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Nest Audio pair always asks where to play music

Ianp
Community Member

Whenever I ask my Nest Audio speaker pair to play music or radio it always asks, “do you want to play this on speaker pair”? It almost never just plays the music or audio.

 

how can I fix this?

 

The desired solution is that it acts as a single device just as if I only had one device in the room, which would not need to ask me which device to play on.

19 REPLIES 19

GothamNY
Bronze
Bronze

Hi @Ianp, have you assigned the speaker pair to a location? One way to check is to look in your Home app...do you see the pair dangling at the bottom with a notation that it's not assigned to room? If so, pick the pair and assign it -- that should prevent asking where to play.  I'd also check to see if the speaker pair can be designated as the preferred source for audio.

Ianp
Community Member
 

Hi @GothamNY I do have the speakers individually in a room and then the pair made from them in the same room. I also have the speaker pair as the default speaker.

OK, so do both reside in the same room, say the living room or is one in the living room and the other in the den? I can't tell from "in a room" and "pair made from them in the same room."

Also, can you tell me the phrasing you're using to play music? Here's why this makes a difference - if you simply say "play music," it's logical for Assistant to ask where/how since in theory, you have 3 speakers: 2 individual speakers and 1 pair, it can't read minds, lol. So, if that's what you're doing, how about saying "Hey G, play music/radio on speaker pair." Is the result different?

Ianp
Community Member

I have a Google Home Mini in another room. When I ask it to play something it never once asks me where to play it. I believe this is standard functionality for a single device. This is what would happen if I only had a single Nest Audio, which is what happened until I decided I’d like two as a steep pair, but once you pair them they don’t seem to act like a single device as I expect.

 

Do I have the wrong expectations for what a pair should do?

 

 

To answer your specific question (hopefully 🙂 ) I have two Nest Audio in the same room. I have made a pair from those two Nest Audio speakers and they are the only speakers in that room. When I ask any Google device to play something I say, “hey Google play Radio 6”. I never specify the room as the default speaker for that room is the only speaker in the room. I do take you point about there being a possibility I might want it to play elsewhere, but then I would specify the device.

 

thanks for your help.

Great, I was asking for location because one of the conditions is that both speakers should be in the same room, hoping to rule out, by process of elimination, any potential issues on that end.

Yes it's the default speaker in the room, but in the Home system, as I mentioned earlier, it might have to do with how the system views what you have and how it needs to be instructed to avoid that nag. I understand what you might do and don't want to do, but if you're not willing to try the suggestion of specifying the pair I don't have any other suggestions. It is asking perhaps because it "sees" multiple options for such a generic request based on how it's set up under the hood, which is beyond any of our control. It's not necessarily how we see and expect -- it's fake intelligence.

Here's another way to look at it: you have two kids in the kitchen and you say "take out the trash" one says "me or do you want us both to take out the trash?" The speaker closest to you gets the command, blocks the other speaker from responding but the responding speaker "realizes" it's connected to the other so it asks do you mean me or do you want me to activate the pair. If you say no, the answering speaker is the only one to play. So, to avoid confusion and the nag one would say Hey G play music on speaker pair. A specific, instead of generic request.

Ianp
Community Member

I do take your point @GothamNY , but this seems only to be a Nest Audio thing and more specifically when you make a pair from Nest Audio speakers. A single Google Home Mini and a Google Max pair, which I have (in their own separate rooms) do not do this, only the Nest Audio pair I have. You've explained your point clearly, I fully understand this. Before take the decision to change practice to walk in to each room in the house and tell each Google product to play in that specific room and remember what I called that room each time then it seems I should work out if that is necessary when it only seems needed for a subset of Google products not all those I own.

 

What can we come up with together to explore this further? As I said when there is a single speaker in a room there is never a question about which speaker to use. Is there something happening in the room with the Nest Audio speaker pair that causes the pair to not be a full pair and see multiple speakers in the same room and then it makes sense it would ask about which one to play on?

 

Is there something new in the Nest Audio software and the way Google does multi-room recently that other speakers and speaker pairs that I own don't do? Does the Nest Audio recognise that I may have played music in another room before entering the room with the pair and that causes the question? What is the purpose of a room if not to isolate the speakers and therefore prevent this.

OK, so let me ask some questions -- remember I can't and don't see what you see so I'm trying to grasp what you've got. So my first question is are the devices you're pairing identical? The rule is all paired devices must be the same device/generation. So Mini2/Mini2, but not a Mini2/Mini1. Moreover, both speakers in a pair must reside in the same room, pairing can't span rooms, speaker groupings can. Moreover, in a pair, when the above conditions are met and they are set up correctly, the left speaker is the only speaker that answers and responds, the other is basically a slave and the pair are seen as one speaker, not two. So maybe we have to try an unthread the needle a bit, haha.

Now, don't laugh @Ianp but my house is littered with every Nest speaker and video device known to man except the new Nest Audios, lol, so I may ask dumb questions about it because I don't have one and can't test, which is what I usually do in situations like this.

Ianp
Community Member

I have got quite a lot of devices myself, no video products, but most of the audio ones and some thermostats. I did wonder if my issues were rare ones because maybe fewer people had lots of them, but nice to know I’m not alone.

 

To your question: both Nest Audio devices are identical, bought at the same time and are in the same room. No other devices are in the room and the devices are not in a group.

OK, no guarantee this will work, but it's the only place we haven't gone yet with this:

If any of the instructions below are unclear come back with questions before following any of it:

  1. Unpair those two devices and make sure they both work independently.
  2. Not sure what handheld devices you use, but if it's Android, go to the device settings/apps/Home app. From there, go to storage & cache. Clear the cache. Do not clear storage in this section it will wipe any and every device you have set up -- you will be angry.
  3. Then find Google Play Services in this section of settings and again clear cache. Do not touch Manage storage, angry doesn't describe what you'll be if you touch that.
  4. Reboot your phone, the two speakers, your modem, and the router.
  5. When all of that fires up again, check that the two speakers work independently.
  6. Pair the speakers again.
  7. 🤞

To repeat -- if any of this is unclear come back before doing any of it. 🙂

Ianp
Community Member

I have an iPhone, but my girlfriend has an Android phone. I think that she has the power to administer the Home in Google Home app so I can see if this will work.

 

Before I continue though is this clearing the app cache or the device cache? I have an iPhone, iPad and my girlfriend's Samsung phone so if this is clearing the app cache should I do this on all devices?

 

In trying to find the cache setting on my iPhone I was unsuccessful, but I did find two different homes. One is what I call the home and one is named for the address of the home. This could be a massive red herring, but if the same devices are in two homes would that cause a conflict? I think that the original home was named by my and then later I merged my Nest account with Google and that has a home that was named by the address of the home. Could this merger of accounts cause that problem.

 

My thoughts are that I delete all homes in my account except the one that matters. What do you think?

"Before I continue though is this clearing the app cache or the device cache?"

Clearing the app cache -- as I said, clearing the device cache wipes everything, choose the one on the right "clear cache."

"I have an iPhone, iPad and my girlfriend's Samsung phone so if this is clearing the app cache should I do this on all devices?"

On an iDevice, the option in settings for the app is a toggle "background refresh."

"This could be a massive red herring, but if the same devices are in two homes would that cause a conflict?"

I can't say for sure, but this little detail would have been very very helpful much earlier in the conversation, lol, as it would have suggested a totally different path to troubleshooting. Going back to my kids and the trash -- think for a second, one pair of speakers operating in two "Home" setups for the same location; that scenario might very well lead to asking which device. 

Ianp
Community Member

"Before I continue though is this clearing the app cache or the device cache?"

Clearing the app cache -- as I said, clearing the device cache wipes everything, choose the one on the right "clear cache."

I apologise for the ambiguity: is this clearing the app on the phone's cache or the Nest Audio's cache. I wanted to check where this suggestion was operating so I understood what it was attempting to do.

 

"On an iDevice, the option in settings for the app is a toggle "background refresh."

I'll try this later today, thanks.

 

The red herring was a red herring. There is no difference now that my iPhone has only one Home with all devices on it. However, I did notice that the problem we're investigating occurred only once my girlfriend had started to play the radio in her office. At that point when I went to the room with the Nest Audio pair it asked me where to play my radio. Before that I was playing music everywhere without problems.


@Ianp wrote:

"Before I continue though is this clearing the app cache or the device cache?"

Clearing the app cache -- as I said, clearing the device cache wipes everything, choose the one on the right "clear cache."

I apologise for the ambiguity: is this clearing the app on the phone's cache or the Nest Audio's cache. I wanted to check where this suggestion was operating so I understood what it was attempting to do.

You're clearing the cach for the Home app AND Google Play services as explained. Nest's speakers, to my knowledge have no separate cache.

 

"On an iDevice, the option in settings for the app is a toggle "background refresh."

I'll try this later today, thanks.

 

The red herring was a red herring. There is no difference now that my iPhone has only one Home with all devices on it. However, I did notice that the problem we're investigating occurred only once my girlfriend had started to play the radio in her office. At that point when I went to the room with the Nest Audio pair it asked me where to play my radio. Before that I was playing music everywhere without problems.

Here again, this is another detail that can cause a problem when playing music in an offsite location. If you're using one account for music and you're not using a family account you can't play music in multiple places -- this too can result in asking WHERE to play and thus a different set of questions from me. Are there any other details you need to share? We're trying to solve a problem that may not be what you think and the red herrings are not red herrings at all -- this too is relevant to what's happening and should have been explained in the original post, especially since this "problem" started when your girlfreind began using the music account in her office. Prior to that, the speakers worked as designed, so it's not the speakers.


 

Ianp
Community Member

You're clearing the cach for the Home app AND Google Play services as explained. Nest's speakers, to my knowledge have no separate cache.

Okay, understood. How does this affect whether Nest Audio pairs ask me if I want to play on a device or not? Just trying understand how this works in the whole Google ecosystem.

Ianp
Community Member

Here again, this is another detail that can cause a problem when playing music in an offsite location. If you're using one account for music and you're not using a family account you can't play music in multiple places -- this too can result in asking WHERE to play and thus a different set of questions from me. Are there any other details you need to share? We're trying to solve a problem that may not be what you think and the red herrings are not red herrings at all -- this too is relevant to what's happening and should have been explained in the original post, especially since this "problem" started when your girlfriend began using the music account in her office. Prior to that, the speakers worked as designed, so it's not the speakers.

 

It is worth investigating whether one of the sources being used by us is not registered to her account directly and so may default to my account. I checked and Spotify is definitely linked to separate accounts within our family plan. I do not know if BBC Sounds accounts are working the same. However, BBC Sounds allows me to play multiple streams on different devices so at least it's not the same as Spotify when it stops you playing on two devices.

 

With respect to the problem at hand. This only happens with Nest Audio pairs, not single speakers and not with my Google Home Max pair. I'd love to solve it with this account specific set-up we are investigating, but I'm still confused as to why no other speaker I own exhibits this behaviour.

 

GarrettDS
Community Specialist
Community Specialist

Hey there,
Just wanted to jump in here to check to make sure that you saw our response. Please let us know if you have any other questions or concerns as I will be locking this in 24 hours.

Have a great day.
Garrett DS
 

frances
Community Specialist
Community Specialist

Hi All,

 

We haven't heard any updates from you. I'll go ahead and lock this thread. If you're still experiencing problems, feel free to start a new thread and we'll be happy to help.

frances
Community Specialist
Community Specialist

Hi All,

 

First, thank you GothamNY for answering the question.

 

Hello Ianp, just wanted to check in. Do you have any other questions or concerns? Thank you. 

Ianp
Community Member

@frances Please see above, I know you are measured on closing out open community threads, but please give us time when our real lives, which get in the way of being available 24/7 to answer questions, don't get you a resolved thread in the first couple of days. It's frustrating and annoying.