Contributor I

Problems with Google Assistant on Sonos One

Forum|Forum|7 years ago
July 28, 2019
25 replies
5501 views

Hello,

I've owned a pair of Sonos One for about 2-3 months now and they are amazing. Especially since Google Assistant launched for Sonos speaker in the Netherlands last month. The first few weeks were very good and I had little complaints. But since 1-2 weeks Google Assistant stop responding to even the most basic questions. Only when I stand next to the speaker that has the voice enabled and I talk really slow she sometimes understands what I mean.

We have our Google Assistant in English, since my girlfriend is Swedish. Even tho there is bilingual support in Google Assistant there is no way to name rooms/devices in Dutch and Swedish. So we choose the middle ground and set everything in our house in English.

I've already tried the following:

Setting it too Dutch. It's now in dutch and it's far from perfect. But she does seem to respond a bit better now. But this is not a solution.
Rebuild my entire home in the Google Home App
Factory Reset both my Sonos One Speakers

I'm getting a bit desperate in finding a solution, since we spend the money on these speakers to use it with voice function and control of our house.

Does anyone have a solution for this? Or even the same experience that there was a sudden change in functionality of the Google Assistant on Sonos One or other products? Especially if there are any Dutch people experiencing the same problem.

Thanks in Advance,
Kevin

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P

Preetorian

Lyricist I

The Google assistant lives in the cloud, not on the individual devices. The devices just provide a method by which you voice gets transmitted to the cloud processes.

Thanks! You're right indeed. :)

Regardless, I am turning off the mic on my One's and putting back my Google Home Mini.

Hopefully, Sonos will do better in the (near) future.

S

SonosFanNL

Lyricist II

The Google assistant lives in the cloud, not on the individual devices. The devices just provide a method by which you voice gets transmitted to the cloud processes.

Hi Airgetlam,

You're completely right with that, but still the support in the different devices is different. The Sonos One reacts as it a Google Assistant service from a smartphone but not as a Smartspeaker. That's why this is so strange. Why is there a difference? What is causing this? I also have a LG Smartspeaker which is reacting exactly the same as the Google Home mini.

Another example. Ask Google on the Sonos One 'what is the latest news'. Have of the times It does not answer and also in the activities there is no logging. There is no other smartspeaker on the same floor even. And the second is that you can't stop the broadcast by saying 'Hey Google, stop', it just stops for a moment and then resumes.
On the LG and Google Home mini this works everytime.😥

J

JD Moons

Lyricist III

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 only show commands.

The long history list seems to confuse Sonos. So press the “thrash can” button next to the 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 google recording 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 with other devices like Google’s own Home devices.

G

Gchamp

Lyricist I

Have there been ANY responses from Sonos about this ??

Its very frustrating. I have a google home mini, but bought two Sonos Ones to replace this. It looks as though I’m going to have to place the google mini in the room with them. What a waste of money!

Sonos.. Could you please respond to this?

J

JD Moons

Lyricist III

It has again been unresponsive to volume commands for the last week. You can ask the Sonos, questions, like “Who is Donald Trump” and it never misses. But a simple Volume Up or Down command is a hit and miss experience.

Strange: since this morning it understands volume commands again. Very frustrating.

F

floppy37

Lyricist I

I’m having the same issues in Germany, but only with my One Gen 2. Up until recently it worked. The Beam works perfectly. The comments also don’t directly appear in the My Activity log, while the one from the Beam are directly there. They show up later as Unknown voice command.

E

elesage85

Lyricist I

Thanks very much JD Moons. Your fix solved my problem. I cleared the historical commands into my activity and now the device works properly.

I suspect this happens when you set up multiple languages.

I bought the Sonos One only a few weeks ago. Initially I set it up in English and it worked fine. Then I added a second language in the google assistant app (french) and it seemed to work only well in French and not so well anymore in english. I removed the french language and it was not working very well anymore since then. I have reset the sonos and the google asssitant app but nothing was working. Now I have cleared the acitvity and works again like a charm! Let’s see in a few days how it is going to evolve! So far i haven’t unchecked the history recording of the commands.

P

plockhart123

Lyricist I

Exact same experience as OP. Clearing the activity history hasn’t solved it for me unfortunately. So frustrating

Ken_Griffiths

Exact same experience as OP. Clearing the activity history hasn’t solved it for me unfortunately. So frustrating

It’s working okay here for me in the U.K. Perhaps try clearing the Sonos Skill in the GH/GA App and when the speaker rooms are cleared from your Google Home, add the GA to your Sonos speaker(s) again via the Sonos App “Settings/Services/Voice” menu option.

Three things to also double-check are that you have the following…

Just one language installed in the GA location settings.
That you have just one Google Home on the Account
That the chosen ‘paid subscription’ only Music Service, set as your default service in the GA/GH App is also installed as a service within the Sonos App using the same login credentials.

Hope that helps to get you up and running with GA on Sonos.👍

C

csmith

Lyricist II

Same issue here on a new Sonos Move (diagnosis ID: 1477074619)

Google Assistant responds to a handful of basic commands (what time is it, what’s the weather) but never responds for anything more complicated (skip this song, what’s this week’s forecast, what’s my first meeting). 90% of the time, these queries have no response at all or I get “Sorry, something went wrong”.

My Google Home Mini with the same account on the same WiFi has none of these issues.

Here’s what I’ve tried (none of which have worked)

Factory reset of Move
Unlink then relink Assistant in iOS Sonos, Home and Assistant apps
Delete and re-install Assistant and Sonos apps
Connecting to a different Google account
Changing language from UK English to US English

This issue has been happening for months. I bought the Move specifically for its Assistant integration so this is extremely disappointing and Ive wasted hours trying to resolve the issue.

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