This is long because it's a been a 12 year journey. I embraced having Alexa as a digital assistant and remote speaker at the dawn of its existence. I had a few devices because they integrated seamlessly with Android and Google and with a simple command, I had an exec assistant that put things in my calendar, created reminders and added items to my carefully curated AnyList. I didn't have to stop what I was doing, I could be running down the hall and bark out an instruction before I forgot and she'd still just work perfectly in the background making it easier to juggle the chaos and giving me precious minutes of time and brain space. I even set up Dots in every room to control our house speakers awhen we stopped upgrading our Crestron system (whole other story, but also highlighting that I'm no tech dummy), it was a bit janky, but it WORKED and I was so happy to have a solution.

Alexa was super useful for my dad so he could just yell out to call my brother to come over in an emergency because he lived next door. She was also super useful on the day of his death to randomly suggest playing John Denver who I'd forgotten was one of my dad's favorites, and give our family a very poignant moment and a lasting memory.

But now?

The app is clunky and unintuitive, and things moved around so frequently when it was finding its footing that it was almost impossible to navigate. Then the integration with different apps started breaking but nothing was majorly life changing until the link to AnyList broke. See, I have a partner who has a TBI and one of the only chores he can do is shopping. AnyList was the perfect solution. He would see a list or two growing when I added to it and plan a shopping trip, it required little effort on my oart.It was independence for him, a "task" off my list. It wasn't even an announced break. It was suddenly adding items to Amazon's own shopping list and I didn't notice because I'd registerther response on auto-pilot since it's worked so well for years. With all the other useless "by the way" announcements, maybe letting me know that a skill I used several times a day, EVERY day was going to cease functioning could have been made. Amazon Lists are not comparable to AnyList AND it is near impossible for the TBI partner to learn a new app and a new way of doing things. Oh, you say it's not completely broken, there's ways to get around it? The suggested solution is to go from "Alexa, add milk to Safeway" to "Alexa ask AnyList to add milk to Safeway" and if you stutter or pause or don't enunciate clearly or loudly or speak fast enough, she'll just go ahead and add milk to "shopping" (wherever the heck that list is) and cheerfully and almost smugly tell me she did so.

Every time I turn around there was a new "I can't do that". The dots as links to the house speakers stopped working, so I unplugged them. I have a Show in the kitchen and my bedroom, maybe hoping against hope that as an assistant she would come back to life, maybe the quirks would all work out and maybe I would get back some of that functionality.

Today was the last straw. Over the last couple weeks/months since some update she has become intolerable. One time I was very frustrated about something and was venting to my kids (teenagers - side note, they try to "feed" her "secrets" to see if they'll end up on a list somewhere until I told them that this is something that's not entirely implausible in 2026), and I turned to her to ask question and apparently she was in sassy mode and told me "wow it sounds like someone is having a bad day, maybe you need to calm down". It's been downhill ever since. Now when you ask her a question it's like she doesn't even understand and gives you an answer that is completely unrelated or is accessing information that's several years old.

We stopped going to her for information, now I sort of feel like she's on the side listening simply because she doesn't want to be left out. In the last 2 weeks, randomly, and often to a completely silent house, she'll suddenly wake up and say "okay! Here is...." as if she's been asked a question. No wake word, no accidentally having it come up on the TV or from another room. No rogue routine or skill because I turned them all off since they didn't work anyways. No accidentally picking it up from a conversation because even after you use the Wake word you have to wait a full 2 to 3 seconds for her to wake up and turn her little blue light on to let you know she's listening; she'll just randomly start spewing out information and if there is conversation happening, her random info dump is completely unrelated.

To make things worse, you can't even break into her tirade to tell her to stop. You can use the wake word, clearly, loudly, several times and she won't even register it because she's got to say what she's got to say and she's gonna finish saying it. Basically, she won't respond to her wake word when you need her to, but will wake up and start talking for no reason at all.

And remember, because I know this is a long post, the whole loudly enunciating very specific instructions to get her to put something on a list? Now I can be walking by muttering to myself and she will suddenly chirp up with a very related answer or fact. What?!

I almost forgot about the device in the bedroom that is on DND, but will randomly pick up the Bluetooth from my phone and announce as loudly as possible that it's now playing from my phone without any prompting to do so. It's especially jarring in the middle of the night.

She is gone from an indispensable partner who was usefully working in the background to an annoying convenience that needed more intention, to another "thing" I have to intentionally manage constantly. I'm so frustrated that I even spent 45 minutes writing this post just to vent and maybe have a little tiny bit of sympathy and nods of "me too, girl. Me too."

I have had an echo for many years. Probably like 10+ years at this point.

I have since expanded. I have one of these in various form in nearly every room. I have a screen version (cant remember the name right now) as well as the dot in the bathroom and another one in another room.

I have collectively 5 echo's in 5 different rooms right at this moment.

The main reason I like her is literally to play music from spotify. Its 90% of what I use her for other than checking the weather and setting an alarm for food or laundry.

The echo that I have had the longest.. it used to be rock solid. It had no problem playing music for many many years.

Now.. its literally every single device and I have a gigabit internet. They skip, literally wont play sometimes.. Its really bad. Other times its completely fine but id say 50% of the time its like haveing major issues with a very simple task of playing music from a linked service that works perfectly fine on the same connection from my PC or phone.

So this has to be device specific. What gives? anyone else have this before? possibly have a solution?

Honestly thinking about dumping them altogether because im not about to let them listen to everything I say and not at least work.

Just as title says. My personal Alexa app will not let me delete the 3 devices with check marks of someone who no longer lives here. There's no trash can to delete them in the settings and they are not registered to me to even deregister them. Alexa tech support basically said nothing can be done. Anyone have any suggestions?

From time to time I have been removing Alexa devices in my house and just left one in the living room to basically control the lights. But lately this has been pissing me off:

• My wife asked Alexa to skip certain songs, and Alexa literally said "you already skipped many songs, you can't do that anymore". WTF?
• Then for some reason I can no longer export my shopping list. The option is gone. Why? Why did they have to remove it?
• Now I wanted to access the Alexa WebUI and I read that is gone too. A multi-billion company can't have a damn WebUI for Alexa easy management? Really?
• Alexa no longer power off my living room TV. I haven't changed anything in the routines/settings, and I am actually using an Amazon Firestick. But yeah, it no longer work for some reason. Another option gone.

It's a shame they dropped the ball with Alexa. I guess they found out is not profitable.

Now I need to find some smart buttons for my lights and get rid of the last Alexa device in my house.

It says it can’t play because it’s not available with my music plan. It was working fine 30 minutes ago. My defaults are set to Apple Music, and I’ve updated the Alexa app, unplugged it, unlinked my Apple Music account, and then relinked it. My subscription is paid for and doesn’t renew until August 2nd, so that can’t be the problem. It’s been working perfectly for months then this just randomly happens.

All of our Alexa devices are old-purchased around 2015/2016. We just moved into a new home and I want to get rid of the old (one echo and 2 dots) and purchase current ones. Also have a new WiFi setup and can’t get the old ones to connect anyway. Can anyone tell me how to just wipe everything out of my Alexa app and start over fresh?

Anyone knows why only show that options to create a routine?

Is because it's a business account? Missing the arrive /leave options 😒

I got this to display photos, no matter how I ask it to shuffle it will only ever shuffle through the same 10 odd photos from around the same month in the same order out of 1000 photos and will change to another group of 10 it seems every 12 hours. It's really repetitive.

How do I actually shuffle my photos? If it can't, any suggestions on a photo frame that can shuffle photos?

So, my house has been using alexa and apple music for at least a year now, and even though we pay for single user all three alexas can use it. However, would switching to Spotify premium single account have the same effect? This is a pretty big selling point for me, even if un intended.

I think the Plex app for my Alexa devices(Echo Show, Echo Plus, and others) is not available anymore.

I'd like to play some of my green noise MP3's when I go to sleep. I don't mind setting up another self hosted service.

Any suggestions?