For quite some time, I've had an automation created as a shortcut to listen to a daily podcast in the morning. The automation includes 1 starter ("daily podcast") and one action ([x] Play the latest episode .. [Podcast name]) and had worked without issues for a very long time.
In recent months, my wife and I found that the automation was less reliable, often "picking up where we left off" instead of playing the most recent episode. However for a while it seemed that if the other partner said the keyword it would work correctly. In the past couple of weeks, it just doesn't work at all... We've found ourselves waking too early in annoyance, yelling "hey google stop!" and fumbling for our phones to open the podcast app to cast to the speaker manually rather than using the automation tools that we have paid for...
In the course of troubleshooting, the automation has been deleted, recreated as either a personal routine and a household routine.. sometimes after re-creation it works correctly, other times it doesn't. We know that there are no conflicting routines because when the automation is deleted, the speaker gives us directions and information about a nearby bakery with a similar sounding name.
<frustration continues>: A long time ago, the routine was configured to use Spotify as a podcast app, but after a long time we just decided that the integration was broken and gave up in favor of using Google podcasts assuming that keeping the routine in the same ecosystem would help. This, and other inconsistencies managing lighting and smart plugs in our home over the years has been very frustrating... almost enough to make this long time supporter of Google products jump ship to another provider.<frustration portion ends>
[edit] Obviously written in frustration, but if anyone has tips, they would be appreciated.
