TTS Notifications don't work on Samsung mobiles

Maybe anyone could help, because I have no idea, what else could I check…
Home Assistant, latest sw, mobile Samsung S21, Home Assistant Companion installed.
App works fine, notifications also work fine, but only as a simple text messages, TTS notifications doesn’t work at all.
I’m testing both examples from this manual called via Developer tools/Services:

service: notify.mobile_app_s21_jarek
data:
  message: TTS
  title: "Motion has been detected"
  data:
    channel: "alarm_stream"

but after run it gives nothing. And more funny fact is that according to app log, everything works fine, only I’m deaf:

04-22 19:08:53.890 27767 4474 D MessagingService: Sending notification title to TTS
04-22 19:08:53.928 27767 4523 E SchedPolicy: Failed to find cgroup for tid 27767
04-22 19:08:53.958 27767 4474 I TextToSpeech: Sucessfully bound to com.samsung.SMT
04-22 19:08:53.983 27767 28495 I TextToSpeech: Connected to TTS engine
04-22 19:08:54.000 27767 27937 I TextToSpeech: Setting up the connection to TTS engine…
04-22 19:08:54.003 27767 27767 D[u][u] MessagingService: speaking notification

And yes, I checked volume level, tried with unlocked phone, etc. Google speech service is installed on my phone (but I don’t know, how to check version, it is not visible in the list of applications, only after finding it in google play shop I see notification “already installed”, my google assistant works fine and talks to me.
[update] I checked also on other devices within my family and it seems that issue is connected to Samsung mobiles only. The same notification doesn’t work on any Samsung device (tested with S21, S20, A40 and really old tablet) and works without any problem on Xiaomi Redmi.

And other issue with notifications, not as annoying, but maybe somehow connected: text notifications work, but ony as simple messages, without possibility to use e.g. color. For example: this action:

service: notify.mobile_app_s21_jarek
data:
  title: "Motion Detected in Backyard"
  message: "Someone might be in the backyard."
  data:
    color: "#2DF56D" # or "red"

should give me notification in red, yes?
So, look:
image

some Samsung devices simply don’t support using the alarm stream, try removing that parameter.

Just like this?

service: notify.mobile_app_s21_jarek
data:
  message: TTS
  title: "Motion has been detected"

unfortunately no changes.

check the volume of the media/music stream. Also go to device settings and play the TTS sample and make sure it can play properly.

Also this is not right, try to change the text to speech default engine to the Google one instead of samsung. Typically part of language/keyboard or accessibility settings. Every device is different.

1 Like

Problem solved!
I found in settings of my phone “speech synthesizer” and you have a right, it is samsung, not google. And because I was not using it before, my language was not installed at all. I added it and voilla, HA notifications also started to work.
Also I found finally, where to set “google synthesizer”, but anyway it speaks with other voice than standard google assistant.
Thanks for suggesting good way!

2 Likes

Found this thread helpful! Tip for finnish users, search for “Teksti puheeksi” and change it to google.