Google Home App

[electrikcheez]

Hello,

I have been using the Google Home app for a while, but there is a problem now in connecting my main account with the Google Home app.

I did a hard-reset on my Nest Wifi Router and Point, as well as, create a dummy gmail account.
I also did a factory reset on my pixel 4 phone. 

After all this, when my phone was reset, I downloaded the Home app and started to create a 'home' using my dummy gmail account.

Everything is working, so there must be something wrong with my main account linking with Google Home.

It's great that there's a temporary solution, but it saddens me to know that my decades-long main history and information is not linked through my Google Home environment.

Could you provide some solutions or fixes?

I've investment a lot in creating my Google Home automation set-up and would really appreciate your help.

[Marek]

I have exactly the same problem. Today I was told that there is no fix for this. I am loosing on my nest aware subscription that is on my main account. Clearly problem is with Google home account. Interesting is that it crashed my account but also my wife's and ny sons account. One thing in common is that all had access to the Google Home structure. This clearly means that the home structure is corrupted. I wonder how long it will take google specialists to work it out. At the moment they know less than some in Community. 

[CHLAA]

Marek has it made any of your Nest devices unusable? I found that my Nest Hub was working but I couldn't make any changes on it but after a factory reset it is now unusable. Currently in a Twitter thread trying to resolve. 

[CHLAA]

After requesting all my data through Google Takeout and leaving my Nest Hub Max off overnight I am now able to link it to my new home structure under a new account. I've had to retrain voice and face control and enable the new account access to my old account (including invites to shopping lists) but I am pretty much back to where I was before the issues just with extra accounts to maintain and secure.

I couldn't see any obvious corruption in the data from Takeout but was able to confirm that a single home exists and get all the ids for it that may be useful in the future for removal.

I would suggest to anyone having this problem with more than one account associated with a home to do the following:

• Use a working account with Google Home to remove all other associated accounts. 
• Delete all devices in the Home including any nest devices. 
• Delete the Home
• Factory reset all devices
• Setup a new home
• Create a new Google account for user who had corrupted data.
• Allow access to old account from new account
• Invite new user to new home

It's a lot of work for something that should be relatively straightforward to fix on the Google end but hopefully it is a acceptable workaround for affected users. 

[MikeL]

Latest response from the Google Nest Twitter:

 as previously discussed, our team is still working on the case and we don't have a specific time frame to offer. Thanks for bearing with us!

Unfortunately, more scripted customer service nonsense.

[RuzaW]

Hi there.

Delighted to have been pointed to this thread - despite lack of solution - but I have been having the same problem for about 9 months or more. I have a Pixel 4a 5G and was told by one person in support that this was a hardware issue. I was heartened as it seemed that it was a known issue. However, they transferred me to the Pixel team who told me it was a Home issue and transferred me back. Absolutely no solution and the different person from Home support could not help and was just trying to transfer me elsewhere as quickly as possible.

Luckily, Google Home app does, ironically, still seem to work on iPad!

Not sure if it is linked, but the other thing that has happened is that I can no longer display my own pictures on Nest Hub or Lenovo alarm clock. I guess because it is not linked to my main Google account any more via the Home App.

I also have the message in Google Home app that says: "'Oops, we're having trouble loading this screen. Please ensure that you are connected to the internet and" and that is as far as the message goes.

The other thing I find strange is that I do have notifications on my phone to say what is playing on my Home devices. So there is clearly a link there.

I hope we shall get some sort of simple fix via this thread that means we do not have to set up another account.

[ctrl]

I've had the same problem for more than a year now. 
After countless times speaking with support to no avail, I ended up having to set up my home with a different account and just unsubscribing from google 1 out of spite.

It's unbelievable how long it's taking them to fix it and the sheer incompetence in doing so. 

I can honestly say I regret choosing google over Alexa as my hardware setup because, although it looks nicer imho, the level of buggines, UI intuitiveness and overall custumer care is abysmal.

I'm chiming in here just to be another voice, but honestly, I gave up on the issue ever being fixed

[CHLAA]

Hi All,

I think I have found a solution if it is not just coincidental with a Home App update? 

While looking through the entities home-assistant.io could see on the Google Cast integration there was a media_player.display_group which was flagged as unavailable and didn't correspond to anything I could see within the home app. So I did a search for "phantom group google home" and came across a post in the r/googlehome subreddit on how to fix this involving installing an old version of Google Home:

• Uninstall Google Home App
• Install old version from:

https://www.apkmirror.com/apk/google-inc/google-home/google-home-1-19-26-release/google-home-1-19-26...

Not sure if you need to enable developer options to allow installing from untrusted sources (I probably already have this set up) .

• Login to Google Home app with old account
• Delete any devices it finds that are not a physical device you are aware of e.g., speaker groups (I had 3 of these). 
• Update Google Home app to latest version (Play Store) 
• Login with old account - I could see my old home and a pending invitation to my newly created one so I selected the invitation and was able to use Google Home as successfully. Hooray! 

At this point I decided to completely remove the old home structure where I had encountered the problem starting by deleting any rooms and removing other users (if any) and then deleting the whole home.

Do let me know if this solves it for anyone else. 

[MikeL]

Holy crap it worked! @CHLAA you are a genius!!! I saw a bunch of duplicate speaker groups under the old app which I deleted. When I updated to the latest version, I could access my old home again on my primary account. Seriously @CHLAA , you are the best! If there is anyway I could ever repay you, please let me know.

As for Google, you should be ashamed of yourselves. It took a dedicated user a few days to fix a major problem that your engineers couldn't (or wouldn't) fix for years.

[electrikcheez]

@CHLAA wow, i don't know the engineering behind this, but it seems to be working!! i installed the old version of Google Home, and I was able to load up my 'main' account. There I noticed an old speaker group from my previous set-up at an old address. I deleted the old speaker group, updated Google Home to the most recent version, and I was able to log-in through my 'main' gmail account. I'm slowly rebuilding my entire Google Home automation-setup, but so far, everything is working fine! You are the best! @GarrettDS Google needs to send @CHLAA a truck-full of products & beer!

[GarrettDS]

Hey folks,
It looks like we have come to a solution so I'm going to be locking this thread. Huge thanks to CHLAA. I have added this thread to the list attached to this bug internally. If you have any other concerns or questions, please feel free to create a new thread.

Have a great day.
Garrett DS
 

[Marek]

O M G!!! 

Its alive! Its alive! My account is fixed. Whoever came up with this solution should get fat bonus from Google! It doesn't change the fact that Google should be able to fix it first hand.

Thank you very much. I can only hope that Google won't change anything that this solution doesn't work in the future.

Thanks to all involved. 

Marek 

[CHLAA]

I'm so glad my fix is working for everyone so far. The fix will need to applied to every account that was affected and I'm unsure if the phantom speaker groups will start to proliferate and cause issues again if they are not removed for everyone? 

[RuzaW]

Many thanks, @CHLAA amazing to have the Home App working again after so long. Not sure if it also has any bearing on things, but in the old version I also deleted a second household that was on there as we had to move out of our house for a couple of months last year and so were staying with someone and I created a second home. Not sure if that helped, but the App does now work after about a year!

My only issue now is that I still don't seem to be able to get my photo albums back on my Nest Hub or Lenovo clock. They stopped displaying my pics when the app stopped working. For some reason, when I go into settings in the home app on those devices nothing shows up. At the bottom of the screen (in the app) when I click on those devices it offers me a button for 'Request invite to home'. Does that mean that my account is no longer the linked/main account for that device?

Any thoughts on this welcome to finally get full control back.

[CHLAA]

@RuzaW if you've got control of your old account it probably will not be part any home you set up. It will still see hubs and the Lenovo clock as any guest users can use certain features.

I would factory reset those devices (hold volume up+down for 10s) and set them back up in the home associated with your original account. At that point you should be able to select your Google Photos. 

[RuzaW]

Fantastic. Many thanks for your help @CHLAA . You really should be working for Google