Error message when syncing devices "x things aren't available" > old Devices

[GlennKocak]

When using the Assistant voice command "sync my devices" Assistant report that "x things aren't available". When doing this through Assistant on my phone it actually shows the "unavailable"  devices.

These devices are all old Phones that haven't been active in years and that have all long since been completely reset and unlinked from Google Account. They are not visible anywhere else in the Home app, they are not visible in any Account Settings (Security > Manage devices), so it is impossible for me as a user to remove them manually.

Tried reporting via Google One support but got told there was no way to escalate a tech support/bug report through them...

Example image:

I noticed multiple similar threads about the same issue here but they were all locked without any of them actually showing a definitive answer. None of the workarounds from those threads had any effect for me.

[Juni]

Hi GlennKocak,

Thanks for reaching out. You can disable your old phone from the "show in menus" area of the Google Play Store. Check out the link below.

Google Play  

Could you also confirm if this is the account settings section where you attempted to remove your old devices?

Account settings 

Regards,

Juni

[GlennKocak]

Hi Juni,

Unfortunately that was not the solution for me. These "old devices" do not show up anywhere in the User Interface to remove. Not in the Google Accounts settings you linked above, not under Google Play devices, not in Home or the Nest apps. I've even deleted and recreated my Home and the problem remains. In fact now there are six devices that it says it cannot find before it was only five.

After some more looking into it I think I know what is going on, but I still cannot resolve it. I have attached an image in my OP that show the devices in question. They are all devices that I previously used for Presence Sensing through Nest/Home! But there is no way from the User Interface to remove such devices.

This seems like a bug/technical issue to me and I hope it can be looked into further.

[GlennKocak]

@Juni or other moderators have you had a change to look at my question and additional information? I feel like this is something that could be resolved but the other threads seems to stop before getting a definitive answer.

[GlennKocak]

Apologies for tagging you directly, but I noticed in this older thread  about the same issue you have contributed for a solution, @LovelyM  @Muddi. Could you take a look at my case and forward it?

I'm pretty sure the root cause is as I described above (old Home/Nest presence sensing devices are not removed properly from Nest), but there is no way from the User Interface for someone to remove these manually. This seems like a pretty bad oversight that I hope can be resolved behind the scenes.

In the meantime I've managed to reproduce it two more times, so now Nest is reporting 7 things aren't available...

[Juni]

Hi there,

Thanks for the details you’ve shared, and sorry for the delay. Have you tried creating a new home and seeing if those devices will show up there? Try it and let us know the result by updating this thread. See the steps below on how to create a new home:

Create a home

1. Open the Google Home app Google Home app.
2. Tap Settings Settings and then Add Add.
3. Select Home.
4. Follow the on screen steps.

Tip:You can have up to 5 homes in your account.

Thanks,

Juni

[GlennKocak]

Hi @Juni 

This was one of the things I already tried. I have deleted my current home, created a new Home and connected my Nest devices there. The only thing this did was make the problem worse, it went from the error saying there are "6" things unavailable, to "7" things are unavailable.

Because of course when you delete and create a new Home, it also adds a "new" Presence sensing  device again. When I recreate the screenshot from above it now lists 2 more "Pixel Phones" that cannot be found, 5 in total. I only have 1 Pixel phone.

At this point I am convinced that Presence sensing devices not being cleaned up properly is the underlying issue, and that there is no way from the User Interface to fix this.

[Juni]

Hello GlennKocak,

Got it. Since the steps didn't work on your end, we'd be happy to take a look into this for you. Please fill out this Contact Us form with all the needed information, then let me know once done.

Best,

Juni

[GlennKocak]

Thank you Juni,

I have filled out the contact form with the required information. If this issue gets resolved can we agree to post the eventual solution here?

That way other users can find the answer here as well. (the other threads on this issue were closed before the answer was posted).

[GlennKocak]

Update from my end: Support has reached out to me after filling out the form, but they did not clearly understand the issue (gave me basic troubleshooting steps already attempted here). I have shared more details and hope they will escalate this to the right product team.

[Juni]

Hi GlennKocak,

Upon checking, it appears that our support team is already assisting you via email. Please continue the conversation there so they can assist you accordingly. If you have other concerns with your Google Nest devices, you know where to find us.

Regards,

Juni

[GlennKocak]

Unfortunately the only response I got through the email support team was:

• "Old devices will (probably) eventually disappear"
• "Please use the generic 'send feedback' option from the Google Home app"

Of course I had already used the generic "send feedback" option before I even got to this community, so that wasn't very helpful.
And claiming "old devices will eventually disappear" is also not at relevant or true here, as some of these Nest device entries are several years old.

Neither of these gave me the idea that I actually spoke to a higher tier support agent. Bit unfortunate as I was expecting for a more direct and thorough approach from that team to properly analyse the issue.

I have asked for further clarification, but have not heared back again.

[ArtyMarty]

I have the same problem..

Every few months I think to myself "let's try and fix this" after trying a bunch of things, all I end up achieving is increasing the number of "x things aren't available, you might want to try setting them up again"

I'm now at 5

Might help if there was somewhere it would tell you what the "things" are 🙄

[GlennKocak]

Unfortunately I have not heard back even after my last update. Hope this isn't a dead end.

At the very least you can sort of find out which devices they are by running the "Sync My Devices" command on your phone instead of via Voice control on your Assistant speakers. On the Phone it will then show a screen with all devices it tries to Sync with, where you can identify the ones you don't recognize anymore.

In my case it 100% is old phones that used to be configured for "Presence Sensing" in the Nest app/Google Home app, they don't show up anywhere else in the UI.

[GlennKocak]

Just getting back in here again to once again share that I have not heared back anything else from support and the ghost devices are still there and have not "magically disappeared over time" as the support agent so confidently suggested they would.

[JGrantman]

Check out this threat where I rant on this EXACT topic 6 months ago.  It was after 5 previous requests for help, opening cases through Google One to try and get "experts" involved.  No shortage of response but no information provided.  

https://www.googlenestcommunity.com/t5/Home-Automation/NEST-Ghost-Devices-in-Sync-amp-Wifi-setup-fai...

I have spent hours finding threads of users with same issue and hundreds of Google and Google community suggestions that are all the same middle school child level of technical input and understanding.  Out of frustration and stubborness I went through every single suggestion multiple times to fully rule out any user accessable, user controllable or otherwise user actionalable options.  I have worked in large enterprise IT for 25+ years and have (no exaggeration) over 75 smart home devices or connections on my home network.  I am not lacking any basic user input on "how to" and I am 100% convinced this is a "cached" information issue or some legit software code defect that I personally believe falls into the same category as the purposely consumer difficult and arbitrary policies with Google accounts in general.  Just think back to the fun times with forced Google+ logins, forced accounts, changed passwords only to then find out the account is no longer accessable and will never age out of expire so it's just lost in the ether where it can be compromised but the owner who created it can't access it.

**bleep** it.  Another rant started... sorry for the detour.

Here is the situation as I see it.  The screenshot you provided is similar to what I see on my Google Nest Hub Max and Google Nest Hub screens after asking Google to sync my devices.  What is crazy is it has 1 bogus ghost device listed that is the exact same as my screen... ONEPLUS A6013.  That is a OnePlus 6T McLaren Edition for me (or could be regular OnePlus 6T).

Why does this matter... last summer I had several calls and emails exchanges in response to one of my support requests started through the Google One phone app.  After pushing through all the remedial suggestions (create a new home in Google Home app... blah blah blah...) -- I ended up taking to someone who seemed to have next level of technical understanding to the blackbox Google cloud backend to the Google Home app and it's interactions to the greater Google infrastructure.

What was confirmed via phone (but I could not get confirmed in email or via post) was they saw several Oppo devices on my account.  (For me it was 13 which is the number of devices that can't be setup when I sync my devices).

Oppo owns OnePlus or atleast OnePlus is under the Oppo umbrella and shares mobile device designs and components with other Oppo devices and Oppo brands making mobile devices.

Thing is I have only ever own 1 OnePlus 6T and no other Android devices from anything close to an Oppo or Oppo related brand.  And that OnePlus 6T has not been powered on in over 18 months as I  have an iPhone, a Pixel 7 and Lenovo Tablet that all show up fine.  I also use an Nvidia Shield which shows up fine.

So my best guess is I must have wiped my phone or uninstalled/re-installed Google Home on the OnePlus 6T 13 times over the 3-4 years it was in use.  The ghost device problem started over 4 years ago but the corrupt residue devices originally did not show up on screen on the Hub devices... but I could install a very old version of Google Home by side loading an APK and I would see the "ghost devices" and could remove them.

The old Google Home trick stopped working last summer which prompted me to do a nuclear reset (see post I referenced above).  I killed everything and anything that could carry and memory or cache of history related to network devices.  New Home Assistance server from scratch, new Google Home, wiped all devices, new subnet on my home network after a hardware wipe of the router.  Left all switches, servers, laptops, desktops... unplugged and did not turn back on and just setup Google Home from scratch device by device.  Started with just a Google Nest Mini then a very generic basic Home Assistant server install.  Only connect was from Home Assistant (Nabu Casa) to Google Home.  Then sync my devices.

Guess what... 13 devices can't be setup.  That means those devices are pulled in from a database or cached information related to my Google account but not specific to my Google Home configuration.  Finished putting everything back on network and once Hubs were connected the devices showed up as before on the Hubs screens in response to "sync my devices".

At this point there are atleast 1000 people with the issue and likely 10x or more as I am only considering the unique online names I could find searching across the internet with most posting right within the Google community pages.  Earliest posts date back to 2017 or so... can't remember exact date but I know it is within 1 month of the forced Google Home update that purposely broke Google Home Mini devices so they can no longer be grouped to synchronized play which was an incompetently written rushed update in response to Google getting spanked by Sonos on patent infringement.  

I 100% believe that update and the forced breaking of the device grouping (and whatever related infrastructure/architecture changes) is the start, source and likely remains the cause of the MASSIVE growing ghost device issue and very likely it can't ... not won't but can't be resolved because it's way beyond the amount of competency and cost Google makes available to the issue.

Why fix an issue that has persisted for so long when your resources are tied up removing features or shutting down functions for devices to cut costs at the expense of customers.  While that is a bit salty due to frustration and a bit snarky it is still rooted in a very accurate and measurable reality that is very easy to confirm.

No amount of customer complaint at this point is going to get a fix.  I think the last legitimate hope was last year when there were rumblings of Google re-enabling the grouped speaker function and instead of it just being individual speakers in parallel.  Not sure if that is going to turn out but I have 4 Nest Audio speakers that can't even work with 2 in a pair without the Home App flaking and changing names back and forth between the individual speaker name and the stereo pair name and have never been able to keep them useable for more than 3 months before having to hard reset and re-add back like new devices.

I am not angry as I  have worked in the largest enterprise IT organizations where much of this is common place but usually not so incompetently handled.  Google should talking to Apple about how to keep customers blind to the defects or terrible consumer practices.

I wanted to put all the Google devices in a pile and just light on fire but I don't have options to replace that are not as bad or worse.  It's an industry issue not a Google issue but given Google took my money for half baked and over sold hardware that is where I am putting in the effort to try and resolve.

I would be fine without a fix if I had access to my own account and could just code up something or do some leg work to scrub the ghost devices from some cloud backend or manually go through and edit acount data or whatever.

What had made this the worse experience in tech related hardware, software or services is the insane influencer style gorilla support campaign with the same disrespectful, copy/paste rehash of the most basic simpleton suggestions from "support" resources.

At this point... I would rather a confident response confirming I am SOL (sh!* out of luck) rather than another suggestion to start a new home in the app or go to Google Play Store and look at list of devices or go to the security settings in the Google account log out devices no longer used.

I feel bad that I am not the only one with the ghost device issue and that literally thousands of people have been consistantly complaining and begging Google for help for 7+ years... and none of the myriad of threats matter because there isn't a better option just equally bad or worse options if you try to go the Alexa, Siri or whatever else you might considered.

I hate I feel this way but I was actually pleased when I saw the news crawl about Google getting sued by DOJ and now I am rooting for the DOJ just out of personal want to see someone or something slap Google on the wrist since I don't think anything more is possible.

At this point if a fix magically comes about it will silence my active frustation but only as a pragmatist.  My original pro-Google sentiment starting before my pre-relase Gmail account that peaked in early-mid 2010s... has not been ground down slowly to zero which flipped to a growing distain that started last Summer after wasting so much time on this ghost device situation.  All the other smaller Google annoyances are just magnifying that distain and when it becomes larger than it is for a replacement I will jump ship and not look back.

I honestly and truly hope you (GlenKocak) or anyone else reading this ends up with a better outcome.  No one deservices to lost this much time with nothing to show for it other than a couple of overly wordy and snarky posts burried down in a Google pseudo-support page discussion thread.

Good Luck!

[GlennKocak]

Thanks for the elaborate confirmation that this issue is systemic. I guess unfortunately it's just not that much of a priority considering how little this particular problem affects actual use of the product.

That probably explains why there is so little follow through.

Still annoying though.