Can not add child account to Google Nest Hub 2

[Tomas211]

Hello,

four our family (2 adults 2 children) we have purchased two Nest Hubs 2nd Gen. The initial set-up went well and I am able to talk to it, as well as my wife. 

The problem is with our 2 children accounts - I can not add their Voice match to neither of our Nest hubs.

What I am doing:

1. Open Family Link app
2. Content Restricions ´-> Google Assistant
3. Add /Child Name/ to new devices
4. Set up - Save 
5. No Wi-Fi Connection apperas on the scren

I also tried thies:

1. Open Family Link app
2. Content Restricions ´-> Google Assistant
3. Parental Control -> Assistant Devices -> 2 devices available - Add
4. Then "Add /Child Name/ to more devices screen apperas where are two Nest Hubs listed as offline or not availalbe.

Facts:

• I am conntected to wi-fi on my phone (Galaxy A52).
• 
• I am conntected to the same wi-fi network as two nest hubs.
• We have dual band rooter (TP-LINK Archer AX53) so I tried to use 2.4G only during initial set-up of the Nest Hub but my phone did not see it. Therefore both nest hubs are connected to the default 2.4/5 network.
• The fact that I can see both Nest hubs in my Google Home app proves that we are connected to the same network. I can talk to both hubs, as well as my wife, and it works perfectly and it recognizes my and my wife's voice.
• Child's account I am trying to add to the hub has Voice Assistant activated and voice taught via her phone (Galaxy A13).
• Personal Results and Voice Match is ON for both for "Google Assistant Settings" for both hubs.
• It is POSSIBLE to cast screen from child's phone to a nest hub, therefore I assume both devices are connected hardware-wise. Therefore I assume the whole problem might be authorization or permission or any other similar issue related.

Problem description: I can not add child account to neither nest hubs (error messages above). Child can communicate with assistant on her phone but not on Nest Hub (it does not recognize her voice).

Having spent 12+ hours searching for solution online, it seems to me this is a widely reported issue. 

So far I have tried these steps (non resolved the problem):

• re-instal Google Home app, reinstall Family Link app on my phone, followed by my phone restart,
• delete Google Home app updates (on my phone) and re-update it via Play Store,
• factory reset Nest Hub 2 and install again,
• set language on child's phone to English.

I have really searched for really quite a long time online to find solution to this bug / problem. Without success. Can you please help me with this? It is very frustrating it is not working for children accounts as intended. This should be reported as a 1st priority bug a and resolved for us, all the paying customers. Thank you for your hlep how to resolve this.

[romjok]

Exact same behaviour here. Tried to reinstall google, google home and family link. Nothing worked.

[Tomas211]

Hi Romjok, thanks for your response. Can I ask you... do you have all your devices set in the same language? We do not (two phones are in english and two in local language) so I have been thinking if this might be an issue...? 
Anywasy, it is a shame Google has not resolved this yet.

[romjok]

Yes we have all devices set to the same language (German).

[Tomas211]

Thanks. We're quite neighbours (Czech). Could it be something with geolocation? I'm really desperate about it. 

[Tomas211]

Hello, I would like to officially report this problem as a bug. I have spent almost whole day with another series of testing:

• re-started wi-fi router,
• re-started both nest hubs,
• re-installed Home app and Family link app,
• removed voice match from child's google account,

with no success. 

I would like to point out the fact that child's phone can actually cast screen to a nest hub. So there is no problem from hardware or network point of view.

Can someone from Google list this as a real bug which needs to be fixet ASAP? I have purchased two nest hubs for kids and it is not working just because google seems to be successfuly ignoring this wastly reported bug. What a shame.

[Tomas211]

Hello, I have managed to activate developer mode on my phone so I can get bugreports. I do hope to hear from some google support to analyze the logs (where I beleive will be listed the reason for this trouble). Please let me know how to proceed with bugreports. Thanks.

[Tomas211]

Hello, anyone any idea? It is still not working... I do have bugreports with exact time of the error event.

[Cristi2m]

Same issue for me.

' device not available' or 'no wi fi connection'

[Tomas211]

It is very sad how Google is carelessly ignoring the very clear fact their service is not working. 

Posting this 2 weeks ago and not receiving any single line of comment or helpful hint or anything is self-explanatory. 

It should be stated absolutely clearly that Google Nest Hub is NOT WORKING with child google accounts. Therefore your child CAN NOT use Google Nest Hub. This is a bug which Google decided to ignore. Unbeliavable.

In the meantime I had to resolve this problem by myself by simply lying about my child's age to google. This seems to be the only workaround now.

[Juni]

Hi folks,

Thanks for reaching out, and sorry for the delay. I apologize for the inconvenience you're experiencing. We'll work together to identify the cause of the problem and find a solution. From which country are you all located? What language are you using on your phone and Google Assistant? Is mobile data enabled on your phone while trying to link your child accounts?
 

I look forward to your responses.
 

Regards,

Juni

[Tomas211]

Hello Juni. I am located in the Czech Republic but my phone and my daughter's phone is set to english, as well as Google account setting is set to english. I have already tested this with mobile data ON and OFF with the same result.

As I have already mentioned - my daughter can cast her phone screen to nest hub - which means harware-wise this is not an issue. It seems to me as a software issue. Therefore I offered my bugreports where I tried to locate the issue but there are many rows so I was not sure whre to find it. But I guess bugreports should very clearly put some light on this problem. I can upload it somewhere for you if you want.
Thank you.

[Cristi2m]

Hi , i am from romania, language on both phones and accounts is set to english.

Same issue as decribed above.

Everything stops at 'no wi fi connection ' screen.

[Maarten1]

Hi Juni

• Country of origin is The Netherlands.
• The device a nest mini
• Assistant voice is setup to recognize either Dutch or US English.
• Assistant on the nest mini speaks in dutch
• I tried language settings on the phone in dutch and US English
• I tried with and without mobile data enabled
• I can cast audio to the nest mini from my phone so network is ok
• I tried the google app remove / reinstall trick reported elsewhere without succes
• Since some people claimed it worked for them in another thread there might be some firmware conflict preventing the solution from working:
  • Family link (jan 16 2024) and google app (jan 22 2024) are updated to the latest play store versions.
  • Parent phone from which i try to connect to the nest mini is running android 12 and the 1 nov 2023 play store version.
  • Nest mini is updated to the latest firmware

[Princesss]

Hello folks,

We appreciate all your efforts. We'd be happy to take a look into this for you. Please fill out our Contact Us Form with all the needed information then let me know once done.

Best,

Princess

[Tomas211]

Hello Princesss, I have just submitted the form you suggested. Thank you.

[Princesss]

Hello @Tomas211 and @romjok,

Thanks — we got your form and we've escalated it over to our higher level of support for further review. Please keep an eye on your inbox as someone will get back in touch with you soon. 

Best,

Princess

[romjok]

Hello Princesss, I have also submitted a contact form.

[Maarten1]

Hi Princesss

Form is submitted. Good luck with looking into it.

Regards,

Maarten

[Alex_S]

Hello Maarten1,

We got your form—thanks for filling it out. Our team will reach out to you via email anytime soon. Please continue the conversation there so the team can further assist you. If you have other questions or concerns aside from this, let me know.

Warmly,
Alex

[romjok]

Did anyone who submitted the form get a reply on this?

[appenzellois]

Same issues here

[Maarten1]

I am also encountering the same issue as in the screenshots above.

[Maarten1 · Accepted solution]

Just to give an update here to others experiencing issues. Google support did contact me and suggested a few approaches. These initially did not help, so I re-did the steps exactly as thomas has written above to make sure I could explain exactly what my issue was at exactly which step in the online manual:

https://support.google.com/assistant/answer/9071584

And somehow things magically worked. The only thing I tried in between was enabling voice match on the assistant of my childs phone. After enabling it on my childs phone using assistant settings i did try adding voice match the nest device using option 3: using assistant settings on childs phone. But was met with the "no wifi" error.

Now today trying option1: Through family link on parents phone. Things worked just fine. Did enabling voice match / "hey google" on the childs phone itself do anything or did I just get lucky this time. I dont know but hopefully this infomation is useful to the others experiencing issues.

[pereztzum]

Hello everyone, 

Thanks to @ for sharing the next link Let your child use Google Assistant on your devices. I'm glad to know that this works for him.

We can give it a try and follow the steps that are there. If that doesn't work we can use the Contact Us form and you will be getting contact.

Best 

Gustavo.

[Maarten1]

Hi Gustavo and other support employees.

I appreciate your efforts in trying to help everyone. However for the sake of being as clear as possible: The link alone was not enough for me, and only following those steps did not intitially help me. Only after I did something else, enabling voice match and hello google on my childs phone, did option1 (through family link) in the manual work for enabling voice match on the nest mini.

option 2 is outdated and cannot even be followed. option 3 still resulted in the no wifi error.

Best regards,

Maarten

If this was luck or the missing step in the manual

[pereztzum]

Hello @Maarten1,

Thanks for adding those steps that helped you to solve the issue, all of your effort is going to help us a lot.

Rich us out if any further help is needed.

Best, 

Brandon.