedia definition of time

when i ask the same questions to google on non sonos devices (e.g. my phone), i get the expected response.

i have performed a factory reset of both my sonos speakers, and I have deleted and re-added them to google home. 
 

i have a sonos one play and a sound bar. Both have the same issue. 

Userlevel 7
Badge +17

So it could still be on the Google side of the Google/Sonos interface. Maybe you should call Sonos for help in case it is your specific set up that’s causing trouble.

Userlevel 1
Badge +3

I have a Beam, Move and One, the Move being about a week old.

 

When I got the Move I migrated from Alexa to GA, since I am a YT Music subscriber and got tired of waiting for YouTube and Amazon to start playing ball.


GA is TERRRRRIBLE on Sonos.  I ask to turn on a light and I get no response for about 5 seconds, then finally the light turns on, then I get “Sure, turning on the light”...thanks, I can see that, even though I’ve been 5 seconds not knowing if it heard me or not.

Playing music is terrible (GA fault I assume), as someone else said, playing a song just plays a song and stops, it should create a playlist based upon the song.

Specific to Sonos, its just slow terribly, misses more than Alexa, and worse than anything is that there is very little reply from Sonos, and the Move (at least in my country), is literally brand new.

Userlevel 7
Badge +17

On my system the experience is GA is much better. Does GA work 100%? No, but it does swiftly turn my lights on or off, and it does play another song after the song I started from Spotify.

The amount of support I see from Sonos on this issue makes me wanna go back to Bose. Can we get a little help out here?

Userlevel 1
Badge +3

Just coming back to my reply a month ago, I had no choice but to switch back to Alexa.

 

It really annoys me that I’m forced to, since I am a YTMusic sub, and since Alexa won’t allow me to use YTMusic I can use no voice commands for music - a pretty critical feature of a Sonos Speaker wouldn’t you say Sonos?!

I have left GA on one device only in my garage, the rest Alexa for day to day routines.

GA if I ask it to do anything, whether that be tell me the weather, play a song, turn a light on, it takes 5 seconds just to reply to me - of course in that time I have no idea if it actually heard me unless I check the flashing light first.

 

Terrible, unusable, thanks Sonos.

Userlevel 7
Badge +17

Sonos’ advice is to contact Google, but you could try Sonos first if to rule out it’s a networking problem on you side. Try uninstalling and reinstalling GA first.

Same on Sonos One.

- Hey Google, play NTS radio
- Playing a Spotify playlist called “Good stuff heard on NTS radio”
… There was an issue reaching Spotify Premium

(I do have Spotify Premium connected too, it plays just fine from the app)


- Hey Google, Why does the Google Assistant implementation on Sonos One suck so much?
- The definition of implementation is….

 

Userlevel 1
Badge +1

So many issues with GA and Roam, one of the most puzzling is when I ask GA using Roam to play something and it responds on the Roam that Sonos Roam isn’t available right now. This is using the same command on Roam that worked the day before and works the day after.

Hola, tengo un problema muy estresante con el GA,  compré una Sonos Beam para escuchar música y cambiar mi pequeño parlante de Google, pero simplemente no funciona con Spotify ni con Apple Music. Desde la Sonos beam, el asistente es completamente inútil para reproducir música y cualquier contenido multimedia. Es muy frustrante escuchar al asistente darme instrucciones de cómo debo pedir la música, “ para reproducir contenido multimedia di por ejemplo : reproducir música pop …. “ lo insólito es que el Nest mini que es muchísimo más barato funciona 1000 veces mejor con el GA. Es mi única queja, deberían hacer algo porque la experiencia de uso se cae a pedazos con ese detalle.

Si alguien aquí lee esto y encontró una solución, favor su apoyo.

Gracias !!!

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