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.
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