Can't find "group". Be sure the device is turned on and connected to the internet.

[LJS_LasVegas]

Starting a few days ago, Google home cant keep track of my speaker groups.
I have 3 Nest Pro Wifi devices.  9 speakers (most new, old ones in garage) 1 mini hub, multitude of TV's lights switches.
First occurrence was a few mornings ago while running my wakeup script, the response was "can't find (group), please be sure it is plugged in and connected to the internet."  - I spoke that command and recieved the same response.   I unplugged one speaker and plugged back in.  Shortly after I was able to speak that command and it worked.
Later in the day I asked to play music on 'group' and it could not run the script at all.  I noticed the phone was attempting to respond and I checked the wifi connection to discover it was on the 2.4 GHz band (pretty much not used.  I reconnected to the mixed band SSID and told the phone to forget the other band.  I restarted my phone and a short time later the speakers were responsive.
That evening, I spoke that line to change music source and received the same "can't find group" message (different speaker heard me).  I unplugged that speaker and plugged back in (clear it's mind).  Later I repeated the command and this time it couldn't find the group again.  I loaded the Home app and checked - all looks good - close the app.  A short time later I repeated the command and it worked this time.
The next morning I ran my morning script and received the "can't find" error again.  I reset speaker and waited - didn't work.  I had one speaker play music and went through my morning rituals.
Later that morning I decided to do a full reset.  I first reset the wifi group.  After more than enough time for reloading,  I tested the command; It had the same error. I unplugged all my speaker devices and the hub.  Again allowing several minutes to reinitialize and recommunicate with each other, I went to test again.  This time, the speakers could not find the internet.  I then reset the mesh devices again.  This time the speaker groups worked. 
I left the house to run errands.  On returning I spoke the standard phrase and then again received the "can't find group" error.
Currently, I was able to restart my nest hub to get the speaker group working.  I attempted other speakers without success, then opened the app and 'resaved' the groups before restarting the hub. - Adding: After about an hour, I was again successfull restarting music via the hub (but not from other speakers).  After watching a movie, I was no longer successful restarting music on the group from the hub. 

Note: when I am able to play music on the speaker group, the command "stop music" is always successful.

[Wondaqueen]

I'm having the same issue which started this week. Two things that worked (for a while) - deleting then recreating the group and taking a speaker out of a group saving it and then putting it back in and resaving it. 

[XonMus]

I've been having the same issue since yesterday (2024-02-21).  Multiple smart speakers are unable to find my audio speaker group, but it shows up in my phone's Google Home app, and can be cast to through apps on my phone.

[aesopal]

Taking out a single speaker and adding has worked for me, early days regards how long the fix lasts.

[aesopal]

so more feedback, fix just last for a few hours, repeat and it works again. Annoying as i've had a blissful few months of google home being pretty much on the ball. Come to think of it most of my issues over the years have been groups related, I assume appearing and disappearing as they update the central service. I assumed AI would eventually integrated into stuff like home but when they cant even get the basics right 😕

[RussdaFuss]

I've been struggling with this and a few other problems since around the beginning of September. Since then, I have had to delete and recreate my speaker group about 2-4 times a month so that the group can be found by Google Home and music can be played on it.
It's just annoying and frustrating. Contacting support and the developers didn't help at all. The whole system is for the bin!

[Mickeymci]

When i ask to play "radio station" in group "kitchen speakers" everything works.   Ask to play music (youtube) on "kitchen speakers" i get "Sorry i can't find kitchen speakers please make sure that device is turned on and connected to the internet".  Ive removed, reset, deleted re-added devices but still same error.

Strangely i cam cast to the speaker group so it knows it's there.

[Cloney]

Same issue here, if I use voice it can't find the group, if I use my phone and select the group from the cast list it's fine.

Over the past month or so there's been a few issues with groups. Getting pretty fed up with the Google setup

[RussdaFuss]

I had the same experience. Until I deleted the group and recreated it.
However, I noticed that absolutely every Chromecast, Google Home and Nest player appears TWICE in the selection on my smartphone.
Is that the case with you too?

[Mickeymci]

Thankfully no.  Its starting to look like Google wants the Microsoft 90's reputation of buy us but then slowly break or discontinue products and they wonder why Apple fans are willing to pay a premium.

[SorryICantFinda]

IN THE PAST
(months to over a year ago) when I had this problem I had to create a completely new Google account and rebuild my entire home in it.  I experimented and went back and forth between accounts and demonstrated that the new account worked, and the old one did not, even after I wiped all my devices and reinstalled them. There was something about my old Google Account that stayed corrupt (old cached info hiding in the cloud somewhere?) and I could never figure it out .  So now I have a new throwaway Google account for my speakers, and am keeping the old one for reference.  

PRESENTLY
my Google Home speakers cannot find any of my groups. It started about a week ago. But for some reason my Android devices CAN find my audio groups.

TROBLESHOOTING
Interestingly enough if I  cast from an android device (one of my Pixel phones) to one of my groups FIRST, I can THEN call out to my Google Home speakers and they will be able to find just THAT one group again, but still CANNOT find any of the other audio groups.

It is as if the android device kickstarted just that one audio group that it casted to so that Google Home speakers would recognize just that group and then cast to it. But this does not last long.  If I stop the Google Home speakers from playing and do nothing for awhile, they go back to a state of "Sorry I can't find an X group"

My new daily habit is I wake up, I call out to my Google speaker to play the radio on Home Group, it responds ""Sorry I can't find a Home Group..." I then take an old Pixel 2, play that radio station app and then cast it to Home Group using the Pixel cast capability, and it works.  Then I call out to my Google speaker and voila, it recognizes Home Group again.  

ANOTHER AUDIO PROBLEM that is perhaps related?

BAD AUDIO QUALITY (low sampling rate) on Google Home devices when they cast vs. when I cast from my phone:

Over the last several months something else bad has been happening on my Google Speakers: They have dropped the sampling rate of the casting of my radio station such that it sounds like the announcers are talking in a can.  HOWEVER when I use radio station's own native app and then cast using the android devices built in casting, the sampling rate is much higher.

In troubleshooting I have found similar behavior as the previous troubleshooting: IF I first play the radio stations native app on my old Pixel and then use Pixels casting capability to my Home Group, it sounds great. AND THEN if I call out to my Google Home speaker to play the same station it sounds great. But it does not stay this way forever. Eventually it goes back to sounding like a can.

WORKAROUNDS

The first is to reduce my overall Google Footprint:

I am looking to remove my Google audio devices and replace with good old analog audio cables to a central audio source.  Crawling under my house another time to put audio cable to each room is more cost effective when doing the cost benefit analysis of all the time I have lost tinkering to get Google Home to work reliably (look up "Sunk Cost Fallacy" and you will realize that maybe you too have spent too much time trying to get your Google cloud based devices to work when you should go back to LAN and/or analog ).  

HOWEVER I will not give up entirely on the cloud. I also have an old Amazon Echo speaker that I will experiment with. The one thing I really liked about the Echo is it has stereo out jack that I can put into my analog amplifier. Google speakers do not, at least the ones I have.

As for home control, I'll keep a Google speaker handy.  But even then, I am finding that using the vendor's native app on my android devices for control over my LAN vs using Google Cloud seems much more reliable.  Fewer dropouts of individual devices. I have experimented by turning off my internet, such that Google Home cannot work, and then using my phone apps on the LAN to control my house.

RECOMMENDATIONS TO YOU:

Google "Sunk Cost Fallacy" to understand it and make the determination if you have taken too much time out of your life troubleshooting this and need to try something else.

Minimize your overall Google footprint and consider going LAN and/or analog. Pull a few physical wires around your house to a central audio source. Yes its a bit of work, but once you are done, you will have more time to enjoy your music or radio than troubleshooting the cloud.

If you stick with Google Home devices, use only throwaway accounts that you can quickly replace. Do not use your paid account. Use that for more private data like email, storage, calendar - as that seems to be reliable. The Google Home stuff on the other hand, should be used with a separate throwaway account that can be swapped out if things go corrupt (see my commentary above about my throwaway accounts). Plus you will be more secure with your data if you have a separation of accounts for home control and your more personal/private information.

To reduce the issues with Google home devices, simply keep your old android devices around the house , which seem to be more reliable. Use your individual vendor home control apps on these devices on your LAN (no internet needed)

FINAL COMMENT:

It simply comes down to reliability, trust, and control and how much time am I willing to give up to deal with the wide variability of reliability and trust in the cloud before I go back to doing things locally permanently, thereby regaining my control.   I am NOT saying Google is bad. It has come up with some really cool stuff that, when it works, it is really nice. But when some of these things glitch too many times, it ends up eating my own valuable time such that I simply need to give them up to be happier in the long run. This is true of any technology, especially in the cloud. Reliability, trust, and control. 

[Mickeymci]

Wow you've went through a lot.   Makes a manual system seems the easier option.   If Alexa would only work with youtube music I'd switch.   Starting to loose faith in the smart hime when the people running it seen DUMB

[HowardR0071]

My speaker group stopped working. On one device I can see the group but on others I can't. When I try to play the group it says not found. All my speakers show on all devices. None of the articles I've found helped. I've rebooted everything and removed and re-installed google home. when google home reinstalled the devices are still there so uninstall is not fully uninstalling.

[HowardR0071]

So last night the group of 3 speakers worked.  this morning, same issue, can't find the group.  What is going on?  This is nuts.

[Dippie]

I just started running into this problem. It's been really annoying but the workaround seems to be adding and removing one of the devices. 

I'm tempted to get a Sonos just because of this. 

[SorryICantFinda]

Today for the heck of it I rebooted my internet devices, including wifi router. It worked for a little while.  Later in the day it went back to "Sorry I can't find an..."  

My guess is your problem will return. If so... What happens if you remove devices one by one?  Or do you have to remove and then add?  Tedius to try, but the goal is find the root cause and fix.  

[Dippie]

It works when I remove one of the devices from the group, rather than from Home. I haven't escalated to try other options because there hasn't been a need to. 

The devices themselves work fine alone.

[jc8654]

Having the exact same issue.

[LeoLobhaan]

Same problem here. Google is a mess

[RussdaFuss]

Okay Google,

we've had a difficult relationship over the years.

We had our ups and downs. But mostly lows.

Your unreliability and moodiness have become an imposition and it's time to go your separate ways from now on!

Goodbye!

[SorryICantFinda]

Just for kicks this morning I went to remove my main Google Speaker and re-add it to my home. The set up interface in the Google Hme app showed THREE Home Group  audio groups to choose from ONLY durng set up.  Plus there were a bunch of other groups I had created and deleted in the past.   I chose one of the Home Group. BUT when I went BACK  into the Google Home App, my speaker was not there.    Nor were all the groups I had deleted in the past. Why where they still in the set up when I had deleted them, MONTHs ago?

So what this is telling me is possibly a bunch of old information is cached somewhere and cannot be accessed to clean up. 

Its as if your home gets cluttered with junk that blocks your path down the hallway, and there is no way to get rid of it.  All you can do is crawl over it.  One day you wake up and have to run to the bathroom really fast, and, uh oh.   Google Home seems  to be a a virtual hoarder (of old data). HA!  For Audio groups, it's "Hotel Google Home." You can check out any time you want,  but you can never leave.. 😉 

I need "Virtual College Hunks Hauling Junk," geeks who know the ins and out of Google and can clean it up.  

Anyone have ideas on how to find the hidden groups and completely clean them out?

[Goglsux]

Same issue. Wish there was a good alternative because Google speaker groups had always been their biggest downfall and they don't seem to be in a hurry to fix it.

[Dippie]

I actually need the Chromecast option because I turn my devices off at night. Does anyone know of good alternatives? 

[SorryICantFinda]

Update:  I THINK found a fix? For awhile?  Until someone changes something else in the cloud. 

Discovery of "Ghost Groups":

I removed and re-added my main speaker to my home. As I was doing this in the Google Home App, a bunch of extra old audio groups (Ghost Groups) popped up as choices to add my main speaker to. I was surprised to see these as I had deleted them a long time ago. It was very confusing as there were multiple copies of the same group name, including "Home group."

The Short Solution if you want to go through it yourself without my guidance:

Not wanting to be defeated, I found this reddit link on "Fix for Ghost Speaker Groups." 

https://www.reddit.com/r/googlehome/comments/cv3yyw/fix_for_ghost_speaker_groups/

The Long Solution with my stream of consciousness with nuances that may actually help:

If you have not read my past long posts (I tend to get detailed for completeness to help peeps)...

First Go back in time: How the Ghost Groups may have been created

What happened back then was Google Home had yet another glitch where one day casting stopped working (Google Home would say it was casting and then nothing played), so I tried and tried again to delete and add audio groups until somehow magically it worked.  Apparently the old deleted groups did not actually get deleted, but turned into "Ghost Groups," which may exacerbate more problems down the road. NOT SURE.

Back to Present: Discovery of the Ghost Groups

To add insult to injury, even though the latest Google Home app temporarily showed a list of these Ghost Groups when I went to re-add my main speaker, there was no way to delete them. Worse yet after the speaker was added, NOWHERE in the Google Home app could I find those old audio Ghost Groups again. BUT NOW I KNEW they existed to potentially cause problems with impunity. It drove me batty (and thus my quest to keep going to find an answer to help all y'all reading this despite previous thoughts of giving up.)

I apologize that I got lazy here and did not take detailed notes next. My pot of coffee was running out.  So you will have to go with what I have:

Steps to Clean up Ghost Groups:

First I went to my old Pixel 2 and uninstalled the latest Google Home app.  Then in Chrome on that P2 I went to the reddit link above, which resulted in "The download link... expired." NO WORRIES.  I went up a level and found the download link for 

"Download Google Cast" and 1.19.26

Yes the name is "Google Cast" and not "...Home" This download is an old version of Google Home from October 24, 2016

Then in the files app, I went to downloads, clicked on the download, and when it went to install it gave me an error about unknown apps. so I allowed it. (Sorry notes spotty here, you can figure it out)

The app installed correctly and when I opened it, voila! It was the old Google Home app. AND it showed my Ghost Groups.

Here is where I got sloppy in note taking again: There was a list of audio groups, including the Ghost Groups, BUT there was also an area in the app listing "linked devices." Go figure some of those Ghost Audio groups were here too. Strange.

So I deleted everything - meaning I got rid of the linked devices that were obviously Ghost Audio groups AND I deleted all of my audio groups.

Here is an important catch:

I had to go back and forth between my two Pixels, the P2 running the old Google Home app , and the P6 running the new Google Home app, to validate groups actually got deleted, and then try to delete them on both phones until they all deleted. The P2 would occasionally give an error about not being able to delete a group, and upon refresh, the group would appear again. So I went back and forth between devices (old Google Home app and new Google Home app) and deleted groups until upon refresh on both phones EVERYTHING (all audio groups) was gone. Again sorry I did not get an exact order here to determine "rhyme or reason."

Once all audio groups were gone, I recreated them in the new Google Home App on the P6. This includes the Home group. Initially not all speakers worked when I casted something. So I removed and re-added them one by one until they all worked. I suspect there is a settling time to when all devices are set and ready to cast. So I needed to be patient. But I fear my patience and coffee ran out a few years ago.

Then I said, "Hey Google, play X on Home group" AND IT WORKED. But for how long?

Then next morning I got up and tried, and got an error message about going to the Google Home app and finishing setting up my main speaker. For some reason it was no longer completely set up in the Google Home App. I went to the new Google Home App and finished the set up a second time.

Everything has worked since, EXCEPT:

Yes, here it comes.... As I mentioned in a previous post, my radio station STILL plays with low audio sampling bit rate , such that it sounds like it is in a can. As I said in a previous post, I went back to my P2 and cast from there, and it cast at a higher rate with much better clarity.

So still no fix/workaround for the low bit rate when streaming.

QUICK ADVICE:

Do NOT turn in your old Pixel/Android phone for a rebate on a new one. Keep it for moments like this when you have to troubleshoot.

Keep an old copy of Google Home apk handy for the future (it could be taken down). As a matter of fact, install it on your old phone and DO NOT let Google Play update it.

FINAL COMMENTS:
I will leave the editorial comments about Google to you. Despite the temptation, please don't just complain  and leave. Rather Offer constructive criticism and ideas for improvement. A little humor as a relief valve OK. After all, we are a community.  As said before, Google has come up with some really cool stuff that, when it works, it is really nice. 

Ideas for improvement for Google:

Offer a Google Home Dashboard for our devices. This includes a dashboard on Android and on the web.

In this dashboard, allow us to get a single view of all of our homes, accounts, devices, status, data being accessed, and history (including past actions with our devices/groups, etc). Provide the ability to troubleshoot in this dashboard.

Give us the ability to see ALL data that is being stored and where that data is being stored. Give us direct access to all data that is ours and/or related to us due to our ownership and activity with Google Home and devices. Give us the ability to quickly and easily clean things up, delete them, fix them, etc, without having to, well Google, multiple links for solution and then come up with our own workaround after hours of frustration.

Provide a real time connectivity and "packet walk" diagram, meaning, when I say "Hey Google, do X" the dashboard will show EXACTLY where the communication goes, from home to Google servers and back. If there is a problem along the way, show us. There could be a problem en route to your servers in the cloud, or on our own LAN, and you can help us see it more directly.

Put real time updates if there is a problem, especially if multiple people report it through their dashboard. Attach fixes (links to solution) to these reports as they are discovered for these problems and keep a log of it in the dashboard.

And please have tech support chime in with root cause analysis and fix rather than leave it up to the community to figure it out.

If there is a settling time for devices when we make a change to our home, such as add a device to a group, SHOW us this in the dashboard. Show us if a group is ready with all devices, or if there are some devices that need to catch up.

Show us what bit rate audio streams are at and give us the direct ability to change it.

Again: Give us the ability to quickly and easily change/clean things up, delete them, fix them, etc, without having to, well Google, multiple links for solution and then come up with our own after hours of frustration.

I hope this helps! Yeah, sorry not sorry for the verbosity. I obviously like to troubleshoot, and write, and help others with completeness. 😉 But hey, it could be step by step and leave out the nuance you need to understand the nature of the problem to be able to venture out on your own troubleshooting journey to help the rest of us. We need our own open source community Google to Google what we do to support Google. 😉

[RussdaFuss]

EDIT:

Rejoiced too soon! It's not working anymore.

I haven't had any problems with ghost groups so far.

However, my Nest Hub Gen. 1 does not play music in the speaker group. I still installed the old version of Google Cast and deleted my only speaker group and then recreated it in Google Home.

Something definitely seems to have changed, as the Nest Hub was playing music on the speaker group, at least this morning. Let's wait and see how long it stays like this.

[aesopal]

Just an update to say my setup (as I predicted in a previous post) has suddenly started working again, for the last couple of days I no longer have to remove/ re-add a speaker to a group to get a temporary fix. I guess it's expected to a certain extent with a cloud based service, but I don't think Google a particularly great at acknowledging issues with it; alot of our time is wasted messing around with irrelevant endpoint account settings 🤔

[LJS_LasVegas]

All last weekend, my script didn't work and I would unplug and plug in one speaker then wait a minute or two for it to reinitialize.  Then "that" speaker would know about the group.
Early Monday my script worked and the speakers listened, but did not remember the speaker groups for the day.
Starting Tuesday and ever since, I have not had any problems (it is now Friday morning).  Yay!

[XonMus]

My speaker group has been working fairly consistently the last two or three days as of this writing (2024-03-01).

I have a Lenovo Smart Clock and part of my "Good Morning" routine is to have it play a TuneIn station to my speaker group.  This morning it seemed to fail, and started playing through my clock instead, which I interpret as being a fallback if it's unable to find the speaker group specified in the routine.  However, I stopped playing through the clock, asked it to play the station to the group, and it worked.  I've started and stopped the radio playback several times today without any problems.

Throughout this, I chose not to do any extensive troubleshooting, as my past experience has taught me to give it about a week to see if it gets fixed behind-the-scenes before wasting time messing with my own set-up.

[Dippie]

My group is finally working too. Google may have posted an update we didn't know about since firmware updates are done without intervention anyway. 

[SorryICantFinda]

And, if this is indeed the case, it simply highlights a prime weakness of cloud computing: lack of visibility into what is going on, causing lost time as individual customers and wasted time as a community while we troubleshoot together, only to find out that cloud services provider changed things without communicating what is going on on the back end and/or did not in stay touch with the community to learn something broke with the change.     My idea above for a dashboard need to include firmware status and changes.   This is actually an opportunity for Google AI to step in and act as tech support and customer service rep, keeping track of these community posts and making sure we are well informed about what is happening with what we spent our money on and entrusted to Google to take care of for us.