Nest Doorbell (battery) 'Ring Indoor Chime' greyed out

[OVH]

I've had my doorbell for well over a year and it worked without trouble.  When someone rang, my indoor device would chime and say that someone was "at the front door doorbell".  I recently got a new router and changed my SSID, so ran a factory reset on the doorbell and reconnected it.  The doorbell works the same, but without the chime.

When I go to the settings in Google Home, the option for 'Ring indoor chime' is greyed out.

I've searched online for a solution and many people were told that that's because the device isn't wired.  That's not true.  Mine worked without wires until yesterday.  It's the Electronic Chime that will only work if the doorbell is wired.  I'm asking about the indoor chime that rings on our devices (e.g. the hub and mini).

I tried reseting the doorbell and that didn't fix it.

What should I try now?  A factory reset?

[MplsCustomer]

@OVH 

The "Ring indoor chime" option only controls whether an indoor doorbell chime (mechanical or electronic) rings or not, and is automatically disabled and grayed out whenever the Google Nest doorbell is NOT wired to an indoor doorbell chime. It has nothing to do with "Visitor announcements" on Nest Hubs or Nest Minis; that SHOULD be controlled by whether the "Visitor announcements" option is enabled for the doorbell (https://support.google.com/googlenest/answer/7672451).

[OVH]

That's actually not true, but has unfortunately been the response that others with the same issue have received. 

There are two options available. One is ring electronic chime. That's if you have an indoor bell (e.g. from an old style doorbell) that you want the Nest Doorbell  to control. That's the one that requires a wired installation. Makes sense because it'll draw power to operate it. 

There's another option, which I made clear I was asking about, for an indoor chime. That option has your indoor smart speakers play a doorbell sound in addition to making the announcement. That option doesn't draw any additional power from the doorbell, so can be run from a battery run doorbell.

Asi wrote in my support request, that option was working perfectly until I had to reset my doorbell. (another reason I know it can work)

[MplsCustomer]

@OVH 

Yes, there are two doorbell options:

- "Ring indoor chime" - Requires wired installation; rings an indoor doorbell chime, whether electronic or mechanical. This option is grayed out and disabled on the battery doorbell if the doorbell is NOT wired to a transformer and an indoor doorbell chime.

- "Visitor announcements" - Sends "visitor announcements" (a doorbell sound and an oral announcement) to Nest Hubs and Nest Minis.

We have 3 of the older 1dt gem Google Nest Hello Doorbells; on all 3 the internal battery has failed, and they go offline for a minute when the doorbell button is pushed if the "Indoor chime" option is turned on. So we have the "Indoor chime" option turned off, and instead, we have the "Visitor announcements" option turned on, so we get a doorbell sound and an oral announcement on all of our speakers.

If you did a factory reset on your battery doorbell, the "Visitor announcements" option may have been turned off as part of the factory reset.

Also, if "Do not disturb" is enabled for your speakers, they will not do "visitor announcements".

From other posts in this forum, I gather that there is some sort of rather confusing message that displays somewhere in the battery doorbell settings if the doorbell is not wired, indicating that electronic chimes won't work; that message is supposed to apply to the "Ring indoor chime"/"Indoor chime" option (the exact name varies by country).

[OVH]

It's the doorbell sound that comes with the visitor announcement, on all speakers that I'm trying to restore. All I get is the visitor announcement without the doorbell sound.

I have it set to "ding dong", but it's not making that sound before the announcement. 

Any suggestions? 

Nothing is set to Do Not Disturb. As I said, the speakers still announce someone is at the door.

[MplsCustomer · Accepted solution]

@OVH 

That's odd. 

I just checked one of our doorbells, and we still get both the "ding dong" sound and the oral announcement (but our doorbells are in the Google Nest app).

Maybe Google Nest has changed something in the Google Home app.  Or maybe it's a new defect.

I don't know what "ding dong" option you're referring to.  If you're referring to the option under doorbell themes, that applies only to the sound that is emitted outside from the doorbell itself, (and in any case is only available on our 1st gen doorbells near a holiday).

You could try turning off your "Visitor announcements" option and then turning it back on to see if that resolves it.

I have seen other posts in this forum from customers with battery doorbells who have challenges getting "Visitor announcements" to work.

If you can't get it resolved, you could try contacting Support, but they may have you run through a bunch of troubleshooting steps:

1. Go to https://support.google.com/googlenest/gethelp.
2. Select a category/product family, and type in a brief description of the issue, then click "Next".
3. Click "Other", then click "Next step".
4. Under "Resources", just click "Next step". (Clicking one of the listed links will bring up a Help page page.)

5. Under "Contact options", choose to get a phone call or chat with the team, depending on availability in your country.