Google Assistant not working on OnePlus

Google Assistant not working

A few weeks ago, my OnePlus phone started having issues with Google Assistant, where a query would never finish. This was especially annoying, as this defeated one of the main features of my shiny new Pixel Buds, Assistant on device.

With this issue compounding a few other software issues occurring, and the software on my phone being around 2 years old, I figured it was time for a fresh start. I flashed a brand new copy of OxygenOS, restored all my files, and Assistant was working great!

Then, a few days ago, Assistant broke suddenly, saying “Can’t reach Google at the moment”. Digging into LogCat messages, I found this error message:

Failure starting process com.google.android.googlequicksearchbox:search java.lang.SecurityException: Package com.google.android.googlequicksearchbox was not installed for user 999!

The diagnosis

This stuck out to me - what is user 999? Running pm list users, user 999 was Parallel Apps - that’s an interesting note, I had just enabled a Parallel app around the time things stopped working! I disabled Parallel Apps, but it was still not working.

The fix

Obviously the user account’s configuration is a problem, so let’s try removing it. I ran pm remove-user 999, and rebooted my phone. Assistant works again!