Saturday 7 March 2020

Can't Click on Settings in Google Home App

So with Microsoft crapping all over Wunderlist now, my wife and I have had to find a new, free, syncable option that works with our Google Home Mini.

As we are in Canada, Google Shopping was unavailable - I liked that it was theoretically able to work offline - something we have found important in the past when we haven't had data on our phones, and something we still value as out in the country here, data and wifi are still things that aren't 100% reliable.

Today I thought again about Google Keep as another option - my wife had complained about the ads that appeared in Google Shopping, and we both didn't really like the interface.

After a few minutes fiddling with Google Keep, I was super happy to see how many boxes it actually checked off - and as a bonus, it looked like it could even fill in for my wife's Microsoft OneNote commitments.

I was able to use her Google Home App on her phone to switch the default note app on our Home Mini to Keep, so she can verbally add things to our shared shopping list.  Bonus!

Imagine my annoyance when on my Google Home App, I was unable to click on ANY of the Google Assistant options.

I removed and reinstalled Google Home - but no dice.  I started researching Google Assistant, and decided to re-download it onto my phone to see if I could get at the required settings through it.  It complained that there was a problem with my phone once it was installed.  That's when all these similar looking icons and logos made me wonder about their cross-integration.  I remembered that I had mercilessly gone through my phone and disabled all apps that I wasn't committed to using, and that were impossible to install.  An app called simply "Google" was on that list.  From my experience, it just served up time wasting news clips.

Re-enabling it, updating it, and then returning to my Google Home application suddenly allowed me to make the required changes.  I guess I could uninstall the assistant and the Google app again, but maybe I'll let them ride for a bit and see how intrusive they just may be.

TLDR: Ensure that the Google App on your phone is also enabled and updated before attempting to make changes in the Google Home App.