My morning Google (a series of fails)
I’ll note that at the moment this is all happening on my Galaxy S21 Ultra, and there was a carrier update yesterday, but I’m pretty sure this is on the Google Side.
Updated with potential fix at the end
Started my commute this morning and noticed it was not hearing “ok google” for anything – oh well, used the phone, Google assistant worked in driving mode when touched, and I was able to play some music. Dropped the kiddo off at work and attempted to get Hello Google working again, nothing. Voice model is there, it’s happy, nada.
Rebooted the phone, still no voice activated Google. Press the button and asked for driving mode and am now told it’s unable to reach google. Ask to tell me the news and instead of playing the news I’m getting web pages of news outlets. I decide to give up.
A little later I’m in standstill traffic singing “hello google, can you hear me, I’d like news now, no cars near me…” and give up and try again with the touch and now asking it to tell me the news starts the player. Still no “ok google” availability.
Get into the office where I’ve got a Mini on the wall, OK Google it, worked fine.
Only thing that has happened in the past day that is related is I “OK Googled” at home and was asked where I expected it to be answered – the phone, or the Google Home that was nearby. There are no options for adjusting OK Google sensitivity on a phone so not a lot I can do there. Upon second reboot getting that it can’t reach Google when attempting to do voice to text.
Fun morning, no help from googling as to why it doesn’t work.
On a side note, also discovered last night my watch face was changed on the Fitbit. Like been 24 hours of odd.
Update:
So one of the recent changes I had was using my phone as a security key.
The “OK Google” functionality did not die immediately after that, however several hours later it did. I retraced my steps last night and disabled that, rebooted the phone for about the fourth time, and OK Google came back.
As an experiment today I re-enabled the Security Key option. It’s working at the moment however it was several hours last time before it failed.
