[Update: New workaround] Can't find Broadcast & Routines on Google Home app? Language settings might be the reason

New updates are being added at the bottom of this story…….

Original story (published on October 24, 2019) follows:

The advancement of technology alleviates the human effort. A major share of the inventions today focuses on making jobs easier for men. Digital assistants on smartphones were born as a part of this attempt. They help you operate your phone without touching it.

All the major tech giants have their own voice assistants (Google- Assistant, Apple- Siri, Microsoft- Cortana, Amazon- Alexa). Google and Amazon went ahead further with their smart speakers. Both of them can connect to smart devices in your home to automate their functioning.

Google Home has an app, you can use to manage, setup, and control your speaker, Chromecast and other eligible products. The search engine titan often releases new feature-sets to ease their users’ life. Recently, they introduced a new button to call a smart display at home.

While some are happy using the new attributes, there are a whole lot of others worried about their Google Home app. And, for them, a few feature-sets are unavailable. Check out a tweet from a concerned user.

Hello. I can’t add routines to my Google home. The function doesn’t appear at my phone device but it does into my tab. Could you help me please?

In the reply to the tweet given above, the Google Nest handle made it clear that some features including Routines may not work in regions where the smart speaker hasn’t officially hit the market.

Routing to Reddit, we could see similar complaints there as well. Another user was unable to see both Broadcast and Routines on switching the language to English- New Zealand. Oddly enough, they both returned after migrating to English- United States.

So, the issue seems like an incompatibility with locales. In case you are not aware, they are the parameters that define the region and language of a user. It is obvious that Google has whitelisted a few locales. And, those who use one outside the list may miss out on some feature-sets.

If you are a Google Home user and you don’t see one or two features on the app, you should know your chosen locale might not find a spot on the list of the company. Apparently, they are trying to widen the horizon by extending the support.

IST 02:40 pm: It seems that the Google Home app missing Routines option issue is still affecting multiple users. It has also been reported that the issue came to light after updating the Google Home app.

Also, the issue is present on both iOS and Android versions of the Home app. As per a Google Assistant Community Manager, the issue is being worked upon and users can try reinstalling the Home app to get the Routines option back.

Thanks to your feedback we were able to reproduce the issue and we’re working to get it resolved.
In the meantime, one way you should be able to get the Routines button back is by uninstalling and reinstalling the app.
Source

However, the aforementioned workaround is not working for users and some of them have come up with their own fixes that seem to be solving the issue for them. Here’s what one of them have tried to fix the problem:

None of this solutions worked for me. Same issue as everyone on iPhone 12 mini. Got it solved changing my regional settings to United States, opening the routines and while open, changing the regional settings back to my originals. pum!
(Source 1, 2, 3)

IST 12:08 pm: With this issue still unaddressed, affected users have resolved to workarounds — and we have one that seems to have worked for a couple users.

1. Open the “Google” App, yup, not assistant not home
2. Tap on your Profile Picture on top right
3. Setting
4. Voice & Assistant
5. Routines
Source

Note:- Don’t forget to check out our Google section for similar stories.

PiunikaWeb started as purely an investigative tech journalism website with main focus on ‘breaking’ or ‘exclusive’ news. In no time, our stories got picked up by the likes of Forbes, Foxnews, Gizmodo, TechCrunch, Engadget, The Verge, Macrumors, and many others. Want to know more about us? Head here.