While you weren’t looking Google fixed white noise
One of my biggest complaints with Google Home / Assistant for the longest time was that asking it to play white noise was a random and unpredictable thing. My options for sleeping in my neighborhood are a fan or a white noise generator, and my Google Home fit the bill perfectly for a nighttime white noise generator.
What was happening was if you asked Assistant to “play white noise on device,” you were getting a playlist from YouTube Music which cycled through various short noise tracks and then fractured off into things entirely not conducive to sleep. If I asked my bedside Google Assistant to play white noise, about one in 12 times it would mishear, with my favorite of all time while my was was asleep google saying “this is what an elephant sounds like <blaaaart>” Really not great to wake sleeping wife up.
What I had been doing as a workaround was starting white noise on a Google Hub (now called Nest Hub,) and then choosing what speakers it played on, but after a year of feedback requesting they fix it, it appears it’s now fixed and you can put a reliable white noise request in a routine or text.
From my phone I can trigger assistant, hit the keyboard option, and type “play white noise on Master Bedroom Home” and bam, it plays. No unexpected pachyderm blasts, no “Your Woman,” from White Town, etc.
Of course, with how Google assistant works and doesn’t, your experience may vary.
