Google Assistant is crashing on some Android devices, here’s a temporary fix

Ben Schoon | Sep 27 2019 - 3:20 pm PT

Some Android users have been reporting a crashing issue with Google Assistant over the past couple of days that hasn’t been patched by Google just yet. If you’re affected, there is a temporary fix.

There’s been a persistent crashing issue with Assistant since 2018 that’s popped up in waves. Now, that issue is back. A support thread has seen dozens of reports over the past three days and in the past 24 hours especially with users who are having trouble.

With this issue, a crashing message constantly appears as the app fails in the background. The crashing starts when the user triggers the Assistant either through a “Hey Google” hotword or a gesture/button-press.

Whatever is causing this Google Assistant crashing issue, it doesn’t seem to be device-specific. We’re seeing reports from Pixel devices, the Galaxy Note 10+, Xiaomi Mi 9, Galaxy S10e, and other devices all with the same behavior. We’re guessing this is a server-side issue seeing as multiple versions of the Google app seem to be affected.

At least one Google “Product Expert” is aware of the issue and looking for user reports. While Google works on a fix, one user says that clearing the Google app’s cache and storage in the settings menu and skipping the “Get Started” tutorial upon re-opening the app seems to, at least temporarily, fix the problem. We’re not experiencing the issue, but one user who is tells us that the mentioned solution worked on his device.