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.