I remember turning these off at one point, but can't seem to find the setting now... and ideas?
Yeah, I get sick of Alexa saying "by the way..."
Tell it, "Alexa, stop by the way." That will shut her up for a while.
It has to be repeated to keep the suggestions off. I have an automation in Apple Home that weekly has Siri tell Alexa to stop by the way. I figured that Siri was probably as annoyed by it as I was.
Brilliant!
That does work but only "for now". I haven't put a clock on it, but gut feel says she doesn't keep her stupid suggestions to herself for very long.
Even worse, is the Show's "Things to Try". Displaying an album of photos seem to reduce the ads on the screen, but about 75%, not fully. Much of the time I have a routine on my Shows that turn off the screen every 10 minutes.
Yeah...the pushy sales aspect plus the Echo Speaks changes are two of the main reasons I'm starting to migrate more towards Google devices.
In the Alexa app identify that the user is a child.
Yes, that does work but has a few other effects. It disables explicit lyrics and purchase by voice. I don't care about either of those, but when I tried it there was another effect that I considered a show-stopper. Sorry I don't recall at the moment what that was, so might try it again.
I think you can turn that off in the settings.
I did the "stop by the way" a while ago and it surprisingly has not come back yet, has probably been months.
Glad this got brought up again though, as I meant to setup a weekly rule for echo speaks to say this.
Nope. There is an item under Settings that says "Things to Try" ..
.. but there is no setting there. It just gives you more "Things to try" ...
For me it's that it won't recognize your voice as your voice if it's a child. So mine knows when I'm talking or if my wife is talking, but for my kids, it won't let them be identified by their voices.
Since I set up Siri to tell Alexa "stop by the way" every week, I haven't had any annoying suggestions. I only get "by the way" when there's a weather alert. And that's OK with me. I don't have any Shows, but I do have an Echo Spot. I haven't found any way to stop the advertising display on that. But it doesn't seem to do it when I have it in night mode, or whatever it's called on that device. It only shows the time then.
I'm thinking you are talking about an Echo Show 5.
Nope. Actually meant an Echo Spot. It's no longer made. Thanks for the correction. I'll fix my previous post.
Gotcha. I remember those but never owned one. I'm surprised I don't have one in my Alexa Museum that proudly has the Tap, the Flex, Auto, Ecobee 4, every gen of the Echo, and a whole box of Dash buttons.
It's just the right size for an alarm clock on my nightstand. The Shows are too big, as far as I'm concerned. I really hope Amazon doesn't decide to brick it any time soon.
My guess is they will keep it running...i have an old echo input that's still going strong. Discontinued since late 2019.
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