"Google voice typing cannot be activated in this context"

[Fred Hess]

I have been getting constant "Can't reach Google at the moment" messages when using Google voice search. I have an S3. Nothing I tried worked. Recently I went into Google App and uninstalled all updates, and it works for several days. Then I get the message again and I have to do that again. Anyone have an idea what is going on?

 

[Bultaco]

I have been getting constant "Can't reach Google at the moment" messages when using Google voice search. I have an S3. Nothing I tried worked. Recently I went into Google App and uninstalled all updates, and it works for several days. Then I get the message again and I have to do that again. Anyone have an idea what is going on?

Hey, Fred,

I feel your pain. I thought I was losing my mind when I couldn't get my Galaxy S3 to "take dictation" offline, when I KNEW I had done it hundreds of times before.

I messed around with every button and setting I could find on the phone that even remotely resembled anything to do with language, speaking, audio etc over a period of about a week and FINALLY I got it working again. BUT, I must admit it wasn't a "scientific" solution by any means. i.e. Although I fiddled with every setting and control I could find, think of or read about on the internet......I'm still not sure which "alteration" or adjustment got my Voice-to-text working again, but it IS working.

Here are a couple of screenshots, many, most or ALL of which you may have already played with. (Oh, and shutting down and rebooting frequently before, during and after playing with these settings seems to be a recurring comment from people who "think" they have the ultimate solution.

Go to Language and input in your My Device Settings page and click on that heading. The "details" page will open where you'll see (and want to have checked) Google voice typing. And if you click on the settings gear for this, you get another page where you can select and download different languages.....probably English (US). (Although, if you search for the solution to this problem, you'll find a couple of people who swear that selecting English (UK) is the "trigger" to get voice txting working!)

You can see that I have a Swiftkey keyboard installed, but I selected the Samsung one while I was trying to get things working...just in case Swiftkey was causing a conflict during setup (although I switched back AFTER voice texting started working and didn't have any problems.)

Also click on "Voice search" and have a look...although this seems to bring up the same page as when you click on "Google voice typing" settings.

I also clicked on "Text-to-speech", even though this is the "reverse" function of what I was attempting to do, just in case those cagey engineers somehow linked the two technologies! Here, I was sure to select the Google Text-to-speech engine as opposed to the Samsung one.

On the "white" settings screen (where the language is selected) I clicked on "Ok Google detection" and selected ON for the first toggle switch, even though I don't usually use this feature. (I don't have a data plan so I don't want to get dependent on it even though it works when I'm on WiFi.)

I also turned on (or just left them on) "Block offensive words" and "Bluetooth headset" settings, even though I don't object to offensive words OR use a Bluetooth headset. (I only mention these because, for all I know, they HAVE to be set this way in order for Voice texting to work. Sounds crazy I know, but now that I HAVE it working....I'm not doing any experiments to see what makes it STOP working!

Just keep playing with it is my advice...and don't forget to shut down and reboot after every couple of settings changes. (Again, sounds crazy...but I'm not arguing with success.) Let us know how you make out. Good luck! (which is almost what seems is required.)

 

[Joseph Querengesser]

This totally worked. I don't know what I did either, but I just went through trying to update everything I could, and changing settings and restarting. Thanks for all your work on this. Okay Google is still not working also known as Voice Search, and everything else on my phone is working fine now, so this leads me to do believe that this is definitely a Google problem. I'm assuming they will fix this in there next update. I also have a samsung galaxy s3 running 4.4.2, but mine is with Telus.

 

[tsalagiman]

I just started having this problem a few days ago after my Motorola Droid Maxx updated. It works for "OK Google Now" but not for texting. None of my Language settings have changed. Since there is apparently no definitive solution anywhere, it looks like I'll just have to wait this out to see if it self-corrects or just live with one less feature.

 

[Robisan]

Just to update this thread about a month later, since I disabled Google Voice in the Car Dashdroid app this problem has gone away. Best advice I can offer to people having this problem is look for third party apps on your device that use Google Voice and try disabling the GV component (or uninstalling if there's no way to just disable GV usage within the app).