Skip to main content

My Pixel started playing the Morning Briefing podcasts at 50% speed

Every morning I wish my phone good morning.  Well, sort of.  After my shower, as I dress, I say "OK Google, good morning."

It then wishes me a good day, tells me the time, temperature, weather forecast and information about my commute.  It then plays the BBS Minute newscast, and an NPR news summary.

A couple months ago, the BBC came up very slow speaking. I thought it was just a case of wacky Brits. Maybe there wasn't enough news copy for a minute so they were being silly.

Then NPR's came up, also slow.

This has persisted through two monthly security updates and multiple restarts of the phone.  So today I'm putting in feedback to Google Assistant, and wanted this blog post to point at with more details then they might want in a feedback.

I know it is 50% because this morning I recorded to Audiology on my PC the full two minutes of the BBC Minute playing through Google Assistant, and then again through Pocket Casts.  And yes, Pocket Casts is set to normal speed.

If their is a speed setting for Google Assistance's playback, I can't find it. Nor can I find any other reports of this online.

Here is a 10 second sample of the BBC minute running at slow speed.

If I hear back from Google, I'll post here.

Update 8/26/2017 : The problem persisted after upgrading to Android 8.0 "Oreo". That prompted me to call Google through the support option in the Pixel settings.

The agent and tried several things,but what finally worked was uninstalling the Google apps updates (you cannot uninstall the entire app).  I then updated the app; downloading and installing the updates again, and it worked. Google Now was running, but he had me go through some steps to make Google Assistant come up. I do not recall those steps exactly and cannot find them online this morning.


Terms to improve searching for this post : Android Assistant morning briefing podcast slow slugggist half speed.


Comments

Popular posts from this blog

Notes Folder : My new note taking system

I'm in the process of moving to a new way to keep my notes. It would be best to make a separate post on my long time notetaking app, Evernote, and how it now disappoints me.  Bottom line, I no longer trust the company behind Evernote since it was acquired. My first inclination was to finally look at alternatives. like Notion, Joplin, Obsidian, etc. of I was not enamored with any of them, so I gritted my teeth and stayed with Evernote. TThe situation made me think about how I use Evernote. To keep up additional posts on this topic, search on the tag Notes Folder Updates : January 24, 2024 and in updates noted here. Most of the things I store are quick notes, lists, online receipts for online bills, that sort of thing.  Kind of an online file cabinet if you will. If I were a doctoral student though I could see storing PDFs of papers and research materials.  If were working on a large project, then plans, communications etc. would all be there. Back when I began using Evernote way b

Recording your own notes with Google Voice

Note :   April 2016:  Frankly I don't know if this works anymore.  It is 7 years old. I stopped using this when Google Now became useful on my phone, and I could dictate reminders using it. I found a way a while ago to use Google Voice to record a personal note, transcribe it, and email it to me. A recent Lifehacker post "Five Things We'd Like to See in Google Voice" lists that need as their #5 request, so I realized what I'd figured out is not common knowledge. In GV's Contacts, create a Group "Special Transcription" To avoid listening to my standard voice mail when I call, I recorded a short voice mail greeting for this group simply saying "Record note now" I added a contact with my own cell phone number as the only number, and made it the sole member of this group. In GV's phone settings, I edited the settings for my cell phone. In the section "Direct access to voicemail when calling your Google number from th

Ten Years of Evernote

This blog post was set to publish exactly as the day begins on Tuesday, July 31, 2018. That is ten years to the day after my first Evernote  post. With my second note, I was already getting down to business; recording the agreement I'd come to on the phone on a minor business matter. My affection for Evernote has not dimmed since that day ten years ago. Since then, I've accumulated about 7.8 new notes a day. Ironically, I have needed to pull up only a few notes a year. Yet, when I need them, I need them badly and am glad to have Evernote all over again. My philosophy of what to capture is simple : If you encounter something you might remotely want to see again, it goes into Evernote. from a blog post June 1, 2015 I've written here about Evernote than any other topic.  Even wrote a now horribly out-of-date book. Don't get me wrong. If something better comes along that imports my Evernote notes well, I can be enticed to move.  But in t