Alexa has a very useful function, connect with your purchases and shipments from Amazon and notify you of the news about them. However, you may want to disable this option. Therefore, we show you how to make Alexa not notify you of the status of your purchases.
Many find it useful to disconnect this feature, because that way they do not ruin possible surprises , such as gift purchases this Christmas, which you will have done at the last minute as always.
Or better yet, in the middle of that family reunion, Alexa won’t snitch about your weird tastes and “alternative” hobbies, singing that another compromising thing is coming that you’re spending your salary on.
How the notification service works
In case you may not have noticed, or you have your Amazon Echo speaker brand new, Alexa connects with your Amazon account to inform you of the status of your orders.
In this way, you will be able to:
- Notify you when a package is ready for delivery.
- Notify you when a package has been successfully delivered.
Besides that, you can also:
- Notify of the articles that make up the order . On a screen-less Echo speaker, that means listing it out loud so everyone knows that you don’t seem to have enough funkos yet . If you have the Echo Show with a display, the name of the products will also appear there .
- Notify of the items that make up the order and that, in addition, are gifts because you marked them as such during the purchase on Amazon. Alexa has the option to distinguish this in the notifications, but remember that only if you specified it correctly.
Thus, if there is no danger that no one will listen to what you have bought and the surprise is broken, they can also inform you of the status of the gift when it is delivered and when it arrives.
As you can see, the options are varied and you can configure the deactivation of notifications for Amazon purchases in a granular way and to your liking. Let’s see how to do it.
How to turn off all purchase notifications
For that, we have to enter our Amazon Alexa mobile application.
There you will see the menu in the form of a hamburger in the lower right that says “More” . We press and, in the new screen that appears, we access the “Configuration” section .
Once there, we will see the “Notifications” section , it is the one that interests us, so we click on it.
You will see that you have several options, the first is the one that suits us and is called “Shopping with Amazon” . We also click there.
In the new screen that appears, you will see 6 options to mark or unmark . Some are activated (appearing colored) and others will be deactivated (appearing in white), as you can see in the image below, in which we show you all that there are.
If you do not want to complicate your life, and you want to deactivate any notification related to orders , then it is very simple, just uncheck everything and leave each option white .
When you do, your purchases will be a total secret between you and Alexa, without anyone else knowing.
However, we have to recognize that some of these purchase notifications are really useful . Therefore, you may want to have part of the options activated. We tell you which ones you should play in each case.
Other specific notifications to disable
We have explained the general deactivation, but, as we indicated, some may be useful and therefore you want to be more specific about what you want to have active or not.
How to disable Alexa from saying the content of your orders out loud
If you want Alexa to notify you of an order and its shipping status, but you do not want it to sing out loud what it contains , then you must deactivate the options that are grouped under the heading “Include product titles” .
There is no loss, because they are the first three options that appear on the “Shopping with Amazon” screen of the application that we have seen above.
In this way, you will have order updates but without Alexa going off the hook about what is inside the box.
Of course, another person who lives or is in your house may find out that there is an order on the way or that it has reached its destination, and they may ask or inquire about it.
How to turn off Alexa notifications about returns
Your Echo speaker can inform you of the status of returns, as well as orders. If this does not interest you, you can deactivate it by tapping on the “Returns” option until it is blank.
It is not difficult to find it either, because this option is below the three that we have just seen.
How to disable order updates in general in Alexa
If you want to disable notifications for orders, including those you have in the Subscribe and Save mode, the option you are looking for is called “Order Updates” and it is below the previous one.
Again, touch until blank.
How to disable Alexa from making recommendations and offers
In this same section, you have the option for Alexa to recommend offers and products based on your purchase history . Regardless of whether you want me to notify you of the status of your orders or not, you will surely want to deactivate this , so it is also on this screen.
This is the option “Recommendations and offers” and it is the last of the 6 that we are seeing, so you know, touch and leave it blank.
The options that come by default in the application is that it notifies you of the status of orders and returns, but that it only shows the items that the order includes when they are not gifts .
If for some reason you want Alexa to also say out loud (or show the content on the screen) of the gifts, you will have to leave the first 3 options that we have seen activated.
This is interesting if there is no danger that your child or your partner will hear that you have again taken the cheapest option when buying something from them.
As you can see, Alexa can be very useful and, at times, also snitch about what you don’t want. So that it does not happen to you with what you buy on Amazon, now you know how to deactivate the notifications of your orders on your smart speaker.
