I *finally* figured out how to remote trigger Google Home’s white noise routine
Issue details: “OK Google, play white noise” triggers a specific built-in Google routine I want on a speaker that’s usually next to my sleeping wife (we’ll call the speaker “master bedroom home”.) Unfortunately without being fairly loud, that Google is prone to not hear me and loudly announce that it’s here to help, play the sound of an elephant, and otherwise wake my wife up.
Updated in December: They fixed it
I’ve attempted to ask another speaker to “play white noise on master bedroom home.” this triggers a playlist, not the white noise routine. Same with setting up a recurring routine, it seems to play a playlist, not activate the white noise routine.
Just to clarify for those who don’t know – “play white noise” puts on a 12 hour repeating hiss track. “play white noise on <device>” puts on a playlist that includes 3 minutes of Pink Noise, a lullaby, rain, 45 seconds of an outro to some TV show, an Israeli band, and basically not what I want to attempt to sleep to.
I got Google support involved a while back and after we reached the point of them trying to reset my network and refusing to read the ticket and once again claiming it was my issue (your product, Google.) I dropped it.
Last night I decided to experiment some. Still no way to straight up trigger that I can find, however I discovered you can start white noise on a Google Home Hub, tap the Chromecast/Cast icon in the bottom left, it pulls up a status screen of what’s going on and shows that the white noise routine is playing, and then you can choose which speakers will be playing on.
At that point I was able to start it up on “Master Bedroom Home” and viola… white noise. Only wasted 6000 words in a support chat, 3 articles, etc.
The same probably can be done from the Home App, and I’m going to investigate a follow up command to see if I can start broadcasting from Speaker B to Master Bedroom Home in a routine.
