I hate to sound like a broken record, but had anyone with previous issues been able to solve Google Hotword detection been able to properly solve it? I'm still not sure if it's ROM-related.
I haven't unfortunately. I used NikGapps Core and it didn't work, just like Android Auto. The last I was able to fix fortunately by manually flashing the NikGapps-Addon-11-AndroidAuto. I tried the same for Google Assistant but that didn't solve the issue. I am able to enable 'OK Google' under Voice Match, but it doesn't respond.
Flashed 08-14 yesterday and it's been running stable. I came from one of the June builds and I too noticed that I am no longer able to pull down the notifications from either side of the notch, it only works from the notch itself. Not a big deal but would be nice to see this fixed as I see myself struggling a lot to pull down the bar from the first time.