How to Fix Assist Voice Not Responding in Home Assistant

You say the wake word, the device lights up, and then nothing happens. No transcription, no spoken reply, just silence. When Assist stops responding in Home Assistant, the break is almost always in the voice pipeline itself, most often a stopped or missing Whisper (speech-to-text) or Piper (text-to-speech) add-on that halts the chain before your words ever reach the intent engine.

Quick Answer

Check that the Whisper and Piper add-ons are installed and running, then confirm your Assist pipeline has both assigned under Settings, Voice assistants. If commands work but you get no spoken reply, fix the Home Assistant URL under Settings, System, Network so the device can fetch the audio. Restart after changes.

How the voice pipeline breaks

Assist works as a chain: your speech goes to a speech-to-text engine, the text goes to the intent engine that decides what you meant, then a text-to-speech engine speaks the reply. Whisper handles the listening, Piper handles the talking. If either add-on is stopped, not installed, or not assigned to your pipeline, the chain snaps and Assist appears dead.

The symptom tells you where the break is. If nothing is transcribed at all, the speech-to-text stage (Whisper, or the lighter Speech-to-Phrase) is the suspect. If Assist clearly understands and acts on a command but never speaks back, the problem is on the text-to-speech side or in how the device fetches the audio.

Walk the chain and fix it

First, open your add-ons and confirm Whisper and Piper are both installed and actually running, not stopped. Start them if they are not. Then go to Settings, Voice assistants, open your assistant, and check that a speech-to-text engine (Whisper or Speech-to-Phrase) is selected and Piper is set for text-to-speech. A pipeline missing either engine cannot complete a request.

If the add-ons were just installed but do not appear as options, they may not have been auto-discovered. Restarting Home Assistant usually surfaces them, after which you can assign them in the pipeline. A capable always-on machine keeps these local engines responsive, and compact boxes suited to that role are listed in Evetech's smart home and appliances section.

For the case where commands run but you hear no reply, the device needs to fetch the spoken audio file from Home Assistant, which means Home Assistant must hand it a reachable URL. On a more complex network, go to Settings, System, Network and set your Local Network Home Assistant URL to an address the device can reach locally. Get that right and the spoken responses return. The network cabling and spares that keep a local setup stable are easy to grab from the accessories best sellers.

Frequently Asked Questions

Why does Assist light up but never respond?

The wake word is detected, but the pipeline stalls afterwards. Usually the Whisper or Piper add-on is stopped or not assigned to your assistant, so speech is never transcribed or no reply is generated.

What is the difference between Whisper and Piper?

Whisper handles speech recognition, converting your spoken words into text on-device. Piper takes Home Assistant's text reply and renders it as spoken audio through your speaker. Assist needs both for a full voice exchange.

Assist acts on commands but gives no spoken reply. Why?

That points to text-to-speech or audio delivery. The device must fetch the reply audio from Home Assistant, so set a reachable Local Network Home Assistant URL under Settings, System, Network.

My add-ons are installed but not showing in the pipeline. What now?

They may not have been auto-discovered. Restart Home Assistant, then go to Settings, Voice assistants and assign Whisper and Piper to your assistant manually.

Do I need internet for a local voice assistant?

No. A Whisper and Piper pipeline runs entirely on your own hardware, which is why a capable, reliable local machine matters for responsive, private voice control.