Recently, a lot of Android users have been hit with this notification. It pops up telling you that Speech Services by Google has an update but is stuck on “waiting for network connection” regardless of your connectivity status. This is something that has occurred in the past for various users but seems to be happening a lot lately, likely due to a bug that rolled out with one of the recent updates.
Fear not though as the fix shouldn’t be too annoying at all. We will cover a number of ways to troubleshoot this one with (hopefully) the first one being the answer for most users.
Solution One – A change in settings
This is the least invasive option. Visit the settings screen on your phone. You can do this by sliding down the notifications window and clicking on the cogwheel icon. From here, head to the following path: Google > Settings for Google app > Search, Assistant & Voice > Voice > Offline speech recognition. From here, click on the “Auto-Update” tab. Now choose one of the two options to auto-update either at any time or only over Wi-Fi. If one is already chosen, pick the other. You’re basically refreshing the setting.
The settings should automatically take the moment you click on an option. You can click back to the “Installed” tab and then on the language you have installed. A pop-up will form and give you a few options. If “update” is one of them, go ahead and click it. If not, don’t worry. Just tap out of that popup and back out of the settings screen. It should update over time.
Solution Two – Clear the cache
If the first solution didn’t work, we actually have one more option that doesn’t require much. Head back over to the settings page and follow this path: Apps > (choose “all” if it isn’t already chosen) > Speech Services by Google > (optional: click the “Force Stop” button) > Storage. Now, click on the “Clear cache” button, then reboot the phone.
This won’t affect any of your settings so there is nothing to worry about.
Solution Three – Reinstall!
If the first two options don’t work, you can reinstall Speech Services. Keep in mind that this option could cause you to lose some of your custom settings (within Speech Services). However, you may not even notice any change or there may be nothing lost. Personally, we couldn’t find any change on the devices we tested this against. It’s just something worth noting, just in case. You should be safe though.
To do this, you have two paths to take. You can go to settings and then Apps > (choose “all” if it isn’t already chosen) > Speech Services by Google > App details in store. Or, you could simply open the Play Store and search for Speech Services by Google. Either way, once you have the page loaded in the store, click on “uninstall”. Let it finish and the button should refresh to say “install”. Click to install it again. Once it finishes, reboot the phone.
Conclusion – In the clear
At this point, you should be in the clear and the message should have gone away and shouldn’t come back up. That’s not to say that this will work for everyone of course. There are always a few odd cases that need a little extra touch. If so, do feel free to use the comments below to share your own solutions that seemed to work (for your situation) or share your unsolved experiences. Someone might have experienced the same and might have a working solution that isn’t covered here. These solutions should cover 90% of the cases out there though.
