If your Google Assistant is currently unable to play radio stations on your command, you’re not alone.
Google Assistant users are reporting experiencing issues with the platform’s radio integration feature.
The service, which allows users to ask Google Assistant to play radio stations across all compatible devices, has been down for a few days. Currently, requests to play radio stations on mobile, smart displays, speakers, and auto are returning an “isn’t available or can’t be played right now” response, as reported by 9to5Google.
Google says that the issue is global, and is affecting “most radio providers.” “The Assistant team is actively working on restoring service. We will provide an update here as soon as the issue is fixed,” wrote Google.
This outage has caused inconvenience to many Google Assistant users who rely on the radio integration feature. However, with Google actively working on restoring the service, users can expect the service to resume soon.
Google’s Assistant devices are handy little gadgets that can help you keep up with the latest news, set reminders and alarms for you, play music, control smart home accessories, and much more.
Lately, however, a bug has been affecting Google’s smart displays like the Nest Hub, preventing them from abiding by sleep timers for stopping music after a specific period, as reported by 9to5Google.
Normally, when you’d play music on your Google Assistant device, like a Nest Hub, Nest Mini or Google Home speaker, and you tell it to “stop playing music in one hour,” or “set a sleep timer for 12am,” the feature reliably stopped music, or even sleep sounds from playing after the set period of time.
Recently, the feature has failed to stop the sounds from playing when a sleep timer is set. Community member John McGeough shared their experience on Google’s community blog.
“Up until the last couple of days I could instruct my mini nest to “sleep in 20 minutes” and 20 minutes later is would stop. But now it although it acknowledges the command, it keeps on playing after the time period. I have tried saying “stop in 20 minutes” as well as specifying an actual time, but all to no avail. I have two speakers, and they both are doing the same.”
Google replied that it is aware of the issue and is currently investigating. It’s worth noting that it has been over a month since the issue was reported, and it still hasn’t been fixed.
Google also acknowledged the issue in a Twitter reply, saying that it removed the sleep time functionality intentionally because “one hour is insufficient” and the feature wasn’t working for timers longer than one hour. “We’re currently investigating ways to build a comparable solution and we appreciate your patience,” wrote Google.
In a different reply, the search giant wrote, “Our team is aware about the sleep timers not working on Google Home devices and is already working on a fix. In the meantime, we suggest you keep your Google connected to a stable network for any updates.”
Hey Paul, we've heard feedback that turning off sleep sounds after one hour is insufficient for some of our users, so we made the decision to remove the end time. We're currently investigating ways to build a comparable solution and we appreciate your patience.
Android is announcing new features that help users express their memories and connections.
One of the new features is artist-designed styles in the Google Photos collage editor from Australian husband-and-wife visual duo Dabsmyla and renowned watercolour artist Yao Cheng.
Google is also making it easier for emoji mashups. Google is calling it ‘Seasonal emoji mashups’ for Emoji Kitchen, available as stickers via Gboard.
There’s now a new ‘Reading mode’ for Android that creates more accessible screen reading experiences, with a focus on customizable contrast, text size, text-to-speech, page clutter and font types. The feature is useful for people who are blind, have low vision, or are dyslexic.
The YouTube Search widget can help users find videos directly from their device’s home screen. Plus, there’s tap to watch in Google TV, which gives users the ability to cast content directly from the Google TV app to compatible TVs with a single tap.
Wear OS Tiles makes it easy for users to get in touch with their favourite contacts. There’s also an Adidas running integration with Google Assistant, which lets users quickly jump into more than 30 types of workouts using their phone by saying, “Hey Google, start a run with Adidas Running,” which will start tracking a workout, noting the speed, distance and heart rate via the built-in sensor on smartwatches. Further, Wear OS’ Google Keep update shows a visual enhancement to your notes, like photos, co-authors, and background colours.
Further, over the next week, Google can use Assistant to jump into more than 30 types of exercises.
Google is adding new features to Assistant that aim to make the virtual aid significantly more kid-friendly than before.
For starters, Google is handing more control to parents. Until now, parental controls for Google Assistant interacting with kids were non-existent. Now, through the Google Home, Family Link and Google Assistant apps on Android and iOS, parents will be able to enable/disable certain Assistant features, modify media settings and set up downtime to limit device usage for their kids.
Parents will also be able to pick out which Google Assistant devices their kids can use with parental controls, alongside limiting what kids can do on an Assistant-enabled device, like restricting calls, and picking out what kinds of questions the Assistant can answer.
“After selecting your child’s account, you can choose the music and video providers they can access — such as YouTube Kids, YouTube and YouTube Music — and your kids will only be able to explore content from those pre-selected providers. You can also decide whether you want your children to listen to news and podcasts on their devices,” wrote Google in its blog post.
Parents can also access parental controls by saying “Hey Google, open Assistant settings,” and then navigate to parental controls.
Google is also introducing kid-friendly dictionaries and voices to Assistant.
Through Voice Match, whenever Google Assistant detects a kid’s voice asking a question, it will deliver its reply in a simplified and age-appropriate manner, making it easy for kids to understand the answer to their queries. “With Kids Dictionary, children’s interactions with Assistant can be both educational and fun, allowing them to fuel their interests and learn new things. When your child is voice matched and Assistant detects their voice asking about a definition, it will automatically respond using this experience in Kids Dictionary,” wrote Google in its blog post.
Further, Google is adding four new kid-friendly voices to Assistant that were designed alongside kids and parents, with a diverse range of accents to represent different communities and ways of speaking. To activate one of the new voices, kids can say “Hey Google, change your voice!” whereas parents can switch voices directly from the Assistant settings.
Google says these features are releasing “in the coming weeks.”
Tired of your Google smart display or speaker going on a rant when you want a one-word answer from it? You can now simply say “Stop” instead of saying “Hey, Google, stop” to make the smart display/speaker shut up.
📣 Helpful new Google Assistant feature alert! Want your smart display or speaker to stop talking? Just say “stop” — no #HeyGoogle needed.
The convenient quality-of-life feature was announced by Google via its Twitter account, though the company has been working on it for a while now. Back in October, the company was reported to be working on a feature that would let Android 12 beta users command Google Assistant without having to say “Hey, Google.”
Similarly, in September of last year, Google was rumoured to be working on “Quick Phrases” that allow users to skip saying “Hey, Google” for common tasks like, “What time is it?” or “Turn the lights on.”
It’s worth noting that the new feature works only if your Google Assistant is speaking, and to stop the assistant from playing a song or a video, you’ll have to go the old route and say, “Hey, Google, stop.”
From what it looks like, the new feature has only made its way to English-set Google smart displays and speakers, and users with a different language-enabled assistant would have to wait a little longer for the feature to arrive.
If you’ve tried to use a Google Nest display to set a timer anytime in the last few days, there’s a good chance you’ve encountered a problem.
I’ve stumbled across this issue a bunch recently, usually when cooking — I’ll ask for a timer and my Google Nest Hub will reply with something along the lines of “I don’t know how to help with that” while displaying a screen with “Other things you can try,” which includes buttons to set a timer (as seen in the above image).
Usually, the Google Nest Hub sets a timer fine when I ask a second time. Still, it’s incredibly annoying to have to deal with when I need a quick timer.
Several people over at Android Police, as well as Phil Nickinson from Digital Trends, have reported experiencing the same issue. A Google spokesperson confirmed to Android Police that the company is aware of the problem and is “working on an immediate fix.”
So, if you’re getting hit with the weird timer issues, at least there should be a fix sometime soon. However, I’ve found my Google Nest Hub doing other weird things with timers, too.
For example, the other day it seemed to register my timer request and even displayed the timer with the correct time as normal, but the timer never actually started counting down. After fiddling with it, I eventually gave up and made a timer on my phone instead. It’s not clear whether that’s part of the same issue, another issue entirely or just my Nest Hub doing something weird (which it tends to do).
Google is reported to be working on a Pixel Watch, according to a recent report from Insider. Making the rumours more believable were Pixel Watch’s several faces that leaked online last week.
Now, a new leak obtained by 9to5Google suggests that the watch will feature a next-gen Google Assistant while running Wear OS.
9to5Google’s report states that it found a mention of “PIXEL_EXPERIENCE_WATCH” in a recent Google app update, which indicates that Google’s rumoured smartwatch will carry the ‘Pixel’ tag. Google also adds similar ‘experience’ codes to its Pixel phones to indicate proprietary Android features.
We already know how much better Pixel devices are when it comes to assistant features. Pixel devices process its user’s speech directly on the device, instead of relying on Google’s servers, which makes the experience of using the assistant much smoother and faster.
9to5Google has discovered references to the assistant functionality in several Google apps connected to ‘Rohan,’ which is considered Google’s codename for the Pixel Watch.
The latest release of the Wear OS 3 emulator also gives us a look at what the Google Assistant may look like. Check out the image below:
The Blue, Red, Yellow and Green colours, or ‘Google Colours’ might indicate that the assistant is active and listening. While all next-gen assistant features won’t make their way to WearOS and the Pixel Watch, it is sure to make speech processing much quicker.
It’s unclear when we’ll see the upcoming Pixel Watch release, but it will likely appear in May alongside Google I/O or in October when Google reveals its next Pixel smartphone.
Google has released Assistant Driving mode updates very weirdly over the past few years. With that in mind, several users are reporting a new shortcut widget option that makes accessing the feature significantly easier.
To add the shortcut, open Google Assitant on your phone and say “Driving mode.” Then, navigate to the app drawer in the bottom right corner, and at the bottom of that window, you should see an option that says “Add Driving mode to Home screen.” This button allows you to add a small widget that’s roughly the same size as an app icon.
If you’re someone who drives a lot and uses Assistant Driving mode, this is likely a useful update for you. I managed to update my Pixel 4a (5G) with the feature, and you can even place the widget/shortcut into folders.
If you don’t want to use the new shortcut, you can also have Driving mode launch automatically when you start using Google Maps. All you need to do is connect to your car’s Bluetooth or when your phone detects that you’re driving for Driving mode to launch. You can, of course, still say, “Ok Google, start Driving mode.”
Unfortunately, Driving mode still hasn’t adopted Google’s ‘Material You’ colour guidelines yet and it’s unclear if it ever will.
Google’s fancy Pixel 6 and 6 Pro only started arriving in customers’ hands last week (mostly a lucky few who managed to place pre-orders so far). However, in that short time, users have reported several strange issues. There’s been a screen flicker issue, problems with the Always-On display and now some claim their Pixel 6/6 Pro randomly called contacts.
Several users on Reddit (via Android Police) and Google’s Pixel Phone Help site (via Android Authority) report that Pixel 6 and 6 Pro devices are placing calls to random contacts, sometimes in the middle of the night.
The main culprit so far seems to be Google Assistant. Some users report that the ghost calls appear in Assistant’s activity history page. Additionally, disabling Google Assistant on the lock screen has resolved the issue for some. What’s particularly concerning is that many users reported the issue happening when there wasn’t background chatter that could have mistakenly triggered Google Assistant (for example, people reported calls were placed while they slept).
The Pixel Phone Help user also reported that a call was triggered one time while they spoke Farsi, a language that Google Assistant doesn’t support.
Neither MobileSyrup staff reporter Dean Daley nor I have experienced this issue on our respective Pixel 6 Pro and Pixel 6 devices. Daley confirmed to me that he has Assistant enabled on the lock screen. I do as well, but I keep the ‘Hey Google’ hotword turned off on phones (including the Pixel 6) because I hate when my phone intercepts a command I intend for one of my smart speakers.
For those that encounter this problem, it may be worth temporarily disabling Assistant on the lock screen (or the ‘Hey Google’ hotword). You can do that by opening the Google app > tapping your profile in the top-right corner > Settings > Google Assistant > then tap ‘Hey Google & Voice Match’ to turn off the hotword on your phone or tap ‘Lock screen’ to disable Assistant on the lock screen. Other users have avoided the issue by deleting contacts that Assistant calls.
Hopefully Google pushes out a fix for this problem soon.
A useful new feature that lets users interact with the Assistant without saying the phrase “Hey Google” seems to be making its way to Google Assistant on devices running the Android 12 beta.
According to XDA Developers, the feature is available on Pixel devices running the Android 12 beta. When this new form of interaction rolls out to everyone, users will be able to answer or decline a phone call by saying “answer” or “decline,” and “stop” or “snooze” when an alarm or timer goes off.
It’s worth noting that you can already say “stop” to halt an alarm with Nest smart speakers.
After you enable these quick phrases, you’ll see a message below the phone call or alarm notifications to remind you that you don’t need to say “Hey Google.”
To check if you have this feature, head to Assistant Settings > Quick phrases, and from there, you can enable the settings. Quick Phrases might also include tasks like “What’s the weather?,” “Turn up volume,” “Skip this song,” “Create reminder,” and more, but these weren’t spotted in the most recent Google App version, ‘12.39.17.29.’
While I don’t yet have Quick Phrases on my Pixel 5 running the beta, I hope it arrives soon.
