How I Fixed the Mic Switch on a Google Home Mini

Another public service post.

One of our Google Home Mini devices decided recently that its microphone was switched off, even though it wasn't. It refused to obey voice commands (unsurprisingly) and when you powered the device off and on again, the nice voice let you know that "by the way, the mic's off".

Suggestions from Google Gemini included restarting it, manually toggling the mic switch loads of times, and then, if it was still misbehaving, doing a factory reset. I tried all three options without success.

Gemini had mentioned a fourth option: open the Mini up and try cleaning the physical switch. On YouTube I found a video of someone opening one up: thery started by blowing hot air on the plastic pad on the Mini's base to weaken the adhesive, then lifting it cleanly off. I took a hair dryer, set it to Max, and began to blow. The guy in the video must have been using something hotter, because my pad refused to come off cleanly. I tried the mic again: still off. But on a whim I aimed the dryer at the mic switch instead. The Mini quickly became too hot to hold, so I used a cloth to toggle the mic switch about twenty times. When I switched the device back on, the microphone was working again.

Of course, thanks to the factory reset I had to re-add it to Google Home, but several days later it's still functioning correctly.

Update - I should have waited a few days before posting this. Six days on and the Google Mini again thinks its mic switch is off. I guess I could try to fix it again, but we've got a spare one in a drawer, so ...

Maybe you'll have better luck if you try this fix.

Google Home isn't talking to your new Pixel Phone

Last week I took delivery of a new Pixel 9a. My 6a had been working fine until one morning Google sent me a battery overheating alert and recommended I get the battery replaced. After that the battery icon at the top of the display sported an exclamation mark inside it, and the battery life dropped alarmingly. Deciding I couldn't be bothered to replace the battery in a three year old phone, I opted for the more expensive but also more satisfying option of getting a completely new phone.

Migrating from one Google phone to another is a process that justs gets simpler and simpler — this time I didn't even need to connect the two devices with a cable. It was all over in a few minutes and my new phone was ready. Everything on the Pixel 9a worked just fine, with one teeny weeny exception: I was no longer getting any notifications from Google Home. In particular, I wasn't getting anything from our front doorbell camera.

The doorbell itself was fine, and I could even follow its livestream. Other phones and tablets were still getting notifications, so I knew it had to be the 9a that was letting the side down. I opened up the 6a and 9a side by side and went through all the relevant settings, but they were all identical. No surprises there really.

Googling the fault revealed that this has been a common complaint since the Pixel 8 came out. Numerous solutions are suggested online, and I tried most of them, even uninstalling and reinstalling the Google Home app. Nothing worked. Until...

This is the last thing I did before the notifications started arriving again.

1. In the Google Home app I opened the camera
2. From the three dot menu I selected Settings, then Notifications
3. I turned off Push notifications
4. Then I restarted the Pixel
5. In the Google Home app I opened the camera again
6. From the three dot menu I selected Settings, then Notifications
7. I turned Push notifications back on

I can't say for certain that this fixed the problem, and perhaps the phone had just sorted itself out naturally at that point. However, the actions listed above seemed like a sensible thing to try, and I can even understand (as a software developer) what the underlying bug might look like.

Anyway, I'll now leave this on the web in the hope it might save someone else the time I've just had to spend getting this working.