Navigate to... Broken for Many in Google Now

[cgavula]

I've been trying to find an answer to this for a while. It looks like sometime around the 4.4.2 update, Google Now has been broken for a quite a few users, especially those who have a Nexus 4 or 5 or a Moto X.

The bug appears to be this: If you say "Navigate to..." and you specify and address, all is fine. If you say "Navigate Home" it doesn't work. It brings up a Google search for "home" instead. Same for "Navigate to work". It also seems to fail when trying to navigate to a contact. For some people, one of these might work but not the others. In any case, the larger process seems broken.

The suggestions I've read include, clearing caches to factory resetting the device. I've read suggestions to reset the home and work addresses in Google Maps (both online and on the device). I've seen suggestions to check the "personal" option in Google Now. I've seen suggestions to try using a different Google account. This last one seems to work but is completely a stupid solution in my estimation and doesn't really fix the problem, it just goes around it in a fairly drastic way.

I've done all of that and none of it works (except the account change). Why can't Google seem to fix this problem? I'm tired of reading how great Google Now is when they can't even fix a bug like this! It's this kind of nonsense and inconsistency that makes people run to iOS. Come on, Google, fix this already! I know it doesn't affect everyone, but it seems to affect a LOT of users.

Ironically, when you say "Navigate to work" and it falls back to a Google search instead of navigating, some of the top search items are about how the command is failing for people!

Has anyone found any real solution that has consistently worked?

 

[hallux]

Just did it, totally hands-free and it worked fine. I'm on 4.4.2, said "OK Google Now, Navigate Home". Of course, it said I'd arrived as soon as it went into navigation since I'm sitting at home...

 

[cgavula]

I have read about this problem so many places and seen so many solutions - none of which worked for me.

Today - I finally found out where my "work" and "home" were stuck and preventing navigate to... from working for these locations. Short form - they were stuck in my Google+ account, but NOT in the places category. It was my contact settings for home and work. They were set to blank in my Google plus profile. It didn't matter that I had them set in my phone. It didn't matter that I had them set in Google Maps (both on Android and on the web). Caches - meaningless. In the end, it came down to the fact that those values were blank in my Google+ account - THAT is what stopped the service from working.

I'm glad I found it and fixed it but that is a really stupid reason for that service to fail to work! Bad design, Google!

 

[SquaredCircle]

Sorry to bump an older thread, but I came across this while trying to find a solution for myself. I'm running KitKat on a Galaxy S4 (Verizon), and I'm having this same problem. Navigate home and navigate to work bring up a search (which is how I found this thread), but navigating to a specific address is fine.

I tried all of the suggestions in this thread, but nothing is working for me. This is incredibly frustrating. Just wondering if anybody else is experiencing this or if anyone has a new possible solution.

 

[ressmad]

I, like so many, was getting really frustrated with this failure to navigate to home or to work. My experience matched the experience I hear from so many people on this forum and on others too. I have a Moto X and was using the "Ok Google Now", "Navigate to Home" or "Navigate to Work". Like others I got list of search results even though google maps seemed to know where both home and work were.

The good news is that last night I got it to work. The bad news is that I did so many things I'm not sure which one actually corrected it. It's like it just all of a sudden knew what to do. Here's a list of some of the things I did:

I switched to a different google account I had. It made no difference. I switched back. I don't think this had anything to do with it eventually working.

I changed and reset the Home and Work addresses in Google maps. The app behaved very funny and didn't seem to change them. Then all of a sudden it knew they were changed. Then I changed them back. I really don't think this had anything to do with eventually reaching success.

Enabled the google now app: this sounds obvious, but I had the google now app disabled. Even with it disable, the "Ok Google Now" interface on my Moto X still did lots of things. I could Navigate to the Grand Canyon if I wanted to, just not to home.

From Google Now settings, I:
- enabled web history
- enabled personal results
- enabled contact recognition (I think this one had a lot to do with it - in fact, it might have had everything to do with it)

I experimented with phrases like "Ok Google Now" "Directions to Home" and "Directions to Work". These phrases started to work.
I move on to "Ok Google Now" "Navigate to Home" and "Navigate to Work". The latter all of a sudden started to work. Sometime later, "Navigate to Home" started to work.

There may have been something else I did too and just can't remember right now.

My best guess is that changing the setting in Google Now eventually fixed the problem. My best hunch is that it was the contact recognition. I believe this because it took some time - it wasn't instantaneous. I think maybe Google was uploading my contacts and learning to recognize them.

I hope this helps someone. I feel your pain.

 

[irha]

I have read about this problem so many places and seen so many solutions - none of which worked for me.

Today - I finally found out where my "work" and "home" were stuck and preventing navigate to... from working for these locations. Short form - they were stuck in my Google+ account, but NOT in the places category. It was my contact settings for home and work. They were set to blank in my Google plus profile. It didn't matter that I had them set in my phone. It didn't matter that I had them set in Google Maps (both on Android and on the web). Caches - meaningless. In the end, it came down to the fact that those values were blank in my Google+ account - THAT is what stopped the service from working.

I'm glad I found it and fixed it but that is a really stupid reason for that service to fail to work! Bad design, Google!

Where exactly did you fix it in Google+? I went to my G+ profile and didn't find an address to choose for home or work. I would appreciate if you can give more details on this.

 

[Alex Shaw2]

The problem for me was using my work account. It would seem that a business account by default can't gain access to your current location. You can check this theory out by asking "what's the weather like today". If you don't mention the area you are checking the weather for then Google can't give you an answer as it doesn't know where you are. You have to go to your admin panel and switch on web history for this to work again.