Google assistant on Sonos one not responding



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Hi, 

 

 

looks like I’m having the exact same issues with our new Sonos one as described above. 
 

A while ago we bought a beam and the voice control with google assistent (in dutch) works perfectly. We use google home with niko home control so we ask GA a lot. We wanted a microphone upstairs as well so we bought a Sonos one to place in the hallway. The Sonos one literally responded once to a command but after that she only responded to “hey google” and after that nothing happened anymore. In the history I can see “unknown message”. The beam however understands this commands perfectly fine. 
 

I tried some things mentioned on this forum (delete history, restarting, language,..) but nothing seems to help. 

Guess I just wait here for a solution! :(

 


 

 

I agree. Even after doing the history clear. It is still hard to have the Sonos understand the volume commands. It worked so well initially. Just got another update from Sonos but still same problem.

This is soooooo annoying!

I am having the same issue. My setup:

iPhone 11 pro

Netherlands

Language English USA

Sonos One

What helped:

Deleting all my Google history including the Google assistant of course.

The restarting the Sonos One and pressing the play button.

Problem is that sometimes it works and sometimes it just doesn’t.

I had a similar issue. Since a week, Sonos stopped understanding basic commands like Play Joe Fm on Tune-In or Volume Up or Down. It did react on the Hey Google wake up but didn’t understand a thing after that.

Here is how I fixed it:

I browsed to:

https://myactivity.google.com

Make sure you are logged in with the correct google account.

On that page you see a list of all the commands you ever gave to your google assistant and browsing history.  To make it easier and only see assistant commands, you can press the Filter button and select Assistant.  It will then only show assistant commands.

The long history list seems to confuse Sonos.  So press the “thrash can” button next to Today and all the other dates.  I had to press many times because it keeps the history day by day and there is no delete all history button.

After that, select the main “My Activity” menu on that page and select “Activity Controls”

Uncheck the two boxes in Web & App Activity.  It pauses the recording of all your activity.

This fixed the problems and I could again have a meaningful conversation with my Sonos One.

For example a command like Volume 1 or Volume 2 did not work anymore at all.  Since I went through the above steps, these work again.

Despite the fact that I disabled “Include voice and audio recordings” in the “My Activity” section, it still seems to register all commands in the history.  So I may need to clear this in a month from now again.

It would be great if the Sonos team checks why this activity history is such a problem with the Sonos One. Because it isn’t a problem with other devices like Google’s own Home devices.

After multiple diagnostics over FB Messenger, which got escalated to phone and email correspondence, there’s still no resolution to this :rage:

Have been in contact with them over FB Messenger, phone and email, and have performed all of the following:

  • Unlinking and re-linking Google Assistant
  • Pausing Voice and Audio Activity
  • Connecting the speaker via Ethernet instead of wireless
  • Connecting the speaker through a different wireless network with different ISP.
  • Creating a brand new Google Account and linking it.

All of which Google Assistant still did not respond.

And then what was especially infuriating was when Support started asking me to repeat the same steps above right from the beginning. It was a new person by the name of Alanis who took over the case, who clearly did not look through the case history and past diagnostics logs. I requested for Alanis to look through the case history, but the reply back after that totally ignored my request and asked me to repeat step 1. I nearly combusted.

Anyhow, what worked however is when I tried connecting to Alexa, and it worked perfectly! This totally eliminated the possibility that it’s a hardware defect and it should be purely a software issue. I don’t know whether Sonos is working on a fix, but looking at how unhelpful Support is, I am starting to have my doubts.

Would like to add myself to the list of ppl having problems with Google Assistant being unresponsive. Have tried pausing Voice and Audio Activity, but it's still not responding to any of my queries. It does successfully answer, like 1 time out of every 10 attempts. The rest of the 9 attempts are just silence. 

The thing is, the microphone does pick up my "OK Google" command very well, but after the chime , it just stays quiet. 

Am currently in touch with Support right now, going through a whole laundry list of troubleshooting steps to isolate the problem. Sigh. 

Once I checked I’m in on GA using data from my activity , it worked . Maybe coincidence … but I had unchecked it earlier. 

Its in the get the full experience section on the home screen of GA (with the mic)

My voice and audio controls were already off. Pausing  / Turning all web and App activity off stopped google assistant working altogether, and she said something along the lines of more information required.

Within Activity Controls, go into item view, filter by Assistant, and delete all entries for assistant (effectively clearing cache). Everything now working perfectly. I can now use Google assistant on the beam to play from YouTube Music or Google Play, and Apple Music from Echo with the beam as a preferred speaker.

Leave ‘Include voice and audio recordings’ deselected under web and app activity - It still works, but leads to significant delay in response to voice commands

Hope this helps!

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Well I'd reached the point where I was going to return my One having tried the pausing trick with little success. However I can confirm that having paused the settings twice it did the trick and Assistant has worked flawlessly for me for well over a week now.

The only other thing I did was to rename each of my Sonos speakers/rooms. By default I'd originally left them as Living Room, Upstairs and Kitchen. I added 'Sonos' in front of each (e.g Sonos Upstairs). I can't see that this should have made any difference, but try pausing again to see if it helps.
I have contacted support via twitter as well. Like i mentioned in my previous post, by pausing the voice and audio activity controls, my One is still not responding as expected. It makes the Google assistent function useless to me.

Sonos responded: Thanks for confirming. So we can gather more information about your setup, provide the make and model of your modem, router, and any other attached network devices.

I feel this is going nowhere.
Is pausing the voice and audio activity controls really working out for everyone here?
I am at a point of considering returning the device.
Just spoken to the Sonos Support Team on twitter and they can't help me since I've already returned my Sonos One. They say that different people probably have different problems so could some other people contact Sonos support to see if they can fix the problem?
I’ve sent the Sonos support team a message on twitter. Their automatic responds said that they would reply within 30 minutes unless they’re busy. I guess they are because it’s been 24 hours. I’ve asked for a status update on this issue with a link to this thread. I’m going to return my Sonos for now but will let you know if they reply.
Maybe i was a bit too fast with my previous message.
Indeed, by pausing the Voice & Audio Activity controls things have improved, but overall it is way from perfect (compared to my Google home mini). I have decided to install my google home back into the livingroom and mute the Sonos One mic for now.

Yep, it's sonos cause google home mini works perfectly.
Also worked two weeks back, now it doesn't do anything, totally useless..
Sonos is looking into it
Example:
https://photos.app.goo.gl/MTru1gJcPQTVAPBs6


Is there incident or case number known by someone here, or anything so that we can keep track of the solving progress of Sonos? I haven't seen an official statement yet. Anyone?
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Having got to the point where I was about to return my Sonos 1 as mentioned above, I did a final check of the settings. I found that in the Assistant settings the Voice and Activity control had reset itself to on. I paused it again and the One started to respond as it did before. That was 4 days ago and I'm happy to say that it's been perfect since the last change. So, in my case at least, pausing it a couple of times has resolved the issue. Might be worth trying the pause trick a few times to see if it works for those still struggling.
Yep, it's sonos cause google home mini works perfectly.
Also worked two weeks back, now it doesn't do anything, totally useless..
Sonos is looking into it
Example:
https://photos.app.goo.gl/MTru1gJcPQTVAPBs6

I just bought my sonos one 2 days ago and can’t seem to get google assistant to work. Have the same issues as in the video above 😞 It only works about 10% of the time. Changing the setting did nothing for me.
Having the same exactly the same issues as described in this thread. I'm from the Netherlands too.
Indeed by pausing the Voice & Audio Activity controls, google assistant responses seems to have improved significantly. Thanks for that.
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I've been trying to get my new Sonos One to work with Assistant for over two weeks. I've followed all the advice on this, and other, threads and the user guides elsewhere.

Last night after reading about the suggestion to pause the Voice and Audio activity controls I did so and, bingo, it worked - I was over the moon. Until this morning, when my Sonos One reverted back to ignoring me. It's infuriating as it listens to me but ignores most of my requests. Occasionally it actually will react but mostly I have to revert to using the app on my phone to control my music.

I'm on the verge of giving up and returning the unit to the retailer which will be real shame as I've got other Sonos speakers around the house and bought the One to give me voice control of the system.
Not sure if there are any drawbacks, apparently its used for learning your voice
@maketheface awesome... It's so much better now!!!
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Currentl in the same boat as everyone here!!!

But I believe I may have actually solved it now by pausing the Voice & Audio Activity controls within google itself... The sonos device seems to be working again now


Just tried it and indeed, it works back again with the answers you suspect (so no 'place the speaker somewhere else or this of that like they mentioned before)
So there's the fault where sonos have to look in to solve the problem
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so sonos can't find out why but the users can? 🙂 If that is the problem then sonos should look into that, that would also explain why there's unknown command(s) in the activity controls
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Ive just tested turning it off and so far seems much better
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Currentl in the same boat as everyone here!!!

But I believe I may have actually solved it now by pausing the Voice & Audio Activity controls within google itself... The sonos device seems to be working again now
Came to the forum to research this. From what i’ve seen, this has fixed it 99% of the time. I always get a response to ok google, but now I always get a response to the command too - even if it’s an invalid command. With the voice activity switched on I would frequently get no response. Thanks for posting this 😃

Is there a drawback from turning it off? and what exactly do you need to turn off?
Currentl in the same boat as everyone here!!!

But I believe I may have actually solved it now by pausing the Voice & Audio Activity controls within google itself... The sonos device seems to be working again now

Came to the forum to research this. From what i’ve seen, this has fixed it 99% of the time. I always get a response to ok google, but now I always get a response to the command too - even if it’s an invalid command. With the voice activity switched on I would frequently get no response. Thanks for posting this 😃
Also having this issue on my Sonos One Gen 2. Ok, Google works fine most of the time there is no response at all and it just cancels the request. Been happening for weeks now and it seems to be getting worse. Is Sonos looking in to this?