Google Home automations not working right lately? Blame your TV

If you’re looking to configure a really impressive smart home, Google Home automations are your best friend. While routines are great for pulling off complicated multi-device workflows, automations take that to the next level by, well, automating them — instead of manually activating a routine, automations begin all by themselves when their starter event occurs. At least, that’s the way things are supposed to work, but right now there’s a frustrating glitch impacting automations tied to TVs.

Over on Reddit’s Google Home sub, users have been complaining about automations involving their TVs that fail to work. While you should be able to use events like powering your TV on or off to trigger an automation, Google Home just doesn’t seem to recognize when these starter events happen.

While we don’t have much in the way of a fix to offer you right now, the good news is that Google’s aware of these reports, and the company pops up in both threads with some reassurance:

We’re currently investigating an issue with TV-based automations. We’ll circle back as soon as we have an update. Thank you for your patience.

Our last update there is from about a day ago, and as far as we’re aware, the problem with automations persists.

Both reports we’ve seen identify the TV in question as a TCL model, but it’s not yet clear if this failure is specific to TCL sets, or represents a broader problem with TVs and automations.

As we look forward to news of a solution from Google, we can at least take solace that the company was quick to fix the recent alarms issue with Google Home. But now Google’s got not just this TV automation problem to figure out, but also that glitch with adding items to Keep lists. Hopefully it’s not much longer before we similarly learn about fixes for these remaining Google Home headaches.