I have several speakers with the Assistant on them, including the original Google Home, some Nest Minis, and a new Nest speaker that is a couple months old. I have them organized in groups through the Google Home app, and I play music on them by voice command, using YouTube Music as my primary service.
Over the last few days, when playing music to any group, the Assistant will not follow voice commands, because it keeps asking me which speaker to do the action on and then it gets stuck. So, for example, this happens if I am listening to music and say, “Hey Google, skip this song.” It will then respond, on one of the speakers, asking “Which device did you want to do that on?” and it will list off some of my speakers’ names. But there is no response I can give that satisfies it, even though I respond with the exact name of a speaker. The Assistant just repeats the question two or three times and then when it all ultimately fails, speaks a message about needing to select a device for commands. But when this happens, literally every speaker is playing the same thing, in synch, and the question about which speaker should skip the song makes no sense.
This happens with other commands where it is equally nonsensical. “Hey Google, give this song a thumbs-up.” “What device would you like to do that on?” Wait — what??
Is this more fallout from that Sonos lawsuit, because it has to do with the behavior of speaker groups? I know that I can do things like skip songs through the Google Home app, but my family relies heavily on voice commands because we have someone using an AAC device (in this case, a specialized, dedicated tablet that you control with your eyes that produces speech), and that person can only interact with the Assistant by voice. We absolutely cannot give up the use of voice commands.
