Amazon Drops Alexa Voice Commands for AUX Input on Older Echo Speakers

Amazon has turned off Alexa voice commands that controlled the wired AUX input on several older Echo speakers, according to Engadget. An email from the company, which a customer passed along and Ars Technica covered, states that requests like asking Alexa to play from line in or to set the AUX input no longer function.

The four models affected are the second-generation Echo Plus from 2018, the third-generation Echo from 2019, the original Echo Studio from 2019 and the fourth-generation Echo from 2020. Amazon verified the removal. A spokesperson told The Verge that only a tiny group of owners who relied on spoken requests for AUX playback had been contacted. The company gave no reason for the decision.

The physical port itself is unaffected. Audio still travels through a cable as before, and owners can switch the AUX input on or off through the Alexa app on supported devices. The change mainly hits people who liked jumping to a wired source without touching their phone.

On the hardware side, the 3.5mm jack on supported Echo speakers does one of two jobs depending on the model. As an input, it lets the speaker play sound from a phone, computer or other external device. As an output, it sends Alexa audio to a separate speaker or amplifier. The connector is identical; only the direction of the signal differs.

Both directions work on the second-generation Echo Plus, the third-generation Echo and the fourth-generation Echo. The first Echo Studio accepts input but cannot send audio out. Earlier Echo Dots, covering the third and fourth generations, offer output alone. The fifth-generation Dot dropped the 3.5mm port entirely.

Older gear still has clear value. A CD changer from the early 2000s, for instance, can feed an original Echo Studio over an RCA-to-3.5mm cable, letting the speaker play those discs without a Bluetooth transmitter or a new player.

To set it up, open the Alexa app, pick the speaker under Devices and locate AUX Audio in its settings, which some app versions list under General. Choose Line In to pipe outside audio through the Echo, or Line Out on models that support both directions. Playback and track skipping stay with the connected device, since the retired voice commands only governed the Echo's input.