Six ways to solve Echo mic issues
Amazon Echo has been around for nearly 10 years. 10 YEARS. Barking orders at a speaker or screen in the corner of your room is now completely normal, whether you use Alexa, Google Assistant or Siri. It wasn’t always common practice to ask a speaker what the weather was going to be like or add something to a shopping list however. You used to have the news on TV for the former, and a piece of paper for the latter.
For all their fabulous attributes however, occasionally Echo devices encounter microphone issues, and the microphone is of course detrimental to how Echo speakers and displays function. It’s a little hard for Alexa to do what you want if it can’t hear your request after all. Thankfully, there are a few easy fixes that might help if your Echo device is having mic issues. Here are a few worth trying.
Turn it off and on
It sounds like a stupid thing to say, but often, switching your Echo off and on again can help to fix mic issues. It’s not just Echo devices, this is a common theme – and joke – across a lot of consumer technology. Got a phone issue? The first thing you do is turn it on and off, and it’s no different for a smart speaker.
You’ll want to unplug it entirely, wait several seconds (around 10 is recommended) and then plug your Echo back in.
Hit the mute button
All Amazon Echo devices have a hardwired microphone button (circle with the diagonal line) on them to allow you to turn off all the microphones and ensure Alexa most definitely isn’t listening to you deciding what you should cook for dinner. Find the microphone mute button on your Echo device and press it to turn your microphones off. We suggest keeping the microphones off for at least a minute, after which you can press the button again to turn the microphones back on and see if it has fixed your issue.
Setup Voice Profiles
If you’ve tried restarting and rebooting and nothing is improving, it might be that your Echo device just needs to hear and understand you better. For this, make sure you have set up Voice Profiles for the different people in your home. You will get a more personalised experience if you set up Household Profiles and Voice ID, from phone calls to shopping lists. It might also help your Echo device recognise different voices in your home however. We’ve got an entire feature on how to create Household Profiles and use Voice Profiles that you can give a read if you think this one might be the answer to your issues.
Reposition your Echo
Amazon’s Echo devices have far-field microphone arrays within them that allow them to not only hear commands (when the microphones are working), but where those commands are coming from. The blue light shows your Echo device has heard you, and that light will be brighter and point towards the direction it is coming from.
Still, if your Echo device is struggling to hear you, you may want to try moving it. Either spin it around so it faces a different direction, or consider moving it entirely. Amazon recommends placing your Echo device in the middle of the room, but that isn’t always practical. You should try and avoid placing it next to something that emits ambient noise however, whether that’s an open window, fan or the TV.
Reboot your router
It might not be Echo’s fault that it’s having problems. Alexa requires the internet – there’s no on-device magic here so if you’re having issues, you could try rebooting your router. Some Wi-Fi systems allow you to prioritise devices too, like Google’s Nest, so if you really want your Amazon Echo to have the best connection possible, you could prioritise its connection over others at certain times.
Reset your Echo
If the good old fashioned restart hasn’t done the trick for you, or any of the above, then you may need to get a little more serious. You could try a factory reset which will return your Echo device to the original settings it came with out of the box.
Keep in mind if you do this, you will need to setup your Echo from scratch again, though this doesn’t take too long so it’s probably worth it. We’ve got a whole separate feature that explains how to reset your Amazon Echo to help if this is the method you are resorting to.
