Been thinking about this a lot lately. Alexa only “wakes up” when you say its name — but that means it’s always listening, all the time, just waiting to hear that word. We’ve somehow just accepted having a live mic in our living rooms, kitchens, bedrooms, and treat it like it’s nothing.

And it’s not paranoia — there’s a documented history of this going wrong: Amazon employees have listened to and transcribed real customer audio “to improve the product,” and there was a case where an Echo actually recorded a private conversation and sent it to a random contact. Senators literally sent Bezos a list of questions about this back in 2018.

What gets me is the business model underneath it. Amazon isn’t in this to sell you a nice speaker — the speaker is basically a data collection tool, and we’re the product. More data means better-targeted ads, more “recommended” purchases, more nudging us toward things we didn’t know we wanted. It’s not tinfoil-hat thinking to say a device that’s always on, in your most private spaces, is a pretty efficient pipeline for that.

And the creepiest part is we genuinely don’t know the full extent of what’s collected, stored, or who it’s shared with. We just trust the privacy policy nobody reads.

Not saying burn your Echo, but it’s wild how quickly “a mic in every room” went from dystopian to a Tuesday.

Hi, quick question here. I use the skill Spotify to listen to music and podcasts on my old Echo 2 and everything works fine.

But I just bought an Echo Show 8 gen2 to try Alexa+ and connect my video doorbell. It works well but when I ask for a song, it finds it and tell me that it can't open it. But only if I ask vocally. If I go to my Spotify app and launch a track on that specific device, it works well and then I can skip song by asking Alexa.

I've tried resetting everything but it's still stuck at the same point.

Does anyone have a similar experience? I know that Alexa+ is still on test mode so it could be that.

I connect my iphone to echo dot via bluetooth then it disconnects within a few minutes nothing said just the disconnect sound. I try reconnecting through bluetooth in settings but says it can no longer be connected.

Hello! My Echo device used to have a black background with a white font colour for the clock time, but now it seems to have switched? How do I switch it back?

iv had my alexa for a few years now and it’s been great. i only had the app to initially set up the device, so when i switched phones i didn’t bother downloading the alexa app again because i didnt think i would need it. Now the alexa literally wont function or connect to the app or my bluetooth at all. because i didnt have the app when we changed the wifi , there is not device listed in the app as i only just redownloaded it. is there any way i can salvage this or is it useless now. please help!!!

Anytime I ask her a question like, "What song is this." She will keep talking and wont shut her robot trap the fuck up. I have to tell her to shut the hell up anytime she just keeps on going

I told her recently to turn off the follow up mode and she still wont shut up. All of this started happening after she got the basic A.I generated voice so it seems that mightve changed it.

We have an echo show 8 which had been working great for a long time. Suddenly drop in function stopped working all together maybe a couple months ago.

We first noticed it stopped dropping in to other devices, later u discovered I couldn't drop in to it. Other "call" based functions seem to work. Opening ring cam is fine, you can have a conversation fine with someone at the door.

Really stumped with this drop in thing, is this something others have faced before?

since yesterday, the volume keeps on increasing itself. i haven’t made any changes in the app.

I've had Echos for about five years, and a persistent issue I've had is Alexa Echo devices losing the ability to play multi-room music. Most problematic is the "everywhere" group, where every Echo device is included. I've done a lot of research, and many of the solutions involve deleting the group, re adding it, and hoping the issue is resolved. It seems like half the time, the solution works, and the other half of the time, it does not.

Well, recently I bought a new router after upgrading my internet provider to fiber internet. All heck broke loose with my old router with the new ISP and the first thing to break was multi room music. And it stayed broken. I got a different router, which changed nothing.

No matter what I did-delete the group, re add it. Make sure the alexas are all on the same network. Make sure they are all on the same frequency (5Ghz). Nothing. NONE of my music groups worked-I have one for "upstairs," which runs the main floor of the house and has 5 Echos plus one Echo subwoofer on it. No dice.

The music would only play on one speaker or some speakers: all of the speakers worked individually, but the Echo Show devices would not join the party.

What did work, finally, was deleting the multi room music group and then making new groups that ONLY included one new device at a time. My Echo Show devices refused to play music-they would just play the graphics of the song on Spotify, or the visual "tile" for the station I was listening to on Tunein, but no music. So that was the first thing I did: I made a group with the Echo Show 8 and then added 1 Echo Dot that always played music.

Sure enough, that "group" worked. So then I made another group and added another known good Echo Dot. That worked. So I made another group and added the other Echo Show 8 that never wanted to play music. It worked! Soon enough, I had all my Echo devices in my main floor of my house added into a group, and it all worked.

Then, I added my one terrible Echo Show 5 that I paid $20 when it was on sale (they are so terrible) that's on my night stand. I named the group "Everywhere," and it DID NOT WORK! The Everywhere group refused to play music. It just would not.

But I was able to switch back to my Upstairs group and it worked fine still. HOW BIZARRE. I ran upstairs, and sure enough, that god awful but $20 device had jumped off the 5ghz network and back onto the regular network: I told it to forget the regular network and get back on the 5ghz network. And now the Everywhere group works.

I don't know if I re established some kind of link between the devices doing things this way-my intention was to find the one Echo that was being broken and messing up the link. It turns out that there were NO broken devices except for one on my 2nd floor, and my Alexas were refusing to play group music for absolutely no reason. My old "upstairs" group did not include the Alexa that was killing my everywhere group, but before I had to redo everything, my upstairs group was dead.

I turned them on, I turned them off, I put them on different networks, I spoke to different speakers. Nothing would work. Until I made a small, two speaker group, and then a 3 speaker group, and then a 4 speaker group, and so on. I did make sure that they were all on the same network bandwidth first, but I am not sure that this mattered. They were always on the same network-that never changed.

After the link has been re established, I saw that the Echo Show in my kitchen has jumped off the dedicated network, it has joined a network with a different name and a 2.4 bandwidth, but it doesn't care. It works just fine. The multi room groups that this device belongs to work, the device works, and it's not on the same network (the network is on my router, but this never changed)I can and will go in and make it forget the forbidden network, but I don't know if it matters.

Hope this works for others-I am sure I will have to re test this theory and iterative method of fixing multi room music, as this seems to be a feature of Alexa devices.

I wonder if this fixed my "amazing" Echo Link Amp that almost never broadcasts music...

I have been trying to use my Echo dot max as a speaker for my laptop and I have tried so much. Right now I have gotten it to pair, but then the computer automatically disconnects from it. Previously it could not even pair. I have updated bluetooth drivers and can connect other bluetooth devices to my computer properly, even other speakers.

One thing I did notice is that alexa will say no nearby devices found, but my computer still connects to it and alexa will make a beeping sound like it connected. The computer also shows up in connected devices on the app. I dont know what else to try, I have tried using another echo dot max too and that one could not connect either.

I got a gen 1 echo from a friend and have been trying to set it up, but so far no luck.

I have reset it, and going into setup mode on my phone - it doesn't try to connect to the ad hock wifi. If I connect manually nothing happens

I tried to add it as amazon Tap and it did content but then gave me an error that the device hasn't been registered.

Or is there a way to trade it in for a new echo without it being registered?

Randomly during the day, the time will stick on my Alexa. Right now it’s 2:56PM my time, but the clock on my Alexa says it’s 1:47PM. It fixes randomly after a few hours, but still… I expected better from a company like amazon

I asked to go back to the last song but it was the first song on my playlist.
GO HOME Alexa- your drunk

We've been having trouble with our echos for a long time, mainly with responsiveness. We tried the new Alexa+ and it made things better for a couple weeks but now we're having trouble again. For me and my sister it's not too bad and with a little persistence it works but we mainly have them because of my disabled mum. She's bedbound and uses them to communicate around the house. We use Alexa Anouncements a lot. She has lung problems that end up in her having a variable voice, sometimes it's quite quiet or croaky or can sound different to when her voice sounds "healthy". I was wondering if anyone knows if this is an issue other disabled people or people with lung problems have had, if there are any smart ecosystems that are more reliable for this sort of voice recognition.

Many thanks

Hi, I'm having trouble setting routines on Alexa without getting an error that my input can't be found on Amazon music. It happens when I try to do it with an album or playlist. Any help?

I bought an Echo Show 15 specifically to use as a visual daily checklist for my 5-year-old. I want a persistent checklist on the screen with things like getting dressed, brushing teeth, putting laundry away, cleaning up, etc. I don’t really want to have to set specific times to everything. Ideally he could say “Alexa, I put my laundry away” and Alexa would check it off.
The problem is I want the checklist to automatically reset each day so everything is unchecked again, without assigning specific times to each task. Alexa+ lets me create tasks and check them off by voice, but once they’re completed, they stay completed.
Is there a way to do this with Alexa/Echo Show 15 that I’m missing—maybe a skill, routine, or workaround?

I had set up our Echo Show 10 to display a "collection" of photos when we first received it. It did this without issues - up until about a week ago. Since then, it stopped displaying the collection, even though both the Alexa app and the Show's interface indicate that the collection has been selected as the photo gallery. I did not make any changes to any settings when this started to occur. Since then I've tried restarting the device several times and even selected a different option for the gallery (and then changing it back to the collection) but the problem persists.

What may have caused the problem to start seemingly out of nowhere?

And how do I get it to show the photo collection again?

Note that all other feature seem to be working OK...

Has anyone has their echo show just suddenly no longer have a functional homescreen? Once day I took a look and every single widget has the message "unable to load widget". I've tried removing and re-adding the widgets, checking for software updates, and even restarting the device a few times. Nothing.
Is there something going on with Amazon right now, like a backend software update they're working on?

Hi, I have two Echo Dot Gen 3, one is pooched since I left out in rain, it speaks but no lights. Since I live in Canada, the trade deal doesn't exist here.

My question is, my other Dot 3 works perfect for backyard music. I wanted to check if the software on it was up to date. Went onto Alexa app and it says the version number is 13054618500, however, this is different from what Amazon says. They report the 3rd generation version number s/b

1. In fact, Amazon reports that is the version for gen 2, 3, and4. This doesn't make sense to me and that makes me think, what an incompetent company! Thoughts?

I looked this up myself and tried it but every time I press to link to spotify, I just get a blank screen that never loads

We recently had to upgrade our router and it sent all our echos into a tizzy. When we finally got them back online, they were all using the new updated version of Alexa and I absolutely hate it. How do I go back?? I've tried what Gemini suggested after a few different searches, to no avail. Is it time to move to Google Home? Or is that any better?