Nexus 5: Google Now no longer showing cards

[DirkBelig]

For the past couple of months, it's been fine, showing commute times and the weather where I'm at and stories related to searches, etc. But in the past couple of days, it has fallen apart, now saying 99% of the time that it has no cards for me at this time. Even after repeated weather requests, it won't pop a card for it unless I manually set one for home.

I've tried toggling it off and on; switching accounts; erasing stored data (which only wiped out all my home screens); nothing works but turning it off and on and opting in which beings up one set of news story cards which when swiped away never return. No stocks, no weather, no commute times, nada, nyet, nothing.

Any suggestions as to what caused this and how it can be fixed. Stock, unrooted 4.4.2 here. TIA.

Possible Fix: After uninstalling updates to Google Search - WARNING: This will reset all your homescreens to default, wiping out your folders, etc. - it seems to restore normal Now function. Just make sure to update Search to current before rebuilding your home screens otherwise you'll have to swipe from the beginning of your app list every time.

 

[Aquila]

Re: Google Now no longer showing cards

My first question would be what are the location services settings?

 

[DirkBelig]

Re: Google Now no longer showing cards

Location reporting and history are both on for the account that I'm using.

Posted via sheer force of will on my Nexus 5!

 

[DirkBelig]

Re: Google Now no longer showing cards

This is weird: A little while ago I check Now and it showed the temperature and a slew of other cards, including a public transit one I'd never seen. No commute one, though. I rummaged through the settings to see if it had my home and work addresses and I couldn't find it. (It's hiding under the magic wand and Places.) After exiting settings, I'm back to not having any cards. Da fuh?

Posted via sheer force of will on my Nexus 5!

 

[Aquila]

Re: Google Now no longer showing cards

I'm somewhat boggled on this one, haven't been able to replicate other than once everything is cleared sometimes it takes awhile to come back. Checking with some brainiacs on the ambassador side.

 

[DirkBelig]

Re: Google Now no longer showing cards

Thanks.

Sent from my Nexus 5 using Tapatalk

 

[DirkBelig]

Re: Google Now no longer showing cards

While exploring fixes I tried erasing data under Google Search and it blew away all my home screens and folders again. Good thing I'm so practiced at rebuilding them. Pffft. Now is still borked. So fail. Much lame. Wow.

Posted via sheer force of will on my Nexus 5!

 

[Bront]

Re: Google Now no longer showing cards

Make sure location services are on for all google accounts on the system, even if you're not using them for NOW. Otherwise you can get a nasty battery draining bug. That also might be causing the issue.

 

[DirkBelig]

I thought leaving them on caused drain and a common power saving tactic was to switch them off? I already had it turned on for my main 2 of 3 accounts. My battery performance has been much worse in the past week ahead of Now pooping the bed.

Sent from my Nexus 5 using Tapatalk

 

[Bront]

Re: Google Now no longer showing cards

I thought leaving them on caused drain and a common power saving tactic was to switch them off? I already had it turned on for my main 2 of 3 accounts. My battery performance has been much worse in the past week ahead of Now pooping the bed.

Sent from my Nexus 5 using Tapatalk

Leaving them all off or turning them all on will.

I had Search drain my battery earlier. Did research, and that was the solution (I only had 1 of 2 accounts turned on for location service). Even a reboot didn't fix it. Once I turned it on, battery drain returned to normal.

It didn't cause any problems for weeks though, and then suddently hit. It was... odd.

 

[DirkBelig]

Re: Google Now no longer showing cards

FWIW, Now is starting to appear to be working more as expected, but I'm not quite ready to declare victory yet.

Also happening lately has been Android Services and Google Play Services guzzling a ton of power. Currently they're responsible for 21% of use, the former using a ton of CPU, the latter holding it awake. I'm not rooted, so I can't deep dive for wakelock, but this is a recent development and it's murdering my already lackluster battery life.

Posted via sheer force of will on my Nexus 5!

 

[Aquila]

Re: Google Now no longer showing cards

I thought leaving them on caused drain and a common power saving tactic was to switch them off?

It is common, but it is also somewhat misguided, depending on how often the services are toggled. It's much more work to do a full sync after stop than to do more consistent sampling. One thing that helps is setting the location mode (I think choices are High Accuracy, Battery Saving and GPS Only). The first two are the most efficient and turn on GPS dynamically, only when needed. If you only turn it on/off a couple of times a day, it might marginally help, but if it's something that's managed by another task, such as a power saving app, it is common for those to turn the radios on and off more or less when the screen is turned on and off... which is going to be very taxing.

 

[DirkBelig]

Re: Google Now no longer showing cards

OFFS! After a few hours of actually showing a weather card and producing a travel time to home card with some prodding, it's back to nothing. Between this and the rapid battery draining - it went from 95% to 30% in 5 hours with 1:25 SOT, mostly on wifi - I'm suddenly finding my N5 to be a lot less wonderful. Bother.

 

[DirkBelig]

Woke up this morning to a few news cards, but no weather or commute to work info. Now there is nothing. Now is fundamentally broken. Kinda sucks when a key feature of Android refuses to work.

Posted via sheer force of will on my Nexus 5!

 

[DirkBelig]

While digging for fixes I came across someone who said they'd uninstalled updates from Google Search to resolve it. I did that, wiping out my home screens again - why the hell are those tied to search?!? - but after a day and a half, it sorta looks like it's gotten back to normal. One thing I noticed while rebuilding my folders while Search was updating was that initially I was having to swipe through all my app pages to get to later letters when it had left off where I'd been before. After the update, that behavior returned. Again, why is the interface tied to Search?

 

[diamond.g]

The Google Now Launcher is Search isn't it?
I seem to remember reading that somewhere.

Posted via Android Central App

 

[Aquila]

Yes, if you're using the Google Now Launcher, that's part of the Google Search app (so is Google Now).

 

[Bront]

Yup. In my previous message about turning location off or on, google search is what was using the battery. It gets stuck trying to toggle the GPS on for an account where it's set off, so if you set them all to off it doesn't try, if you set them all to on, it does it's update and goes back into power saving hybernation.

One of the way to reload cards is to actually search for something. For example, I follow chicago sports, and did a google search for each team, and now I get score update cards. Google now is basically a "pre search". So try searching for traffic times and see if that helps.

 

[DirkBelig]

As I noted in the very first paragraph of my OP, repeatedly searching for the weather or deleting/readding sports teams had no effect; only nuking search fixed it.

Sent from my Nexus 5 using Tapatalk

 

[Bront]

Clearly nuclear warfare is the only thing Google responds to then.