Sleep Timer doesn't work with Google Assistant


Userlevel 2
I just set up Google Assistant, and I'm largely happy with it, except that sleep timers don't work.

When I have spotify playing, if I say "Sleep Timer for 10 minutes", Google Assistant responds "Sleep timers can only be set when media is playing".

Is there any way to get this to work?

38 replies

Having the same issue on my new and freshly updated Sonos Move. Sad to see this critical voice feature still not working after a year of posts about it :(

Userlevel 2

+1

I luckily received a One G2 and One SL for Christmas to use in my bedroom.  Now I find that the Sleep timer doesn’t work on Google Assistant.  I guess these will now be returned.  Not sure why Sonos doesn’t get this fixed.

Userlevel 2

I luckily received a One G2 and One SL for Christmas to use in my bedroom.  Now I find that the Sleep timer doesn’t work on Google Assistant.  I guess these will now be returned.  Not sure why Sonos doesn’t get this fixed.

 

Apparently, Sonos doesn’t care about what users post on this community forum. By the way, one possible solution is to use an app called Olisto. In is not easy to set up, but you can create workflows that does exactly what a sleep timer does.

 

 

Userlevel 1
Badge +3

I cannot believe a 3 year old thread has no reply from Sonos on such a critical failure.

 

I have 3 Sonos devices, and every few months I switch everything from Alexa to Google and vice versa.

 

Nothing works perfectly on this expensive system, and Sonos doesnt seem to care or even acknowledge anything.

 

I used to think Sonos was great, now I actively discourage anyone to buy it, its not production ready imo, far too many bugs that dont get fixed.

I cannot believe a 3 year old thread has no reply from Sonos on such a critical failure.

 

I have 3 Sonos devices, and every few months I switch everything from Alexa to Google and vice versa.

 

Nothing works perfectly on this expensive system, and Sonos doesnt seem to care or even acknowledge anything.

 

I used to think Sonos was great, now I actively discourage anyone to buy it, its not production ready imo, far too many bugs that dont get fixed.

What bugs? Do you perhaps mean some user-requested features? Not everything is doable or worth the development costs, or maybe some ‘partners’ may not want to play ball.

There is certainly no doubt that both Amazon and Google reserve certain features for their own hardware. An ‘enabled’ device such as a Sonos speaker does not mean full feature compatibility. 

Userlevel 1
Badge +3

I cannot believe a 3 year old thread has no reply from Sonos on such a critical failure.

 

I have 3 Sonos devices, and every few months I switch everything from Alexa to Google and vice versa.

 

Nothing works perfectly on this expensive system, and Sonos doesnt seem to care or even acknowledge anything.

 

I used to think Sonos was great, now I actively discourage anyone to buy it, its not production ready imo, far too many bugs that dont get fixed.

What bugs? Do you perhaps mean some user-requested features? Not everything is doable or worth the development costs, or maybe some ‘partners’ may not want to play ball.

 

How about the bug this thread is about?  Setting a sleep timer to have the music turn off after X minutes, and then instead getting an alarm at that time, and the music still keeps playing anyway?

How about setting an alarm via GA, and Sonos tells you the alarm is set for 2 hours earlier, even if that time has actually already passed (as I raised in another thread)?

Neither of those are classed as user requested features, they are features that do not work right and should be fixed for a retail product.  Customers are not beta testers, but even if they were, at least beta gets fixed with other products.

If GA doesn’t play nicely with Sonos, and Sonos don’t want to fix it, the they should remove GA and stop advertising it as a Sonos speaker feature. 

Userlevel 2

The fact that there are no reactions from Sonos makes me very sad. My home is full of Sonos devices and this problem has me totally in it’s grip. I’ve got a Premium YouTube account and am unable to play YouTube music on Sonos using Alexe. So I switched to Google just to find out sleeptimers don’t work no matter what. Woke me up after an hour with alarm sounds and music still playing, thank you. The YouTube premium account prevents these irritating adds but is pretty expensive with 15,99 Euros/month. There’s a cheaper account but that only plays music. If only YouTube would support music on Amazon I would switch back to Alexa in wink. I could of course take an Amazon Music account for 9,99 Euros/month but that would make the total 25,99 Euro/month for both accounts. And I guess they just don’t care. Money is flowing in nontheless. Sonos is stuck in the middle of all this, I don’t blame them. But It would be nice to get an explanation from them. So, come on Sonos, help your valued customers.

Still having the same problem

I’m not sure this was ever a feature available on Sonos, which are Google ‘enabled’ Assistant devices, rather than having the full features of a full blown Google device - A similar thing applies to the situation with Alexa Assistant too - There has to be a ‘will’ to provide these features by both manufacturers for these things to be added to a 3rd party device and, just as an example, if Google say ‘No’, then it may never happen.  Its clearly for Google to let their customers know what features are/are not available from their portfolio on 3rd party devices like Sonos speakers.

Also even if such features were available, Google likely have the right to withdraw them at any point from such products. So my thoughts are, as it’s a Google feature being requested here, it’s probably a better idea to perhaps canvass Google for the feature required.

Userlevel 1
Badge +3

I’m not sure this was ever a feature available on Sonos, which are Google ‘enabled’ Assistant devices, rather than having the full features of a full blown Google device - A similar thing applies to the situation with Alexa Assistant too - There has to be a ‘will’ to provide these features by both manufacturers for these things to be added to a 3rd party device and, just as an example, if Google say ‘No’, then it may never happen.  Its clearly for Google to let their customers know what features are/are not available from their portfolio on 3rd party devices like Sonos speakers.

Also even if such features were available, Google likely have the right to withdraw them at any point from such products. So my thoughts are, as it’s a Google feature being requested here, it’s probably a better idea to perhaps canvass Google for the feature required.

It’s fairly pointless discussing further here, that seems clear; since Sonos don’t pay attention to these threads, and your input through this thread (and many others) has been to try and point the blame anywhere but Sonos.

 

Regardless, we paid for a Sonos product, and the support should be provided by Sonos on their product, not by a 3rd party that has a perfectly functioning product on their own hardware and many others.  

Quite clearly, GA as a product is not broken in the same way, since the features discussed here (for example alarms and timers) work fine on every Google product, and every other hardware platform except for Sonos.

 

So the issue is the implementation of the GA software within the Sonos code, and Sonos should be fixing this.  It is rather obvious to me that since everyone is having an issue related to timers and alarms, that it is probably something as simple as the timezone or daylight saving not being taken into equation when GA sets the timer against the Sonos clock.

Suggesting we should be raising this with Google is a blatant palm off and a finger up at Sonos customers tbh but then again so is this absolute failure to fix such a basic problem for years now, by Sonos.

 

FYI @Paul Sinnema , I’ve gone back and forth many times, and just my 0.02$, but Alexa is where I stuck finally.  GA is just totally buggy and unusable, not to mention slow.  You cannot also add Sonos Assistant with GA, but you can with Alexa.  It’s quite clear Google and Sonos have no intention to work well together, probably because of the recent back and forth suing between the two companies.

 

 

@rbrown,

I won’t apologise for expressing my own view of things here, even if it is, or maybe seen, as biased and in favour of Sonos, but ‘it takes two to tango’ and I personally suspect that because Google lost the initial Court case to Sonos and were found to have taken/used Sonos patents in their own ‘Nest’ products, that they may not be assisting to add/fix these mentioned issues, but instead have resorted to providing ‘maintenance mode’, but of course we can only guess at such things and only time will tell.

So far however the length of time taken in regards to this issue leads me to believe it’s just not going to happen because Google have probably ‘thrown out their baby with the bath water’. Also like you I too have switched to Alexa and SVC (working happily on my Sonos devices, side-by-side) and have given away, all except one, of my Nest speakers/displays to my Children/Grand-Children, but even they are not using them much and far prefer Alexa devices in their smart-home.

Personally I’m happy to continue to side with Sonos in this regard, as I think the ‘Goliath’ status of Google would have otherwise got this sorted by now, despite the litigation and any differences the two companies may have.

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