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

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 !!!

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.

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 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.

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.

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 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.

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

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.

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

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. 

I am having the same problems with Google assistant. Every command I give yields the same repsonse (“sorry something went wrong” ) then the second time I give the same command it sometimes works. And sometimes I can give the same commands that give a result sometimes till i am blue in the face but it does not do anything. I am appalled at the crappy quality of this “integration” and to redirect people that have complaints to Google is completely laughable. This is CLEARLY a Sonos issue.  I was a huge Sonos advocate for a long time but this just sucks. I am going to see what else I can get for my money, that actually works. 

I'm getting this constantly:

"Sorry something went wrong.

When you're ready, give it another try"

Sometimes retrying is successful, but after 4 retries, I give up.

This is so insanely frustrating!

Me TOO!  It’s gotten so bad recently.  I’ve removed and reinstalled Google Assistant several times.  I’ve rebooted my router.  I’ve connected Sonos to my router directly.  Nothing worked.  It finally got so bad that I deleted my whole Google Home and started over.  I did everything short of a factory reboot on my Sonos speakers.  Instead, I just put up my old Google nest minis again.  I don’t exactly regret buying my Sonos speakers, because they do sound great for music, but I DO regret buying the Ones that have GA build in.  I should have just gone with the SL.  I have to use the Sonos app all the time anyway.

Honestly, I’ve been so disappointed in GA on Sonos that I’ve put my Google minis all around the house again.  They just work better.  My Sonos ones sound great, but I’m controlling them with my phone, not my voice.  After having had google speakers for years, which always just WORKED, I can’t believe how buggy it is on Sonos!  After a while I get tired of having so many speakers around the house and go back to using GA on Sonos, only to be disappointed again and get the minis back out.

I have no much problem controling the lights but playing music is awfull.

When it works you ask for a song and it just plays that song. while in other devices starts a playlis or a radio based on that song. but welll i can survive with this problem as a minor.

 

the meyor problem is that lately it just doesnt work GA with sonos 

In the past the problem was every two weeks it replyed that it can play my music on that device… I needed to grab my phone an play it form sonos app. and suddenly it worked again the next day. naow it happens one thay and the other day too.  I reinstall  the GA on sonos Beam and it works again for a day. 

 

Also latley ti sas that is not conected to the internet while every other device is conected and working.

The purporse of adding an Asistant to a speaker is to make things easier not just complicate them. 

this problem has a lot of time and is getting serious and Sonos is not doing anything to solve. is as easy as just read all these coments reply the configurations and use them for a week. thre you have the problem and now start to fix it local.. 

 

And give feedback to your comunity.  

 

Userlevel 7
Badge +18

Hopefully we’ll see something from Sonos soon using the Snips voice/AI technology they bought in late 2019. 

Mine is brutal.  I had to turn on the chirp so I knew it heard my wake command.   Then it just seems to do what it wants.    I asked it a math question last night and it started playing music!   Half the time I have to say okay Google 3 or 4 times.   I hate it.   My google mini works 100X better than this garbage.

Google Assistant seems to be working fine with me. Can control all 300 Zigbee devices in my home without issue. The only thing that won't work is control of Netflix. All other streaming services work. There are a lot of small bugs though. For example, it'll respond "turning off lights" when turning them on or vice versa.

Userlevel 4
Badge +6

Google Assistant on Sonos has never worked for me. Basic queries like “What’s the time?” usually work, but as soon as you want to play music, the speaker starts ignoring you completely.

And combined with constant messages like not being able to reach the internet even though streaming music through that speaker works just fine using the Sonos app and the speaker is using a wired connection to the router, or “I can’t do that here, but you can ask me to play it on one of your other devices”, it makes Google Assistant on Sonos completely unusable.

Not to mention other quirks like no volume ducking when speaking to another device in the same room, no separate alarm volume, many services like Apple Music not working, ...

And since this mess has been going on from the get go, I doubt very much that this will ever be resolved.

This is what frustrates me! Google activity indicates the correct verbal instruction but Sonos just don’t recognize and said I don’t understand. I have google assistant in another room (no Sonos one) and have no issues with the same verbal instruction. 

Userlevel 5
Badge +8

While I agree that GA on Sonos has some annoying issues that have persisted since it was first introduced, some of the issues in this thread are probably just routine failure to hear correctly, or routine variability with GA in general (Google’s fault, not Sonos-specific). I have other Google Home and Google Assistant speakers, and also a bunch of Echo Dots and other Alexa-enabled devices to compare to, and they encounter issues often enough that I’ve developed reduced expectations of consistent reliability.

All my Google Home and Google Assistant speakers (and Alexa on the Echo Dots too!) occasionally start misunderstanding a routine phrase that I’ve used for ages for no apparent reason - and then return to normal operation days/weeks/months later, again for no apparent reason. Not the fault of Sonos in most cases, although I have encountered some such instances that seemed to be Sonos-specific, for example when GA on Sonos would suddenly refuse to recognize the Stop command for a day or two.

As for specific commands that are failing, I can say “Hey Google, how’s today weather” to my Sonos One pair, and it works fine. If it doesn’t work for you, possibly it’s not hearing you correctly due to speaker placement or ambient noise. You might want to check the activity log and see what Google is actually hearing.

Just been reading through this thread and I cannot agree more with fellow Sonos users. The Google Assistant integration with Sonos Arc is appalling. I upgraded from Sonos Beam to Arc & in terms of Google Assistant support the Beam was FAR superior. This leads me to think it has something to do with the mic on the Arc. Is its positioning different? Is it as sensitive? Are the hardware/software interactions different?

This definitely needs looking at properly, I’ve been through all the standard fixes that either make no difference or seem to work for a limited time. The main frustration I have is that it’s intermittent with no pattern in terms of time of day/type of voice command/other devices using WiFi etc…

Wits end with it here.

I don’t agree with Sonos as well. I had the old Sonos Play 1 and upgraded to Sonos One mainly for the voice control. I also have google mini for years and have no problems with basic command “hey google, how’s today weather” Now upgraded to Sonos One and ask for the same command but Sonos voice assistant said sorry, I don’t understand. Sonos should step up to investigate what’s wrong on their end instead of telling me to get Google support. Totally disappointed on this upgrade! 
 

I have the same issues and would like to see a fix asap. My Sonos Move is not working as intended right now when it comes to the integrated Google assistant. Thank you.

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