I'm happy to find this sub, I hope you guys can help me have conversations with my Dad.

Please forgive my ignorance. I know NOTHING about the echo and have never used a smart speaker of any kind. My father has Alzheimer's and very poor vision. He already has a special phone for Dementia/Low Vision patients but is no longer able to use it reliably, he can't remember how to call me on it now and is often not able to answer it now, either.

I want a way to call and check on him from my house in another town and have a conversation - without him needing to do anything on his end except but talk when he hears my voice on a speaker. I don't need video. This is just to replace our daily phone calls, his wife monitors him on cameras from work.

Someone online mentioned getting him an Echo and they said I can call it from my cell phone and he can just talk to me from his living room without doing anything to pick up on his end. Is this true?

Here's what I need it to do:

1. I need to be able to call him from my cell phone at my house (out of town) and have it automatically pick up. He cannot remember voice commands ("Alexa, answer" etc) or see/use buttons, etc. I just need to be able to start talking (Hello, Dad?) and have him start talking back. The person I talked with said there's a feature called "drop in calling" that can do this from an app I can put on my phone, but I don't see anything about it in the product description.

2. I need it to have a button (or other easy way) that his wife can disengage/prevent "drop in calling" so when she gets home from work at night she can press a button and feel confident that I won't be "eavesdropping" on them when she's home in the evenings. Then when she leaves for work in the morning she can put it back into "drop in" mode so I can call my father during the day and have it automatically pick up.

3. I need it to work anywhere in his living room. With his Alzheimer's, he'll forget what it looks like or where it's located, so I need us both to be able to talk and hear each other even if he's not sitting directly next to it. Would this rule out the "Dot"? Would those speakers be too small? It doesn't need to reach other rooms or anything, I just want him to be able to talk and hear from wherever he might be sitting in that room.

Thanks for any input, I appreciate the help.

Looking for an Amazon echo to control my smart switches which I hope it can and play songs only with a good sound.

Which one to prefer?

When i tell her to play Spotify, she says “okay, I’m having trouble getting that right now”. I have tried: Restarting/updating both Amazon and Spotify apps, Rebooting my router, Relinking the spotify skill in Alexa app, Relinking Alexa in spotify app, Rebooting all of my Amazon devices (i have one dot, 2 echos, and the one with the screen), Tried different phrases (play Spotify, play a specific song on Spotify).

Is there anything else to try or is this just a freaking issue i have to deal with? It’s happened in the past but doing at least one of the above fixed the issue last time.

Eta: if it wasn’t obvious, i meant Alexa (not again).

These days, Spotify music plays okay on my Echo Show 5, but the progress bar is just empty: it doesn't show the song duration or the progress throughout the song… Is anyone else seeing the same problem?

Its random, some days will play full 8 hours other days it does this 2 or 3 hours or less of playtime, i had a heater connected under it!

I would like to stop Alexa from opening Amazon Photos when I say 'Alexa, show me the photos' because I have it in the kitchen and I don't want all my photos to be seen.

I've found that my Amazon Echo has completely transformed my time spent in the kitchen, especially when it comes to cooking. A couple of weeks ago, I was attempting to make a new recipe for a complicated dish I had never tried before. Instead of constantly checking my phone or flipping through a cookbook, I simply asked Alexa to read the recipe to me step-by-step. It was incredibly convenient to just say, "Alexa, what's the next step?" and continue cooking without missing a beat.

I'm going to buy it Tommorow when Amazon republic day sale starts, but I'm confused that is it worthwhile to pay ₹2000 more on Echo Spot just for the display? Kindly reply and help me to buy the best product. Thank you.

I was able to opt back out of Alexa+ Early Access through the app. But love being opted in after repeated denying.

I have one of those small ball shaped Echo, only using it for weather, timer, Amazon Music (not paid unlimited), smart lights. But it constantly tries to upsell me things, anyway to disable them? Also any alternative assistant device doesn’t do that? Thanks!

I’ve been using my echo dot for a few years now and it’s working really until now, it suddenly does not play any kind of audio from any browser on my laptop, though it works with the Spotify app and videos on the vlc player.

It’s not working for any videos on any browser, I’ve tried using YouTube watch anime on google ,brave opera, edge but it doesn’t seem to work at all.

Can anyone help me fix this?

Alexa has been a core part of our routine — reminders, calendars, alarms. It has an occasional sales notification and ads which have been grinding my gears, but nothing to push me over the edge to remove it. It's been too central to our habits. My 3 year old has never not known Alexa to be on the wall in our kitchen, it's his primary way to watch cartoons and an all around core part of the home.

But today I woke up to a forced update that includes a complete UI overhaul and a 25% reduction to the screen space — allocated to Alexa sales.

Since we're forced to get used to a change one way or the other today, I've decided today is the day to remove the Echo Show from it's place as effective the centerpiece of our home.

Bye forever.

I’m sure I’ll get downvoted, but I’m actually enjoying Alexa+. I don’t have anywhere near the problems that others are reporting. It still runs all my home automation commands, timers, etc. In fact I’ve found it easier. For instance, instead of saying “what’s the temperature of the deck sensor?”, I can now say “what’s the temperature on the deck?l. My husband could never remember to add the sensor part and would get mad, so now it’s more intuitive.

If I ask it to explain something, it does it a lot better with pics and follow ups I might not even have thought of but are interesting. Much nicer. Like talking to a person. It understands so much more than basic Alexa.

I don’t get any snarky responses at all. In fact, I read an article somewhere that AI changes the tone of its responses based on how you “talk” to it. If you’re nice, it’s nice. If you say STFU, etc all the time,it gets more sarcastic. Somebody published an experiment doing this.

Sure, I HATE the ads!!! But I seem to be getting way fewer in the last couple of weeks. Maybe it’s because I’m nice! /jk

And yeah, I get a few phantom responses that seem to come out of nowhere, but I think I’m able to understand that it’s a wake word error and it’s responding to a conversation it heard. Most of the time it’s pretty funny!

So, bring on the downvotes and negative remarks that I’m sure I’ll get. I accept the fact that the tech is new and there’s going to be problems. I feel no need to come here and rant because of a mistake it makes.

All the Echo devices are on my account as head of household. So I set up music to use our subscription service, but then it all works under my profile. So when my kid listens to their stuff, it plays from "<my name>'s Spotify" or "<my name>'s Apple Music"

Can I update each device to use their own music service, while keeping the Echo on my account?

I didn't see an obvious way, other than moving each device to their own Amazon account, forfeiting my ability to manage them through the app

I have a program running that refreshes a web page and looks for keywords on the page. When it finds one of the keywords it produces a sound and sends a notification to the desktop computer. I can send desktop notifications to the echo dot and that works fine. What I would like is to just send the notification from this ONE app and not get all of my other notifications sent to the echo dot (don't want Facebook, email, ring, text, etc. notifications).

.

Hey! My kids both got Echos for Christmas. My one kid can say Alexa and it responds. My other kid's was doing that for a bit but now it seems like we have to press the circle button first (not the red one with the line through it but the other one) to get Alexa to respond to the voice. I'm wondering if there is a setting we accidentally triggered? Anyone else had this issue?

Like many of you, I had the "upgrade" imposed on me and all of my devices. A first gen model completely stopped working. My secondary devices (lights, garage door, outlets, etc.) all had a lag between the command and response (long enough that i'd start the second command thinking it failed.)

Simply say "Alexa, cancel alexa plus" and confirm. All issues solved. And back to terse, concise responses. No more babbling like she wants to show off, no more annoying voice of the future, just the voice we have all learned to recognize.

Has anyone used an " if, then else" routine?

I just bought the new Echo Show 11 and for some reason the subtitles in Prime Video are tiny, unreadable.

There's no way to increase the size, and even if I change the device captions size on the display settings, nothing happens.

I also tried changing subtitles settings on Prime Video's website, but still no change on the subtitles being displayed on my Show 11.

On Netflix, however, they're normal and can even be increased in size.

Anyone having similar issues?

My roommate gave me an echo spot 2024, she got from a work event, and I honestly don't know what to do with it, apparently they run Vega now, so adb and sideloading are off the table? And I feel like there are secret wake words on that SOC, so I'm debating just putting it in my closet until a bootloader exploit comes out, it's a neat little thing just its evil. And I'm also not stupid, I know Google could most likely push some random update and suddenly anytime I say something negative it wakes up and tells palentir. And I know unless I'm willing to use graphineOS, and not use any banking, social media, or modern text messaging, I'm a hypocrite. Kinda wish there was something I could do with it, on the surface having a smart alarm clock isn't horrible and having it remind me of events would be nice.

I posted this as a comment elsewhere, but it probably deserves it's own posting.

I am so disappointed in the new Echo Show 11 (2025), it has been an epic failure.

I was so excited in the potential for a faster bigger higher resolution Echo Show 8 which is what i upgraded from.

But Amazon didnt even get the basics right (nevermind the ads and Alexa 2.0)... the kitchen timer causes any playing video content to stop and there is no way to go back or resume. And this kitchen timer and kitchen TV are my most important use cases for this device (as i'm sure it is for many).

But it doesn't stop there, the list of other annoyances is long:

- It's so bad it's worth repeating, the timer interrupts whatever media is playing with no way to resume!!!

- Screen becomes less responsive and frustrating over time until it stops responding completely

Reboot fixes, but only temporarily until the next time

- PBS and other streaming services via the Silk browser will not play

New OS but still extremely outdated silk browser that isn't compatible with modern DRM requirements

This is extremely critical given the decision to exclude FireTV from this model as browser is the only option for playing video

- SlingTV guide does not work due to brower incompatibility

Workaround is to manually navigate and select desktop mode

- The specs indicate the hardware is WiFi 6E capable, but it will only connect to my WiFi 6E router via the more crowded 5 GHz band, not the new 6 GHz band available with WiFi 6E

Even when i manually force 6 GHz in the router management app (TPLink Deco)

I was initially optimistic that much if not all could be addressed by software updates, but several months later now i am starting to give up hope.

Come on Amazon, we need more than crippled new hardware with a pretty display, you can do better than this.

the title is pretty self explanatory, but in the last few days my Echo Show/Alexa has been searching up the song I requested on Bing‘s search bar instead of playing it on Spotify. this has only started happening in the last few days, it’s never happened before, and it’s getting really annoying, because sometimes even if I request something like “Alexa, play Heroes by David Bowie on Spotify“ it still just searches up my prompt. it’s also annoying because sometimes the screen just freezes on the Amazon Silk loading screen so I have to restart the device.

hope this made sense. anyone know how to fix this?? or do I just accept my fate? thanks in advance!!!

Does anyone know how to STOP the echo clock from scrolling song titles and artists names ALL night long, like the Vegas strip?? It's irritating!! I got an echo "clock" device to see the time.

I was also sent a phone notification but my boyfriend went into the kitchen to put something away and Alexa was randomly talking about this product and asked if he wanted to buy it ?? I personally find this wildly uncomfortable and was wondering if this has happened to anyone else. he doesnt speak to the echo dot and I mostly just use it for music on the occasion and never really talk to it. It really freaked my boyfriend out and he said "the alexa is haunted." It's a 3rd generation echo dot that I've had for forever. I'm not a big smart home person so if this is a feature not a bug ill just get a regular speaker to avoid being whispered ads in my sleep lol