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Google Assistant - Vanished and cannot be added back on Beam (Gen 1)


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189 replies

Airgetlam
  • 42073 replies
  • January 14, 2025

Note: this forum is not Sonos Support, who can be contacted by phone. This is a community forum, the only Sonos folks who respond here are Forum Moderators, when they can. You’ll potentially get a lot of other Sonos users like myself, very few ‘official’ responses. 


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  • Prominent Collaborator I
  • 76 replies
  • January 14, 2025
Brian10 wrote:

Hi SONOS Support,

I’ve just bought a SONOS Roam 2 and intended to use it under Google Home/Assistant and disappointed to find out there there is an issue with it even though all the online documentation indicates that it works.

Can you confirmed if this issue is resolved or not (Yes/No)?

If ‘Yes’ Can you please provide detailed instructions on how to get it working

If ‘No’ Can you please let us know when it will be fixed or will it be fixed

I had this issue back in mid December. As per the beginning of Jan 2025, this issue had still not been resolved…but they marked my case “resolved” because I decided to switch back to Sonos Voice Control and Alexa. I asked them to let me know when Google Assistant support will be added back but not sure if they will.

The last I heard they were going to talk to Google about the issue but not sure if they ever did.

Also note though, that a lot of people using Google Assistant with their Google devices (ie Google Nest Mini) are having issues as well. This may be because of Google’s work in trying to integrate Gemini with Google Assistant but I’m not 100% sure.

PS. I’m sure if you talk to Sonos support, level 1 and 2 will say there is no “known issue with Google Assistant” (even though there evidently is). 


  • Lyricist II
  • 3 replies
  • January 14, 2025
Airgetlam wrote:

Note: this forum is not Sonos Support, who can be contacted by phone. This is a community forum, the only Sonos folks who respond here are Forum Moderators, when they can. You’ll potentially get a lot of other Sonos users like myself, very few ‘official’ responses. 

Thank you for the clarification and understand that this is not an official support method though note that SONOS staff do contribute and mark issues as resolved.

I really want some clear guidance on where this issue is at? I’ve rang the technical support line a few times and get a different answer each time.

If it is resolved is it possible to publish clear instructions on how to fix the issue. What devices work (iPhone and/or Android) what version of the SONOS App etc etc…..

If not currently resolved when and if it will be fixed? 


Corry P
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  • Sonos Staff
  • 8336 replies
  • January 14, 2025

Hi ​@Brian10 

Welcome to the Sonos Community!

Please be aware that Roam 2 does not support Google Assistant, and never has. I don’t know what online documentation you were looking at, but I suspect it may have been for the original Roam (if you know of documentation for Roam 2 that says that it does support Google Assistant, please provide a link and I will get it corrected - thank you).

So, I cannot provide instructions for how to get Google Assistant working on your Roam 2, nor can I say when it will work - it will not.

I hope this helps.


  • Lyricist II
  • 3 replies
  • January 27, 2025

Hi Cory P,

I went back and bought a Roam instead of Roam 2 and still have issues setting up Google Assistant. It keeps saying device not found when linking up Google Assistant. Can you provide the exact steps required.

 

Brian


Corry P
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  • Sonos Staff
  • 8336 replies
  • January 27, 2025

Hi ​@Brian10 

I am sorry to hear that!

If the steps outlined on our Set up the Google Assistant with a voice-enabled Sonos product don’t work, I recommend you get in touch with our technical support team who have tools at their disposal that will allow them to give you advice specific to your Sonos system and what it reports.

I hope this helps.


  • Contributor I
  • 1 reply
  • January 30, 2025
Corry P wrote:

Hi ​@Brian10 

I am sorry to hear that!

If the steps outlined on our Set up the Google Assistant with a voice-enabled Sonos product don’t work, I recommend you get in touch with our technical support team who have tools at their disposal that will allow them to give you advice specific to your Sonos system and what it reports.

I hope this helps.

So contacted technical support and the issue is still outstanding and was never resolved. Can you please provide some feedback on when it will be fixed?


Corry P
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  • Sonos Staff
  • 8336 replies
  • January 30, 2025

Hi ​@Me83 

I am not aware of any such issue - and I have asked around.

I looked for a technical support case of yours relating to this to see if I could find what the agent you spoke to said, but could not find one - were you given a case number? If so, could you please send it to me via Private Message? Thanks.

As for getting Google Assistant installed on your speaker, could you please try once more and submit a support diagnostic straight afterwards? Thanks. Please let me know here when you have done so, but please don’t share the number given. I’ll take a look and see what I can determine for you.


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  • Prominent Collaborator I
  • 76 replies
  • January 30, 2025
Corry P wrote:

Hi ​@Me83 

I am not aware of any such issue - and I have asked around.

I looked for a technical support case of yours relating to this to see if I could find what the agent you spoke to said, but could not find one - were you given a case number? If so, could you please send it to me via Private Message? Thanks.

As for getting Google Assistant installed on your speaker, could you please try once more and submit a support diagnostic straight afterwards? Thanks. Please let me know here when you have done so, but please don’t share the number given. I’ll take a look and see what I can determine for you.

Perhaps no one assumes there are “active cases” because they close them without fully resolving them? As I noted, my own case got closed because I got Sonos voice control to work again, thus the engineer assumed it was a “workaround” and thus I didn’t need Google Assistant voice control anymore. I mentioned I still wanted to know when Google Assistant voice control was “fixed” but from your end, the case was probably considered “resolved” which it shouldn’t have be. Again perhaps this is why there are no outstanding issue cases with Google Assistant.

What’s disappointing is that I did a TON of testing for the engineer as well to confirm that this was a serious and unsolvable issue (at least from the Sonos end, as the engineer said they’d have to talk to Google). The weird thing with my case is that I could “add” Google Assistant but it didn’t seem to function fully or properly. So it was like it was only partially added or active. But I would definitely call it a setup issue vs a usage issue because it potentially had to do within not getting a proper “authorization token” or something to that effect.

Again that nobody knows about this on your end, especially after talking to a Sonos Engineer for an extensive period of time, with an extensive period of testing, is pretty disappointing to hear to say the least.

Anyways, I’ll private message you my own previous case number, so you can see what I mean. 


Corry P
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  • Sonos Staff
  • 8336 replies
  • January 30, 2025

Hi ​@Nollind 

I think you might be (understandably enough) confusing customer cases with issue-tracking tickets - they are not the same, and when I mentioned that I know of no such issue, I was not referring to customer cases.

I did not say that “nobody knows”, just that I - and a colleague I spoke to - were not aware, hence my asking for your case number.

Nollind wrote:

Anyways, I’ll private message you my own previous case number, so you can see what I mean. 

Thank you! I just found your case and had a look - Patrick assigned two issue trackers to it, one relating to an Amazon Music queue not loading when commanded by Google Assistant, and one regarding being unable to change the volume by GA voice command. The latter ticket has been closed due to our inability to reproduce the issue in our own testing. Neither ticket relates to adding Google Assistant, so it is possible that you just misunderstood what Patrick was saying. The remaining tracker will remain open until resolved, regardless of the status of any customer support cases.

When dealing with technical issues, they are very, very sharply defined. There will never be a ticket describing vague issues, such as Google Assistant “not functioning fully” - it will be described by the exact behaviour seen as compared to the expected behaviour. If all functionality ceases, sure - that’s easy to describe. When you said “I had this issue back in mid December,” I presumed that you were talking about being unable to add Google Assistant, as described by the author of this thread, which is still not a known issue that I am aware of.

In summary, for the issues you described to Patrick, one we simply could not reproduce so it is not presently seen as something that needs to be fixed with a change of software code - more likely a change done to one of the devices involved, like your phone or router. The other remains open for investigation - your report was not ignored or dismissed, though your case was marked as resolved-with-a-workaround-given.

I hope this clears things up.

 


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  • Prominent Collaborator I
  • 76 replies
  • January 30, 2025

I am not aware of any such issue - and I have asked around.

 

It seems we are each interpreting differently what “asking around” means. I assume it means asking multiple people around you, not just one person. If you had said you only asked one person, I wouldn’t have assumed “nobody else knows”.

 

I presumed that you were talking about being unable to add Google Assistan…

 

I specifically stated in my reply to you (see above) that I was able to get it to add “partially” but not get it to function properly. Even the Engineer couldn’t figure out how best to describe the issue when we talked on the phone, as it seemed quite bizarre. In effect, (based upon how I understand this works), if you add Google Assistant as a service and the authorization token isn’t fully authorized from Google’s end, it’s not really “added” as a service, even though it appears it is. This is why this issue was so hard to test for and figure out. But only by talking to Google (eventually) will we hopefully know what the issue is.

 

When dealing with technical issues, they are very, very sharply defined.

 

There is an upside and a downside to this. When issues are clear cut, this makes classifying issues easier. When the issue is not clear cut, this can actually cause more issues in actually discovering and solving a complex issue itself. In effect, I’ve done tech support myself in large organizations in the past (which is why the Engineer was impressed with my extensive testing). Often times solving complex issues occur when you see weak links of association between two seemingly different issues that reveal the real issue underlying them both (even though the real issue is something different in itself that is causing these “side effect” issues).

So unless you have more than just two people knowing about these complex, vague problems that are occurring, very few people will be aware of them and be able to potentially see these “weak links” of association between them, thus potentially solving them. This is effectively how creativity and innovation works with regards to solving complex problems. To put it another way, by “sharply defining things” and siloing info, you’re actually removing the possibility and potential of seeing associations that may reveal the solution to these complex problems.

All that said, I agree that you can’t just have vague information in a ticket. You need as much clear and concise info as possible. I’m just saying how you “classify” a problem (i.e. perceive and believe it to be so) can actually impede its resolution. 
 

The other remains open for investigation - your report was not ignored or dismissed, though your case was marked as resolved-with-a-workaround-given.

 

This is good to hear at least. Thanks for letting me know.


Corry P
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  • Sonos Staff
  • 8336 replies
  • January 30, 2025

Hi ​@Nollind 

Nollind wrote:

I am not aware of any such issue - and I have asked around.

 

It seems we are each interpreting differently what “asking around” means. I assume it means asking multiple people around you, not just one person. If you had said you only asked one person, I wouldn’t have assumed “nobody else knows”.

Yes, that’s fair. I posted to a group, so technically I asked many people, but I got one answer and no-one else answered because of that - there’s no need. The person who answered will have checked a list of all known issues (not just those documented for Level 1 agents) and would not have relied upon memory or previous knowledge.

Nollind wrote:

 

I presumed that you were talking about being unable to add Google Assistan…

 

I specifically stated in my reply to you (see above) that I was able to get it to add “partially” but not get it to function properly. Even the Engineer couldn’t figure out how best to describe the issue when we talked on the phone, as it seemed quite bizarre. In effect, (based upon how I understand this works), if you add Google Assistant as a service and the authorization token isn’t fully authorized from Google’s end, it’s not really “added” as a service, even though it appears it is. This is why this issue was so hard to test for and figure out. But only by talking to Google (eventually) will we hopefully know what the issue is.

This is what I mean by sharply defined issues - technically, you were off-topic for this thread, but only marginally, and debatably too. Let’s just say it was an easily-made misunderstanding.

Nollind wrote:

This is good to hear at least. Thanks for letting me know.

You are most welcome!


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  • Prominent Collaborator I
  • 76 replies
  • January 30, 2025

This is what I mean by sharply defined issues - technically, you were off-topic for this thread, but only marginally, and debatably too. Let’s just say it was an easily-made misunderstanding.

 

This isn't a misunderstanding issue, it’s a misinterpretation issue. My issue can’t be pigeon-hold and easily classified because it’s complex and not simple. I’m interpreting it as a setup and adding issue, so from my perspective it would apply to this post. You’re not interpreting it that way though. That’s fine. You’re the moderator and can remove it if you feel it’s off topic from your perspective, if you so choose, as your job actually requires you to ensure issues are categorized and silo’d.

It’s fine though. I normally post on Reddit anyways and I’ll just do so in future. 


Corry P
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  • Sonos Staff
  • 8336 replies
  • February 6, 2025

Hi ​@Nollind 

Apologies for the delay - I have been off work.

I said that you were marginally and debatably off-topic because the topic of this thread is “Google Assistant - Vanished and cannot be added back on Beam (Gen 1)” and you were able to add Google Assistant to your speaker, even though you could not then get it to work.

Note that I did not remove/move your post, and I used the words “marginally” and “debatably”. If I really thought you were off-topic, your post would be gone.

At the end of the day, however, I cannot help you more than a L3 engineer can - I hope they are able to resolve this issue for you.


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