What am I missing on my Mini? It will not let my phone answer.

[Chex313]

Ok, so I received my free Mini to go with my Pixel 2 XL.

It set up quickly and recognized my many smart devices without having do anything. It sounds fine , and it activates smart devices faster than my Dot's.

Its unusable in my house tho!! Its 30' away in the kitchen and activates when I make a query to my phone! How does it not know which device is closer? My location is turned on in the phone.

I never was inclined to buy one because it does what my phone does. Although my searches and questions are not all that private , having the answer to a question announced loudly in another room why my the P2 xl in my hand remains silent, is pretty useless.

The Google home app has a lot of things in it, but I don't see a setting that addresses this issue. I am also not having any luck googling the question. I have tried as many different ways to ask the question but it just gives me the faq for setting a mini up.

Anyone else facing this issue?

The worst case was last night when I voice dialed someone on my phone and the freaking mini made the call!

 

[jam4775]

I've had a Pixel and a couple Google Homes for a year now and I have not found a good solution to this. A perfect example of the issue is trying to set an alarm on your phone to wake you up in the morning. I use the Assistant all the time on my phone to set alarms but I can't do it completely hands free with my Home in listening range, which is almost anywhere in my house, because it will set the alarm on the Home instead. This doesn't do me any good since the Home is not in my bedroom.

Google really needs to allow you to choose different wake words for your phone and the Home. I've submitted feed to Google on this through the Home app.

 

[cbreze]

Just got my mini this afternoon. Got it set up and first thing I noticed is when I speak to my pixel it answers thru the mini which is supper annoying. Since I have no plan to buy all the other stuff that can be controlled by the mini I'll probably not get much use out of it. I'll check it out some more over the next couple of days. But so far it's like having a louder phone speaker sitting across the room. I'm not to impressed yet.
Edit: for whatever reason it stopped answering thru the phone even in the same room. Much better now. ??????

 

[anon(10092459)]

I agree, there should be separate activation phrases to segregate which device you want to respond to you, speaker or phone. I use active edge a lot normally, so for the bits when I'm at home and want the response from the phone that's my work around. But I like hands free too! Without a doubt that separation of tasks needs to be an update more sooner than later.

 

[CaymanDreamin]

I have several homes and minis around the house and they respond to hey Google while my phone responds to ok Google.

 

[can3gxw]

I have several homes and minis around the house and they respond to hey Google while my phone responds to ok Google.

Until your phone's assistant gets the "Hey Google" hotword update. Mine worked like this for the longest while, then my phone got the update and now both wake up, and it's hit or miss on who answers. Mostly my Home mini answers when I'm in earshot.