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Help Google Now won't read text messages any more

PattiCakeUS

PattiCakeUS

Android Expert
Last week I decided to see if I could get a male voice on my phone, for when Google talks back to you. So I downloaded the UK files within Google Now & selected a male voice, which didn't work (it stayed female, no matter what) - so I uninstalled the UK voice file & switched back to the US female voice.

But - now Google Now won't read my incoming texts back any more. When I'm driving & I hear a text come in, I do what I've always done: wake my phone & ask her to read my incoming text. I've tried several variations "read all texts" (her response: "there are no texts"), "read new text from henry winkler" ("there are no texts from henry winkler") - now she just refuses to cooperate!

I did a bit of searching online & found a few other reports of people with a similar issue, but many of them seem to be using Hangouts, or their issue is that Google Now only reads back old texts instead of new ones. I'm not using Hangouts & she won't read any, old or new. Zip. Nada.

I haven't recently changed anything on my phone except for my failed attempt at changing the voice. Has anyone had a similar issue & been able to fix it without a hard reset? I'll do that if I get really irritated about this (which will probably happen in the next 2 weeks), but I'm wondering if there are any other things that can be done to make this work again.
 
I use Tasker instead and have a profile that reads incoming text messages.

Touching nothing ... a text message arrives ... it announces who it is from followed by the message. This is great in the car. If it is important I park the car and answer the text message.

... Thom
 
But I don't want to hear all of my messages, just under certain circumstances. It's not even an every day thing.

My phone used to work perfectly for this when I needed it, until I installed a different Google voice (not anything 3rd party, it was Google's own voice file). Somehow that seems to have broken the functionality, & I just want it to work again, as it's supposed to.
 
If the Tasker approach is used you could add logic for limiting when it was triggered ... time? sender? away from normal wifi connection?

I just listen to them all.

... Thom
 
Yep, but thanks for the suggestion.

I'm going to try to be patient & wait for the next Google update (my phone is a Nexus 5X so I get little updates every month). If I can manage to be REALLY patient, I can just wait for Android N & hopefully that will fix it. I hate to do a factory reset only because I don't know for sure that it will fix it, & it's always a pain.

Unless anyone has any other bright ideas.
 
Thom said:
I use Tasker instead and have a profile that reads incoming text messages.

Touching nothing ... a text message arrives ... it announces who it is from followed by the message. This is great in the car. If it is important I park the car and answer the text message.

... Thom
Click to expand...
I also use a Tasker profile to announce and read messages on my Nexus 6. I'd like to know how anyone was able to use native Google to read messages in the first place.
 
It's great that that works for you guys, but I can't see that working for me. It's worked well for me in the past to be able to just have Google read a new message once in a while, hopefully I can get the standard functionality back soon.
 
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Me? No, on those occasions where my hands were busy (usually when driving) I'd just say "ok Google... read new text message". She'd say I had a text from so-and-so & ask if I wanted to hear it? I'd say yes, she'd read it, then ask if i wanted to reply.

There have been some recent times I was driving somewhere, & a text came in related to where I was headed or someone I needed to go & get. Under normal circumstances I just wait until I get where I'm going, I don't want or need to see every text immediately.

It's a standard Google feature, at least on my phone. Pretty sure it's been around for awhile on others, too - although I don't know if it's a Lollipop or Marshmallow thing.
 
Were you able to fix this, PattiCakeUS (not interested in a new app because that doesn't fix the issue)? I have the same problem with a brand new LG Nexus 5X. Also when I switch from Hangouts to Messenger for the default, my messages still show up on Hangouts only. Not sure if that's part of the issue. But anyway.... anything?
 
I did, I eventually did a factory reset & that fixed it. So now I've learned that even though there are other voices, not to ever change the voice again.

Unfortunately I'm not sure this helps you, if your 5x is brand new & you haven't tried changing the voice.
 
Glad yours is fixed, although painful. Turns out that google won't read from Hangouts on my phone(LG Nexus 5X.)/carrier (ProjectFi). I was able to switch back to Messenger (not FB Messenger), but I had to go into the Hangouts menu/settings/account/ messages (turn off). Odd that the system settings didn't override the Hangouts settings, but it worked. Now I'm using Messenger and google is able to read them when asked. All good.
 
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