Google speaker keeps playing music after I tell it to stop

[Palazzo]

Hi,

I've seen a few threads with the issue that when asking a Google Home device to "Stop" when playing media, it restarts again after a few minutes. There haven't been any posted solutions.

What I discovered when playing "Times Radio" via TuneIn on my home mini was that the "Hey Google, Stop" command only puts the media into a Paused mode rather than cancelling it completely as you would expect.

I discovered this by checking the device status on my Google Home android app.

I tried a few other commands "Cancel", "Stop Playing" etc and all only seem to pause the media.

It then spontaneously seem to restart after 5 minutes or so.

I've been using this device for probably 2 years now without this issue - it just appeared in the last couple of weeks, so I assume it's a bug in a recent software update.

Can someone confirm the bug and when it will be fixed, or, if it's a new "feature", what commands can be used to completely stop the media playing?

[LFS]

For me, I encountered issues where "stop" doesn't stop the playback totally. If you look into the Google Home app, the music is simply paused and needs to be manually stopped to totally disconnect. I have had feedback on this problem before but it seems like the software team ignored the problem.

Another issue I encountered was my stop command was totally ignored. The nest mini just blinked the LEDs a few times and the music continued.

[Palazzo]

@LFS Thanks. For all I know this may always have been the case, but it didn't spontaneously restart playing until a few days ago, so maybe there is another recent change causing my issue. 

[Stevemedia]

Hi,

Had the same problem. Tried on/off, Factory reset, no difference

The speaker, 1st generation mini, totally ignored the "Stop" command.

Tried all of the "stop" words I could think of, none of mine worked.

So I went on line and asked for synonyms for Stop. Printed the list and worked my way through it.
Some worked, some didn't.
After each successful stop, I tried the usual command. The first few, no change "Stop" didn't work.
However after one of them, I'm sorry I can't remeber which one, "Stop" worked as expected.

No gaurantees but it worked for me.

Good Luck.

[Palazzo]

Thanks @Stevemedia. Not sure it's the same problem as my device does respond to "stop". However, in that response it is just pausing the media and then seems to unpause it spontaneously after about 5 minutes. My guess is that as I'm streaming radio from the Internet, I expect the device's buffer gets full which forces the restart.

So my key issue is that "stop" pauses the media stream instead of cancelling it completely as I would expect. 

[ReneeSNL]

I am having the exact same problem. I have two home mini devices and the issue is only happening with just one of them. Very frustrating 

[amandastefanik5]

Here's me 4 months after your comment & 1 out of 5 devices (4 mini) does this exact thing. I say "stop playing music" (angrily too lol) & randomly throughout the day it will just resume! I've yelled upstairs to my son thinking it was him & never was. The weirdest part is the fact its just 1 device. However, it is the main "mini" I use for music, the 2nd is Lenova Smart Display & doesn't do this.

[Palazzo]

I've done some more research.

My Google Home minis running cast firmware 1.56.313652 both exhibit this issue i.e. when I say "Play Times Radio" and then "Stop" they Pause the media. The playing resumes spontaneously after approximately 5 minutes.

My Lenovo display Google device  running cast firmware 1.56.285116 completely stops the stream when I say "Stop" (which is what I expect, and what I think the Minis used to do until last week).

Is there any way of rolling back the Mini software so I can test if earlier versions worked OK?

[LFS]

The latest firmware seems to give the Nest Minis (I only have them) all sorts of problems. I made a few other posts in the community and it seems the issues started only with this current firmware.

[Juni]

Hi folks,

@Stevemedia, thanks for the help.

@Palazzo and @LFS, have you tried the steps provided by Stevemedia? You can also try to reboot your WiFi router to refresh its signal. 

Let me know how it goes.

Thanks,

Juni

[Palazzo]

Hi @Juni ,

Have tried those steps, but unlike @Stevemedia I don't have any issue with the device recognising the "Stop" command. It's just that it pauses the media playing when I use that command instead of cancelling it.

Prior to about a week ago, the "Stop" command WOULD cancel the playback completely. My Lenovo Google display DOES cancel the playback with the same "Stop" command, so it suggests that different versions of google home software do different things for the same command. I think the bug is in the software now being deployed on the Google minis.

[Juni]

Hi Palazzo,

Thanks for the response. Coul you send us a short video clip showing your issue?

Below are the steps on how to upload a video:

1. Start a new post.
2. Click Insert Image.
3. Choose an image source location.
4. Follow the on-screen instructions

Also, you can tap the "Drag and Drop" option. Maximum attachment is 5 MB.

Thanks,

Juni

[Palazzo]

Hi Juni,

To summarise my issue is that when I says "Hey Google, Stop" the media playback is paused instead of cancelled and then starts to play again spontaneously after  a number of minutes.

I have attached 6 screen prints but can't seem to upload videos (Mp4s under 5MB. When I drag/drop I get "You do not have permission to upload video."), however the 2 missing videos "2 - Telling Google to stop.mp4" and "5 - Telling Google to Stop again.mp4" just show me saying "Hey Google, Stop" each time and the Google Home Mini going silent.

Note that there is 19 minutes between step 3 and 4 when the media starts playing again on its own.

1 - At start playing media

3 - After Stop media is Paused

4 - Media starts playing again spontaneously

 

6 - Media is just paused again

7 - Mnually stopping media using Stop Casting button in app

8 - media now properly stopped

     

[Princesss]

Hi Palazzo,

Thanks for the additional info you've shared. We'd be happy to take a look into this for you. Please fill out this form with all the needed information then let me know once done.

Best,

Princess

[ByronPowell]

Mine does the same thing.  It started a few months ago, I have to go in the app and manually stop it from playing.  I have the Big Google Speaker for a few years now, and it has never done this before, until a few months ago.  I thought I was tripping, glad to see this is an ongoing issue with others.

[Doug5]

That is a very unhelpful response. All you will hear is what is described. A video won’t do anything. Tunein turns itself back on all the time. And neither them or google seems inclined to fix the problem. I had to open google home app to shut it down. I will not use this application again 

[gbf]

Exactly. It seems like this started happening after Tune In started interrupting the broadcast with ads. Up until a few months ago, they never did that, and I never had a problem. The only reason they want us to show a video is because they don't believe us. I've complained several times with Tune In and they have yet to fix the issue and keep wanting me to send a video. Am I supposed to run my videocam all day, hoping that sometime today will be the day when the station keeps turning on after I turn it off multiple times? 

[ToasterBoy]

I’ve suspected it had to something to do with them interrupting the radio stream with their own ads, since that seemed to start around the same time, and I finally got some evidence. Usually I’m not there when the stream resumes, but yesterday I was, and it started up again with a TuneIn ad. It’s possible that the “stop” command had always merely paused, but these ads now prompt it to resume playing. 

[GrahamReaper]

That is exactly what is happening.  I was sitting in my office and told it to stop after listening to a tune in station for my work day.  After about 30 minutes, it started playing again while I was sitting here with nothing going on.  It was playing the ad that Tune In forces into the stream.  This has been happening to me for about a week, ever since my preferred radio station had to fix their tune in stream, and these weird ads from tune in started interrupting my music.  It will turn speakers back on in the middle of the night, extremely annoying.  

[gbf]

Are you reading the posts? It's not feasible to post a video when you don't know when the issue will happen. Just take our word for it- it happens and it's really annoying.

[gbf]

It's not just Google minis. My regular Google Home does the same thing.

[ToasterBoy]

I’ve had this exact issue during the same time period, also with radio stations via TuneIn. Often I will tell it to “stop”, then go into the app and the “stop casting” button is still displayed, which is a clue that it is merely paused even though it no longer indicates what was playing.  The only thing I’ve found that actually stops the stream from starting up again later is to click “stop casting” in the app. I do wonder if this could be an issue with TuneIn rather than the google controls. 

[Princesss]

Hi ToasterBoy,

We appreciate you sharing some info about this. Right now, we'd like to check further what's causing this to happen. By the way, have you already tested it using a different music service instead of using TuneIn? Are they showing the same behavior?

Best,

Princess

[gbf]

So far, I've been using Audacy for the last week and a half- the issue has not happened. The same can be said about just switching to another TuneIn station. I listened to that for 2 weeks and it didn't happen. For me, for now, it's just with that one TuneIn station, but I can see from these other posts that it's not just that one station.

[radiorice]

I have the exact same problem with Apple Music. I tell my Google Home Mini to stop, it stops, then after about 5 minutes is just starts again. Very annoying.

[ToasterBoy]

I’ve been testing with YouTube music but it hasn’t happened, though it didn’t happen every time with TuneIn either. Yesterday I played a radio station on TuneIn on a nest mini, and at some point told it to “stop.” I went into another room where I have a nest hub and found it’s screen showing the TuneIn stream paused on the nest mini. I didn’t wait for it to start playing again and the screen cleared when I told the hub to stop. 

[ToasterBoy]

I was just playing TuneIn on “all speakers” (a speaker group I set up), said “Hey google, stop all speakers” to my Hub, and got the response “sure, stopping all speakers.” The resulting screen on my Hub showed that it had merely paused.

Of course, since this is a live stream, pausing TuneIn for more than a few seconds rarely works as it might with on-demand audio sources. When told to resume it plays to the end of its buffer and then there’s silence. When that happens after pausing I’ve usually told it to stop, then given a command to start the same stream anew. Perhaps if I waited long enough it would eventually start playing again? Is this the issue?

Yesterday I came home to a nest mini playing the TuneIn station I had stopped before going out.  

[ToasterBoy]

Just replicated the issue. I played a TuneIn station, then told it to “stop” after a few minutes. It merely paused. Several minutes later it just started playing the current stream from that station. I assume that once the buffer ran out, it started streaming the TuneIn station anew. It doesn’t seem to happen every time though!

[Palazzo]

Thanks - yep I think that's exactly the issue I have.

[Dan_A]

Hi ToasterBoy,

I'm sorry to hear you're having the same concern. Have you tried doing all the steps above including the factory reset of your Nest Mini? Just in case, here's how and tell me how it goes.

Best,

Dan

[ToasterBoy]

I have 4 minis and a hub so it will be a bit before I find time to reset and reconfigure them all. I’ve honestly been meaning to anyway, as the wrong devices often answer (the one in the next room instead of the one two feet from me) even though I have sensitivity turned down on them all. I think I may have clicked the wrong button once when the hub asked if the wrong device answered, and there doesn’t seem to be any way to change that through the app.

[Dan_A]

Hello everyone,

Have you all tried the steps on how to factory reset your device? Kindly click the link above so that you can match the steps on the kind of device you have.If you have multiple devices could you confirm what those are? Also, you can just reset one device to check if the behavior still happen after the reset.

Best regards,

Dan

[CapDave]

I did do the factory reset and it still just pauses the music when a stop command is received. We have to go into Google home app and stop it from there.

[gbf]

I tried factory resetting my Google Home and it didn't work.

[RowingWumpus]

I have this problem on when using the TuneIn app on my phone as well as my 2 home minis. With my phone app I physically press the stop icon and don't close the app. In about 30 minutes it resumes playing. My home minis resumed playing on their own a couple of months ago and then they worked properly  until this weekend. One mini resumed playing after being told to stop playing a radio station from TuneIn and the other resumed after my sleep timer from the TuneIn app on my phone stopped the radio station I was casting to it 

[JeffSide]

I'm experiencing the same issues with my two nest minis since the last two months or so and it is very annoying.

Same thing when using TuneIn: the command to stop playing the casting stops for only a few minutes,  then it restarts itself.

Furthermore,  the command to stop playing the casting in <minutes> doesn't work when casting from Spotify. 

I bought one of my two minis for this exact purpose. It used to work out well until an update came in in October I guess...

I know for a fact that these issues are also experienced with owners of google home.

Please do fix these issues quickly.

Best regards 

[CapDave]

Been having the same issue as everyone else here. Same FW version as previous people. Get's frustrating when you stop music when you leave the room to go to bed and the music restarts.
I don't think this is an issue with this many people setting / wifi as has been suggested here and other threads. This needs to be fixed on the Google, Stop and Pause are two different things, also just to comment why would Pause be only for 5 minutes, if I pause something it should stay paused till I say resume. If I pause to take a phone call I don't want the music to start again while I am still on the phone...save that one for another thread...

[Jaymes85]

I am having the exact same issue with my mini devices. Telling them 'stop' merely pauses them and then they restart. I agree - stop should mean stop, and pause should mean pause - not start again on it's own with no imput.

Google - YOU NEED TO FIX THIS!

[Dan_A]

Hi folks,

I really appreciate your efforts and patience ― could you humor me on this last request of mine? Would you try to play a song not from your Nest speakers but only from the Google Assistant on your phone. Pull up Google Home app, tap the mic icon at the bottom and give a voice command to play music and see if the behavior persists.

Keep me posted.

Thanks,

Dan

[Palazzo]

Hi

For my device called "Music Google Mini"

If I issue the command "play xxxxx on Music Google Mini" followed by "stop playing music on Music Google Mini" via the app, the "stop" command DOES completely stop the music.