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Volume adjustments through Daily Routines stopped working

Sleepysheeep1
Community Member

Hi Google and @JillG ,

 

Thanks for responding to my previous comment. As requested, i've raised a new thread for this similar issue.

 

As mentioned on the other thread (link below), my daily routines are no longer adjusting the volume of my speakers.

 

I have a Daily Routine set up called "Daily Speaker Adjustments", which repeats on every day of the week, and the only purpose is to adjust the volumes of my google home mini speakers (both gen 1 and gen 2) at set times of the day.

 

All the adjustments are made using the Custom Action selection, and use the following format "Set volume on living room speaker to 25%" with only the speaker name and volume percentage being the variables

Each time that the routine hits a start time, i get a push notification on my phone saying that there has been an error with the routine, and to click for more details. When i click on the notification, it opens the Google Home App, and within it there is a list of each command for that particular time, and under each custom action is the exact same error message : "Sorry. I can't change the volume on this device".

 

This is the same error as people on the other thread are experiencing when they try to adjust the volume on their speaker pairs and / or groups.

 

I've had this routine working perfectly for absolutely ages (over a year) without issue, but it stopped working at the same time as all the other people started experiencing issues with changing volumes too. Due to the timing of both issues starting at the same time, and the error provided being the same, it appears as though the same bug is causing both issues - but i guess that's for the engineers to check.

 

I order to try and fix this, i have disconnected my speakers, dont factory resets on them, deleted my "Home" within the google home app, deleted rooms, deleted the routine itself - but when i set everything up again the error still persists.

 

https://www.googlenestcommunity.com/t5/Speakers-and-Displays/Google-Nest-Mini-gen-2-keeps-saying-quo...

 

20 REPLIES 20

JillG
Diamond Product Expert
Diamond Product Expert

I will escalate this as well to see if there is any known connection to the other issue surrounding speaker pair volume voice control.

Thanks for starting a new thread and links!

Edit: and if your routine is pairs of speakers this will likely be related but still, i've gone ahead and added your post to the escalation.

 

Hi.

 

No pairs of speakers anywhere in my set up. I do have various groups set up, but all the volume adjustments are targeting individual speakers rather than the groups.

 

On a separate note, the reason I adjust the volume on each individual speaker rather than using the group is because if I try set the volume on a group to 30%, it acts randomly on each speaker and will set speaker one to 15%, speaker two to 25% and speaker three to 50% and then happily tells me the whole group is at 30%. I'm not sure why that is, but I accepted it as a quirk a long time ago and moved on.... But if the engineers find themselves with spare time 😉

Jamesch
Community Member

Hi 

Please also check similar volume issue: https://www.googlenestcommunity.com/t5/Speakers-and-Displays/routine-to-reduce-volume-set-volume-to-...

 

Percentage doesn't work properly. I've woken up to blasting music because my routine was set to 8% and suddenly it was interpreted as 80. Now I figured out that it suddenly matters if I say (or command in any way) OF or ON.

What kind of fresh hell is this?

 

Milessimon
Community Member

I'm having an identical issue (although I use different volumes due to wanting different levels throughout the home), it started at the same time as yours but I've only just investigated. 

I'm not sure if this is relevant, but while I get the same error when the routine runs automatically, if I run it manually by hitting the play button in the list of routines, Home adjusts the media volume on my phone repeatedly, so it's interpreting "Adjust kitchen speaker volume to 35%" as "Adjust volume to 35%" when run manually but not when running automatically.

Sleepysheeep1
Community Member

I think I've found (the most frustrating convoluted) workaround for this, but it is not pretty and by no means absolves Google of fixing this ASAP.... But....

 

I created a new daily routine, and importantly this should have "no device" set as the device for audio.

Then rather than having the routine adjust the volume of all speakers during a single time band (e.g. 07:00) using a custom voice command, I've created a separate time band for each speaker, I.e. 07:00 for living room speaker, 07:01 for kitchen speaker, 07:02 for dining room speaker etc. The only action with each time band is to set the "adjust media volume" built in command to set the desired volume. The key bit here, is to set the relevant speaker as the device for audio for each time adjustment.

Whilst this is no where near as neat a solution, I have now managed to reset all speaker volumes on a daily basis, and also make time based adjustments for my childrens speakers.

 

Hope this helps anybody having similar issues.

 

But seriously Google, pull your finger out!!!

Clarify a bit please? First you say, "have no device set as the device for audio". Then at the bottom you say "set the relevant speaker as the device for audio for each time adjustment".  Can you paste your exact command please?

Sorry about that, not very clear was it.

There should be no device set for the routine as a whole, but instead set the device for each time adjustment individually.

 

Also, don't use a custom command, use the built in volume adjustment function.

Hopefully you can see the screenshots using the links below. The red box is where you need to ensure that there is no default audio device for the whole routine.

https://ibb.co/5FFV2cN

https://ibb.co/V2r4Qg7

Hope this helps... Mines been working as expected for the last few days

 

 

 

I don't see how to "set the relevant speaker" for each time. The standard adjust action doesn't let you refer to one.

It seems that the standard adjust volume routine action no longer exists for new routines. I created a new routine that just says "set speakername to volume 3". The voice says done. But when i look at the speaker it still says 50%".

Take a look at the 2nd of the two screenshots above. You need to ensure that the box is red is set to "No Device", and then within the box in the green you set the speaker you want to change.

And yes - voice adjustments through routines are still FUBAR'd

I see. The red at bottom I had correctly.  The blue doesn't exist for existing actions (dumb) which I was just editing.  So I will have to delete and readd each action.

Milessimon
Community Member

Sadly this doesn't work for me, I get the same error. When run automatically it says it can't do it, and when run manually it just changes my phone media volume.

It seems that this is actually a deliberate change because Google won't pay Sonos royalties after a US court ruled they infringed patents. 

As of today (11-FEB-2022), the Custom Action routines like "Set Volume to 25% on Kitchen Speaker" have started working again - can you check. Did Google fix the issue?

DeBee
Community Member

I've been trying to create a new speaker routine for an hour, and my issue was solved after reading your post and taking out the word "the" in "Set the volume to 25% on kitchen speaker." I've been meaning to create a new routine since Google broke my other routine after the Sonos settlement. Also, I think there must be a more elegant way to create yhis routine.  Right now I have a list of "set volume...", one for each speaker. 

I also have routines that used to work that changed volume on a single speaker.  Now it's inconsistent.  I had one routine withe several separate "set volume of spkrname to 30%. It always worked. Then all of a sudden it didnt work for only one of the speakers. The command for that speaker changed the smartphone media volume instead of the speaker volume.

So I changed all of the volume commands to the form "Set sprkname volume to 30%".  Now everything works again.

Clearly  the google assistant language processor has a long way to go.

Also, never have 2 word device or group names.  Spaces also confuse the language parser especially the YT MUSIC casting options.  

nkr1125
Community Member

As of today (11-FEB-2022), the Custom Action routines (setting volume percentage on individual speakers) have started working again. Did Google fix the issue? Are there any details of what fixes has been done on the Routines...

nkr1125
Community Member

As of 15-FEB-2022 evening, looks like they partially-broke Routine Commands again... if the routines have custom commands like "Set Speaker A volume to 35%", I am now getting an error response saying "The Maximum Volume is 10, what volume do you want to set?"; looks like it no more supports volume in percentages... Now, we need to have volume in context of 1 to 10... I changed the commands to "Set Speaker A volume to 3" and it worked. At least, I am happy the routines are still working 😊 .

Mikkie
Community Member

Thank you for your advice. I've scheduled my 4 speakers to volume 2 instead of 20% and it works a charm now with all 4 speakers in one routine.

Sleepysheeep1
Community Member

Well done to Google here... Gone from being able to set volume to 1% precision to 10% precision.

Kudos to them consistently making things worse... Eventually we'll be left with paperweights

 

Hey folks,
It looks like we have come to a solution so I'm going to be locking this thread. If you have any other concerns or questions, please feel free to create a new thread.

Have a great day.
Garrett DS