Google Home, some work and some don't

Very odd behavior that started about 2 days ago. I can say the same command to 4 different GH devices in my home (turn off/on XYZ light) and it only works on one. What’s more odd is I relinked my ST account and it fixed mine and broke my daughter’s. So I relinked hers and it broke mine. What’s even weirder is she can come in and use the working one and it works for her. I go and use a non working one and it doesn’t work for me, so I don’t think it’s the personalized voice recognition. All other GH commands seems to work fine. We all have personalized our voices but we all use my ST account. Any thoughts? Kind of worried this is related to the new app or account migration. :-/

EDIT: Almost certain its an account issue now. I tried re-linking on my other daughter’s account and that started working and the others stopped. It seems who ever is the primary sign in on the device, if you link that account, those devices work and the rest stop.

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Some more info, I tried having my wife user her ST account when connecting her Google Assitant and it made no difference. Notably she is not the primary (first linked) on any device, just my 2 daughters and I. I’m getting pretty certain that the issue is the primary account on the device has to have a valid ST account signed in. My daughters don’t have ST accounts because I’m not comfortable with their access to adjust setup yet. Tonight I might try to make my account primary on one of my daughters and see if that fixes it. Also reported to St support but not response yet. Looking at the Google Home help forums I am not seeing reports that sound similar. . . but I am seeing a ton of reports with account linking issues spawned by the recent GH email to relink home automation accounts.

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My Google Home’s in common areas are set to “guest mode”. That way the whole voice account thing doesn’t matter and everybody can use the commands.

What does guest mode do? I thought it enabled cast access without being on the same wifi network?

I had an issue awhile back where harmony commands like “tv volume up” and other ghome shortcuts would only work if it recognized my voice. So I considered setting up my wife’s gaccount with the exact same shortcuts but my kids still wouldn’t be able to use the voice commands. The’re too young for gmail accounts, 6, 4 yrs. Also house guests couldn’t use my shortcuts either. So ended up chatting support at google and he recommended guest mode. Basically, whichever google account is the primary, anybody who asks can get any info they want like calendar, reminders etc for that account, they can also make calls to the contacts for the gmail. If that’s is a no go for u, maybe have a dummy gmail account for the fam? Most importantly though, guest mode enables a gaccount’s ghome “shortcuts” to be executed by any voice. Our family is still logged into the ghomes and the bedroom bath phone ghomes are not on guest mode.

Anybody can cast to chromecasts that’s on the same wifi I think with or without guest mode enabled. I think guest mode also puts a pin on the tv to enter to cast without being on the local wifi. Not sure exactly but I trust everybody in my house :slight_smile:

google home and guest mode help site

Also, I remember having a similar issue to yours “some work and some don’t” except mine was just one didn’t work right, but the others did. I ended up factory resetting it and it’s been fine ever since. However, I’m on the preview (beta) program for most of them except that one lol. The chromecasts are all on the BETA preview as well.

So tonight I unlinked both my daughters accounts from the problematic GHs and then relinked them and all seems back to normal. So pretty sure it comes down to two factors. One, seems like ST account can only be linked to a single Google account and function, and two, the primary account on the GH must be the one with the ST account linked to it. Still no response from support.

Interesting, my wife and I both have ST accounts and both have Gmail accounts logged into the same Google home. I don’t know if she used her ST login for “home control” of Smartthings login in ghome app. I’m guessing it’s my ST login. It wouldn’t matter right, ST users all have the same voice options currently right? Like living room lamp off etc.

That’s known I believe. Here’s step 2 of theinstructions for linking ST with Google home

  1. Verify that the Google account that is listed is the one you used to set up Google Home. To switch accounts, click the dropdown arrow to the right of the account name
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Yes, good point. So it must be more tied to trying to tie the same ST account to more than one Google account. Both my daughters’ accounts and mine were all tied to my ST account but only if the GH primary account was the last to have linked ST did it work.

This all worked fine (in violation of my new hypothesised rules) until the last few days, and I think coincided with Google asking me to relinked my account. Silly me following that direction when everything was working. I just got tempted by maybe some new functionality I wasn’t aware of.

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well, detailed analysis is hard to come by. Especially with apple and google trying to make complex things simple and basic. Also, the update notes for the phone apps are almost always blank or one sentence but can change problems like these a lot!

I had weird ghome issue back in the beginning. I had to use IFTTT to allow my wife to control my smartthings stuff when she wasn’t home (on the wifi). Back then it was the only way to use a different gassitant gmail account with the same ST login.