Any other Brits successfully using / struggling with the "Hey Spotify" trigger?!

[SpikySimonW]

Have been using two Car Things (different vehicles) for a short while now - mostly seem to work fine. Just having trouble with the voice control, specifically triggering the wake command! Once it is listening it seems to then hear and transcribe what I'm saying relatively accurately (not the best, but workable).. but trying to actually get it to listen seems really tricky.

Isn't any background noise, have tried with no engine running, no aircon, no music playing, in fact I've found the quieter I say "Hey Spotify" the more likely it is to work! Unlikely to be a hardware issue as it's exactly the same for two different units (installed in two very difference cars/environments). The most success I've had is using Google on my iPhone to readout (pronounce feature) "Hey Spotify" with its American accent and slow deliberate pronunciation - that works most of the time! So I've started to imitate it - "Hey" (weird high pitch twang) "Spot-i-fyyyyy" and this gives me more success.. but is far from natural!!

Wondering if it genuinely is an accent thing? Any other Brits?

EASY WORKAROUND SUGGESTION: have a mic button onscreen to be able to press that imitates listening. Simple.

[briankelly]

Plan: Premium

Country: US

Device: iPhone 13 mini

Operating System: iOS 15.2

My Question or Issue:

Basic voice commands, like “what’s my news?” Or “play NPR” don’t do what I would expect.

This feels very basic, and should work like it does on Alexa or Google devices.

I want to like this device, but it feels underbaked. 😕

[Ver]

Hey @briankelly,

Thanks for posting here.

We appreciate you taking the time to share your feedback with us as we always strive to improve the users' experience.

You can have a look in our Idea Exchange to see if others have already made similar suggestions. If there aren't any, you can give these steps a go and submit your ideas.

If you need anything else, the Community is here for you.
 

[briankelly]

Hi @Ver, I did a quick search of the Idea Exchange. I don't have much confidence that anything I submit there will be reviewed or taken seriously.

I shared it here to try and be helpful, or at least have a place to commiserate with other users. 

[Andreuha]

Plan

Premium

Country

US

Device

OnePlus Nord N10

Operating System

Android

My Question or Issue

Had this full-screen pop-up open on my Spotify Carthing today, with a sentence of text telling me to try a "hey spotify"command (which I've already used before!). I could not dismiss the pop-up after both using a random "hey spotify" command and restarting the device (by pulling the power... While driving). How do you make it go away? I disabled the microphone which made it stop, but it just comes back when I enable the mic again.

This is distracting to the point of being dangerous, it came up just as I was trying to change playlists, WHILE DRIVING, forcing me to pull over on the side of a highway to deal with it. The very idea of having a new text-based modal appear while a user is driving is shockingly bad decision making. On top of that you're essentially forcing users to text and drive with something that is going to frustrate them as it is impossible to simply dismiss.

This really needs to never happen again.

[DavidAleman]

You can turn this off in the settings

[Alex]

Hi there @Andreuha,

Thanks for the post.

Try switching this off from the Spotify app settings on your phone. Go to Settings > Voice > Disable the settings there.

Let us know if that helped.

[Andreuha]

-deleted-

[Andreuha]

Disabling voice altogether is not a "solution". Your workaround is to remove half of the CarThing's reason to exist (the other half being a dedicated display that is always focused on media playback).

If your stove failed to light, how would you respond to the manufacturer telling you to try food which did not require heating? All I have learned from many posts in Spotify Community is that Spotify does not care at all about absurd UX problems (minor fixes with large quality of life impact. Like the lack of a podcast feed. This is a paid service, but I'm using Google Podcasts because I do not binge podcasts like Netflix seasons. 😕 ).