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Home app media tab has problems selecting devices.

barrymilliken
Community Member

Once music is playing one or more speakers, the media tab shows where its playing and give you the option to add to other speakers or remove from some.  The list of "playing on" locations includes unpaired speakers, speaker pairs, wifi points, groups and smart TVs.  Then the problems begin:  I tested using NPR radio streaming:

1. If the stream is on my smart TV, the media tab doesn't show any other devices.

2. If the stream is not on the TV, all available devices are shown including the TV.  But if I try to add the stream to the TV the app hangs.

3. If you select to add a group, the app shows instead that the components of the group are streaming. AND it stops streaming on all other devices not in the group. 

4. If you select to add a speaker, it adds it and doesn't stop streaming to any other device. (good)

I suggest that adding should never include stopping other devices. It's easy to turn them off separately.  Also if all the devices in a group are streaming the group should also show as streaming.

38 REPLIES 38

GarrettDS
Community Specialist
Community Specialist

Hey there,
I appreciate you taking your time to let us know about a feature that you would like to see or changes that we can look into making in the future. Feedback like this helps us constantly improve our products and services by knowing what we are doing right and what we can work on. 

Please let me know if you have any other questions. 

Best regards,
Garrett DS

Sounds like a boilerplate reply to me.  Did you actually  look to see that anyone else had problems like these or try yourself?

I also have similar but different  issues referring to groups when casting from YouTube Music.  Where do I go to report these?

Hey there, 

This is the only instance that I've heard of this issue before so I have nothing else to go off of besides what you tell me. What other issues do you have regarding YouTube Music and I can possibly help or point you in the right direction. 


Look forward to hearing from you. 

Best regards, 

Garrett DS

Let me describe my setup:

Smart TV in Den

Living Room group in the living room which is:

- paired nest speakers and a nest wifi point

Bedroom group in the bedroom which is:

- paired nest speakers and a next wifi point.

Also an Everwhere group which has all devices except the TV.

Issue with Youtube:

1. Cast menus shows all groups and devices except wifi points(?)

2. If I cast to Living Room group or Everywhere the speakers all ping but nothing happens. If I go to home app media tab it shows the devices "playng" but with the "play arrow button greyed out and unselectable.  Only the bedroom group works.  

3. My wife and I are the only members of the nest "household" but i'm the holder of the Youtube premium account.  When youtube is casting, I can go to the home app to pause, stop or add devices.  But she can also pause, stop but NOT add new devices.

 

I'm guessing at this point that I have a corrupted group (living room) but we have no problems casting to the group using voice commands,  maybe I should deleted the group and recreate it?  I think I already tried that a while ago.

 

I deleted the Living Room Group and recreated.  Same problem.

When I cast from Youtube to bedroom group it works.

If I try to cast from Youtube to living room group it seems to work but no sound come out.  If I click on cast icon It says "Living Room... No media selected."

I notice on the home app main page where all all devices are listed by room.

Then a list of Groups.  Even when no music is playing anywhere all devid=ces and group have a "play music" blue link beneath EXCEPT my Living room group.  There is definitely something wrong with that group.  I made new group "newgroup" with the same devices as "Living Room" group.  Same problems.  So it seems to relate to the specific devices: a pair of speakers and a wifi point.

Hey there, 

Thanks for giving me the details of your setup, that definitely helps and I also appreciate you trying your own troubleshooting steps like trying to recreate the group as well. 

Have you tried doing a factory reset on the devices that are having issues? You can try that, or, unlink and relink those devices as well. 

I look forward to hearing from you. 


Best regards, 

Garrett DS

I have done both relinks and then factory resets a month ago to solve other problems.

I will try again tomorrow.

Hey there,
Just wanted to hop in here to see if we still needed help on this. Please let us know if you have any other questions or concerns as I will be locking this in 24 hours.

Have a great day.
Garrett DS
 

barrymilliken
Community Member

I am away on vacation. I will try some factory resets when i get bavk.

Hey there,
Just wanted to hop in here to see if we still needed help on this. Please let us know if you have any other questions or concerns as I will be locking this in 24 hours.

Have a great day.
Garrett DS
 

Got back from trip.  All the same problems but worse.  YouTube music can cast only to the TV. It doesn't see amy speakers.

Time for a factory reset.

Hey there, 

Go ahead and do the factory reset, and let's see where that puts you. 

Please keep me updated. 


Best regards, 

Garrett DS

Peterrrr
Community Member

About 3 weeks ago, I also started having problems with my Groups and Speaker Pairs. (They worked previously for at least the last six months)  When trying to cast any music or radio  to additional speakers or pairs from the media tab, or through the assistant there would be a problem.  So three weeks of factory resets, pairing, grouping, resetting routers and modems, disconnecting APs, deleting and installing the GH app.  etc...... I discovered the problem lies in the fact that the Nest Audio devices have to be not only on the same WiFi but also on the same channel if they are paired/grouped.   So after pairing/grouping , if whole home WiFi optimization, moved a device to a different channel, that device (still connected to WiFi)would still play music on its own, or respond to the assistant, but it no longer participated in the pair/group it belonged to.  The GH app, would show the device sometimes under other linked devices, the settings COG could disappear, or one of the pair would be in the room it belonged to  and the other in linked devices, or the pair name disappeared  with the individual names either both in the room they resided or only one in the room.  Hope this resolves your problem.  

So how do i change channels of individual devices?  And why doesn't google know about this?

Normally the channel is obtained by a device from your router.  When you introduce an automated process that both expands your WiFi coverage (additional access points) and determines the best channels to use , the channels are determined by monitoring factors such as signal strength, interference and load.  In my case, I had no direct control of the device, what access point it would connect to, thus what channels were used within my environment.  For now, I removed that automated process, and went back to just using my router.   (Yes I have lost coverage)

  Now I know why my problem occurs, within the GH app, but who needs to make a change to stop it, is open.  Does Google own it, or is it the provider of the Access Points and Optimization?    Google is more than likely aware of this, but as any provider they more than likely have their own process for determining the priority for a change.  

barrymilliken
Community Member

Since you haven't fixed the problem, I'm not 100 % sure that your diagnosis is correct.

In my case I have a nest router and 2 wifi points.

For 5 Ghz they are all on channel 149(155).

For 2.4 Ghz the router is on 11 but the points are on 1.  I saw another post where Google say that you cannot change the channels yet.

What can I say, Google Support confirmed my diagnosis.

I can not fix the problem, but I can work around it by keeping the devices with the problem on the same channel.  It is true you cannot change the channels because you do not have complete control of the device. You can re-create the problem, by creating a group/pair then forcing one of the nest audio devices in the group to connect to a different access point, or band.  The cast to the group would then not include the forced device, but that device will still function.   A power up of the affected device may have it connect to the same channel that the other devices are using, thus the functionality would come back.  

I was not using a Nest Router or their Access Points, so maybe your problem is not the same as mine.  As stated earlier my problem is created when the optimization, or even the loss of a signal to the devices caused that device to join the network on a different channel. 

barrymilliken
Community Member

So I did a factory reset off all devices in the living room, recreated the speaker pair and group.

STILL THE SAME PROBLEMS.

RECAP:

Nest router and smart TV in Den.

Nest speaker pair and nest point in Bedroom (which is also a group since you cannot cast to rooms only to groups)

Nest Speaker pair and nest point in Living Room (which is also a group)

Not the config is identical in bedroom and Living room but only bedroom works correctly.

Here are the problems after all setup which went smoothly:

In Home App main page ALL devices/pairs and groups (except of course the router) say "Play Music" below the icon EXCEPT FOR THE LIVING ROOM GROUP???

In YouTube Music app when I try to cast the options are ONLY the Liiving room point and the TV???

Maybe I should reset the bedroom devices?

 

SO I tried one more thing: I created an ALL group with both speaker pairs and both points.  THAT WORKS for casting from YouTube music.  I deleted the bad "living" group.  Now YourTube lists Both groups (Bedroom and ALL) both speaker pairs but only the living room point(?)  So this is some improvement.

I'm wondering if I factory rest the whole network that would clean up the corruption???

I tried just deletin the 2 edroom "devices" from ALL. Tried casting from Youtube. Speakers blink, but no musing. Hit the cast icon: "No media selected".

Really weird.

Hey there, 

Thanks for the patience on this. We have been trying to investigate this on our end to see anything further we could do. I just wanted to check in to see if this is still causing an issue as well. Also were you able to try the factory reset? 

 

I look forward to hearing from you. 


Best regards, 

Garrett DS

barrymilliken
Community Member

There has been no change.  I have notice more oddities:

1. If try to cast a music video from YouTube music app it asks me to  cast to one of only 2 devices: my smart TV AND my wifi point in the living room.  This tells me that this wifi point is somehow not configured correctly and may be the cause of my other problems with groups that include that device.  I have no problems with group that do not include that device.  I did a factory reset to this device a week ago, so that did not fix it.

2. BTW in YouTube Music APP when I select a music video there is a toggle on top : Music or Video.  If I opt for music why cannot I cast to any speaker?  Why not to the TV AND other speakers?

Hey there,
Just wanted to see if you still needed help. Please let us know if you have any other questions or concerns.

Best regards,
Garrett DS

Yes I do need help. very little has changed and no one has offered any help.

More oddities:

When I open the home app one of my stereo pairs is missing the "play Music" link below it. AND one of the speakers in the pair is listed separately below all rooms under "other cast devices".  After a few minutes this all corrects itself.

If I select a music video in YouTube Music, I click on "song" rather than "video "on the top. Then I try to cast it I have only two devices in the cast list: My TV and one of my wifi points??? No other speakers show up!!  So I cast to the wifi point and go over to the home app media tab to add other devices.

I'm a very techy guy (software developer) and have studied and experimented with all this for many hours and months.  I've done many reboots and factory resets.  Some things change as hidden updates occur but the basic issues still remain.  Either I have a defective device somewhere and/or you have some very elusive bugs.

I've posted elsewhere regarding my many problems using the home app.  The two main issues are:

1. Routines that used to work and then don't. The routine command is something like " Play WQXR radio on <speaker group>".  I get the ridiculous message "Some of your video devices are offline".   Yet I can give the same voice command and it works.  No video devices are involved and my only video device (a smart TV) is online.

2. Inability to cast to all audio devices from YouTube music.  Instead I get a truncated list even though all devices are online and not in use according to the home app.

One clue I've just noticed may be important:  If I go to the Home app WIFI page, then click "devices", the device names are not consistent with those that have been defined on the devices themselves.

Initially the home app uses the device name from the device.  But if you change the name of your phone it doesn't propagate to the home app.  Instead, the home app keeps the old name but allows you to edit that name in the Network/devices tab by clicking on the device name in the list.  That opens a device page with an EDITABLE name at the top.  You can change the name, but that doesn't propagate back to the device settings on the device like a phone.  I just used this method to edit the name of individual speakers hidden inside a speaker pair.  I removed spaces from the names.  Now my routine works again!!!!  I also removed all spaces from all other device names.  Now YouTube casting works again.  We'll see how long it lasts.

 

Peterrrr
Community Member

Hey there I am back.  So this looks like the cause of our problems.  Too bad Google doesn't have the common courtesy to be truthful to us.  https://www.googlenestcommunity.com/t5/Blog/Upcoming-Speaker-Group-changes/ba-p/77811

barrymilliken
Community Member

The saga continues.  The HOME app routines have stopped working.  When I try to run a routine the voice says "It looks like your video devices are offline..."  But everything is online.  My routines play radio not video.  And If I use voice commands (the same words that are in the routines), everything works.

barrymilliken
Community Member

BREAKTHROUGH!!!  After much testing, factory resetting, wifi rebooting, phone rebooting, I have a breakthrough.

The solution came to me a few weeks ago but I didn't follow up because I didn't think Google would be so careless.  But I starting programming computers in 1966 so I've seen a lot f bugs in my life.  The solution is to not use two word names for your devices or groups.  I had a group called "Living Room" which is now "LivingRoom".

That group contains 2 devices "LRWIFI" (not "LR wifipoint") and "LRstereopair" (not "LR stereo").  Like many people I want to play all devices in a room at once, but google doesn't let me refer to the nest rooms on commands (dumb) so I have to make groups that include all speakers in the room.  Now most problems are solved.

I never want to cast to individual speaker devices so I would prefer an option to omit grouped devices from the list of availalble casting devices in the home app and in Youtube music.

Meanwhile Youtube music still has issues.  If I try yo cast music I get the complete list of devices for selection. If I try to cast a video, the list is reduced to my TV plus my 2 wifi points????  once I have cast a video and later try to cast music, the list remains stuck still not showing speakers or groups.  To get them all back I need to reboot my phone.

Hey there, 

I'm glad to see that you had a breakthrough, but I just wanted to hop in here to see if you had any other questions or were still needing additional help on this. 

I look forward to hearing from you. 


Best regards, 

Garrett DS

My breakthrough address a subsequent issue.  The orignal problem persists.

Hey there, 

It looks like another user replied that the issue is stemming from the article that was posted. I'm happy to take the feedback and pass it forward though.

 

Please let me know if you have any other questions. 

Best regards, 
Garrett DS

Hey there,
Just wanted to see if you still needed help. Please let us know if you have any other questions or concerns.

Best regards,
Garrett DS

Hey there,
Just checking in to make sure that you saw our response. Please let us know if you have any other questions or concerns as I will be locking this in 24 hours.

Have a great day.
Garrett DS
 

barrymilliken
Community Member

I give up.

Hey there, 

Sorry that this has become such a hassle. I'm definitely trying to get this figured out with you. Did you review the article that was posted above? I'm also happy to continue trying to troubleshoot with you if you'd like? 

Please let me know if you have any other questions. 

Best regards, 
Garrett DS

Hey there,
Just checking in to make sure that you saw our response. Please let us know if you have any other questions or concerns as I will be locking this in 24 hours.

Have a great day.
Garrett DS
 

Hey folks,
It looks like we haven't heard back from the OP so I'm going to go ahead and lock the thread. If you have any further questions or concerns, feel free to create a new thread.

Have a great day,
Garrett DS