Google fixes Assistant's play music voice command glitch on Android Auto

Since last week, Android Auto users have been chiming about encountering errors like “I can’t display search results in the car“, “I can’t display search results while driving“, “I cannot help with that” or “I don’t know how to help with that” on commanding Google Assistant to play music/song.

Reports suggest, the problem basically shows up on using voice command (Ok Google) to play music, irrespective of whether the requested track is to be played from Google Play Music, Spotify or Pocket casts.

Also, the problem appears to be limited to Assistant on Android Auto, as the virtual assistant reportedly has no such issues otherwise. A quick rush through the following selection of user comments will give you a better hold of the problem being discussed:

Suddenly started happening today, Android Auto is just ignoring my voice commands that have anything to do with music. If I ask it for a text or directions, it understands me perfectly. If I ask it to play music like I always have, it says “I can’t display search results in the car”. I’m not asking for search results, I’m just using the words “play music”. Same thing happens if I ask for a specific artist or song.

I have been using android auto for over two months and it was working fine. Now if I ask it to play music or a song, it tells me “I don’t know how to help with that” or some other crap.

Every other voice command I have tried works. “Directions to home” “Call mom” “send a text message” etc all work, but if I ask it to play music it hates me. I have cleared and reinstalled android auto along with restarting my phone and nothing worked.

I also have this issue. Started today, no issues previously. Asking to play a specific song or artist returns “I don’t know how to help with that” and just asking to play music results in “I can’t display search results while driving”.

This is specific to Android Auto–Google Assistant still processes these commands without problems.

https://twitter.com/si_mcav/status/1034822828565127169
https://twitter.com/leedsandyb76/status/1034052198362243073
https://twitter.com/DRB/status/1033383331558289409
https://twitter.com/BenRattigan77/status/1033035150744006656

The issue is being widely reported by AA users across different online discussion platforms including the company’s official help forum (1,2,3,4,5,6,7,8,9,10,11,12,13,14,15) and Reddit (1,2).

What’s relieving is that only the voice command for playing music is behaving erratic as rest of the voice commands reportedly remain intact. Also, music can at least be chosen/played manually, as the issue is limited to voice command only.

Google says…

Following the proliferation of reports, came an acknowledgement from someone from Android Auto Team (who is also a Community Specialist at Android Auto User Community) informing the affected users that it’s an issue at Google Assistant end, and is currently being investigated by them.

It’s a known issue that recently appeared. We’ve already forwarded the issue to the Google Assistant team, and they’re looking into it.

While the company hasn’t given any official word on how long will it take to fix what’s broken, we are already getting to see at least a few reports from the affected AA users saying the problem has been resolved for them.

https://twitter.com/Accountablefin/status/1034888783945261056
https://twitter.com/MartinWithAnI/status/1034926803390025729
https://twitter.com/thepoodz/status/1034921380079271937
https://www.reddit.com/r/AndroidAuto/comments/99ztdd/ok_google_play_music_sorry_i_cant_display_search/e52rw8e/

Looks like, the Google Assistant team has already started circulating the fix. Have you received it yet? Did it resolve the play music voice command glitch for you? Do let us know by dropping a comment.

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