Google Assistant Hotword Beep / Mic-Open Notification

7/23/2022, 3:59 pm, General

When I upgraded from my Google Pixel 3 to a Pixel 5, the Google Assistant Open-Mic Notification, AKA the Google Assistant Hotword Beep stopped working. Moreso, the instructions to turn it on using Switch Access didn’t work! Here is the fix!

Watch the video or follow instructions below.

Go to your Pixel 5’s Settings and look for “Accessibility: Accessibility” (don’t tap on the “Accessibility: Google Assistant” screen… yet!). Go to Switch Access. Turn on “Use Switch Access”, click to “Allow” it to have control of your device, click “X” in the upper right corner when it asks about choosing a switch type. At this point, the Mic-Open Notification should work but it might not! That was my case.

Go to Settings and search for “Accessibility: Google Assistant” and tap on it. You’ll be at a screen that says “Accessibility, Mic-open notification, Mic-close notification”. Both will probably be turned on. Turn both options off. Then turn them on again. That was the magic! If that doesn’t do it immediately, definitely reboot your phone and you’ll be on your way!

Now your phone should make a bell sound whenever you say “Ok Google” or “Hey Google”.

3 Comments

Lee says:

7/23/2022 at 4:04 pm

I told the Google Accessibility folks about this.
My ticket #: Your Google Disability Support inquiry [9-3967000032946]
Hopefully, they’ll fix their instructions on the Google Support pages

contact google accessibility
The instructions on how to make the google assistant mic-open sound work didn’t work for me. I found a fix. The fix apparently works around a bug in the Pixel 5. It would be good to tell people about the workaround and to fix the code.

These instructions from Google didn’t work for me, they needed my workaround, below

I wrote a blog post with full instructions and a video here

————————————————–
I sent another comment about this similar google support offering

These instructions work on my Pixel 3 but not on my Pixel 5 because of what looks like a bug in Android but I found a workaround. See my blog entry for the fix.
Lee says:

8/3/2022 at 9:58 pm

My response from Google was messed-up!

Here it is:

Date: Mon, Jul 25, 2022 at 10:21 AM
From: disability-support@google.com

Thank you for contacting the Google Disability Support team. My name is Deeksha and I would be happy to help you!

At the moment you’re through to Google Disability Support. We support users from the disability community with assistive technology and Google products, examples of assistive technologies we support are screen readers and Live Transcribe.

Thank you for expressing interest in our career opportunities. You can search Google jobs and select your preferences for open opportunities.

If you have any other questions about accessibility and assistive technology within Google products, please reply to this email, and I’ll be happy to help you further.

I responded, writing:

I’m confused by your response. I’m not interested in career opportunities, I have an issue with the mic-open sound on my Pixel 5. Please see my original message, copied below, and get back to me.
Thanks

And…. crickets. It’s been 9 days and I never heard back from them!
Lee says:

8/3/2022 at 10:01 pm

I wrote to them again, using the Contact the Google Disability support team website again

I wrote:

List the name of the assistive technology or accessibility feature used below:
Android Mic-Open Notification

The Google instructions on how to make the Google Assistant mic-open sound work don’t work for my Pixel 5 phone. I suspect many more phones are affected, I’ve found many online forums complaining that the Google instructions don’t work. I found a workaround. Can you please tell Google that their instructions don’t work and tell them about my workaround so they can fix it?

These are the instructions from Google that don’t work: https://support.google.com/android/thread/165930450

Here is my workaround: https://www.lee.org/blog/2022/07/23/google-assistant-hotword-beep-open-mic-notification/

Thank you,
Lee Sonko

I got an email with a ticket: Your Google Disability Support inquiry [7-5798000032765]

Let’s hope it goes better this time.

Lee.org