Android Auto voice recognition has gone nuts/unusable

[sidr]

Help! In the car today, with Android Auto (wired), Pixel 6a phone, Android Auto was unusable. Voice commands were interpreted by the system as being a garbled collection of words, mostly with random names from my phone book instead of street names and city names that Android Auto used to do flawlessly and that my phone, when not connected to Android Auto, still does flawlessly. I had to pull over a couple of times as a result of this, and because of my reliance on Android Auto since I got the car.

I've deleted the cache and then the storage of Android Auto. I've uninstalled and reinstalled it. I've rebooted the Sync screen. I've rebooted my phone (twice), I've gone into and out of airplane mode. I've turned the car off. Nothing seems to work. Neither my phone, nor Android Auto, seems to have received an update in the last day when this began happening. And once I'm no longer connected to the car, my phone itself does the voice commands just fine. All (good) suggestions welcome! Thanks everyone.

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[macchiaz-o]

Help! In the car today, with Android Auto (wired), Pixel 6a phone, Android Auto was unusable. Voice commands were interpreted by the system as being a garbled collection of words, mostly with random names from my phone book instead of street names and city names that Android Auto used to do flawlessly and that my phone, when not connected to Android Auto, still does flawlessly. I had to pull over a couple of times as a result of this, and because of my reliance on Android Auto since I got the car.

I've deleted the cache and then the storage of Android Auto. I've uninstalled and reinstalled it. I've rebooted the Sync screen. I've rebooted my phone (twice), I've gone into and out of airplane mode. I've turned the car off. Nothing seems to work. Neither my phone, nor Android Auto, seems to have received an update in the last day when this began happening. And once I'm no longer connected to the car, my phone itself does the voice commands just fine. All (good) suggestions welcome! Thanks everyone.

Is the vehicle's voice recognition working? Try something like "ok ford, find the nearest dispensary" or tap the steering wheel voice button and then say "what can I say?".

 

[macchiaz-o]

Also, try calling someone while you're in the car. Can they understand you?

... trying to figure out if the vehicle mic is working.

 

[sidr]

It seems like the Ford Assistant hears me ok, and phone calls go through ok. But with the Android Auto, it's like the speech recognition database is limited to (or strongly preferring) entries in my contacts on my phone instead of doing something intelligent locally or over the cloud. Data connections are fine, and this has happened in different locations. Also since last time, I've deleted my phone from the Mach-E and re-paired it, no luck.

 

[sidr]

I've now also deleted the cache from my Google app, no luck. Paying more attention now, when I speak something, the Android Auto gets it pretty close on the screen -- sort of like it does before it fixes typos -- but then a second or two later (and before it recognizes the command), the Android Auto changes everything to an assortment of contact names from my contact list, and gibberish.

It seems like the Ford Assistant hears me ok, and phone calls go through ok. But with the Android Auto, it's like the speech recognition database is limited to (or strongly preferring) entries in my contacts on my phone instead of doing something intelligent locally or over the cloud. Data connections are fine, and this has happened in different locations. Also since last time, I've deleted my phone from the Mach-E and re-paired it, no luck.

 

[macchiaz-o]

I've now also deleted the cache from my Google app, no luck. Paying more attention now, when I speak something, the Android Auto gets it pretty close on the screen -- sort of like it does before it fixes typos -- but then a second or two later (and before it recognizes the command), the Android Auto changes everything to an assortment of contact names from my contact list, and gibberish.

That is really bizarre.

 

[sidr]

Update, resolved: After finding that my wife's phone works, I cleared all the data (some 600mb, not merely the cache) from my Google app (not Android Auto app, which I had previously removed and reinstalled) on my Pixel, and the problem has gone away. I also discovered that if this happens again while I'm on the go, if I trigger the Google Assistant on my phone and speak into the phone, that it will communicate things properly to the car. Thank you for your help Jonathan.

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