Google Assistant 'take a selfie' command not working (not opening Camera) for some, bug escalated

Lately, some Google Assistant users have been facing an issue where they are unable to use the ‘Hey Google, take a selfie’ voice command correctly as other random apps open instead of Camera, losing access to one of its most practical features.

In case you don’t know, you can use the ‘Hey Google, take a selfie’ voice command in Google Assistant to directly open the Camera app in ‘selfie’ mode with a 3-second countdown before taking the photo.

However, according to some reports, there are users facing a bug where the Google Assistant ‘take a selfie’ command is not working since it does not open the Camera. Instead, it opens a random app that includes some camera-related option (like messaging apps).

The bug seems to occur in a couple of ways: Assistant opening the camera of a random app, or asking the user which Camera app to open. For instance, one of those affected points out that, when trying to use the ‘take a selfie’ voice command in Google Assistant, their phone automatically opens the WhatsApp camera.

Below is one of the cases where Assistant asks the user which Camera app to open after trying to use the voice command, making the process cumbersome and slow.

The bug in question is not affecting only a particular device, since I saw reports from users of multiple brands such as Google Pixel, Samsung, Motorola, and even Nokia. In our case, we could not replicate the issue on devices from three different brands (Pixel, OnePlus, and Nothing). Also, the cause or ‘trigger’ for its appearance is a mystery at the time of writing this story.

That said, a Google Product Expert confirmed in late November that the bug was escalated to the Android dev team, although no more official updates have emerged since then and the reports have not stopped.

As the bug was escalated last month, it is possible that a fix will arrive with the upcoming Android December patch, although nothing is confirmed in this regard. Be that as it may, let’s hope that those affected receive a fix soon so that they can continue using the feature as before.