Skip to main content

How to turn off package notifications on Alexa

Echo smart speakers and smart displays have a handy feature that can show and tell you when there’s a package sitting on your doorstep and even what’s in it. While this can be helpful most of the time, around the holidays it could seriously ruin some surprises.

Avoid making any Grinch-like moves this holiday and manage your Amazon shopping notifications in the Alexa app to help keep the magic alive. Alongside options for tailoring package announcements, the notifications section of the app also has a number of settings you can toggle on or off to help make the voice assistant a little more helpful when it comes to purchases you make on Amazon. Below are a few of the most useful that you might want to tweak this holiday season.

  • Open the Alexa app.
  • Tap on More in the bottom right hand corner.
  • Select Settings > Notifications > Amazon Shopping.
  • Under “Say or Show Item Titles” toggle off “including items in your shopping cart marked as gifts, or those that might be gifts during major holidays.”

One you are in the Amazon Shopping Notifications page of the Alexa app (far right) you can toggle on and off the different notifications you want to receive on your Echo speakers.
Once this is done, you will still get announcements on Echo speakers and on-screen notifications on Echo smart displays for your packages, but those you tagged as gifts in your shopping cart (or that Alexa suspects may be) won’t include a description of what they are.

This is handy if you actually do want the household to know there’s toilet paper on your doorstep, but not that the Nintendo Switch arrived. To ensure this works correctly, check “send as a gift” when the item is in your Amazon cart.

To be on the safe side, you can toggle off all the items under “Say or Show Item Titles.” Then you will just get word when a package is out for delivery or delivered but never what it is.

If you don’t want any package notifications from Alexa — anywhere, any way — and want to be surprised when you open the door toggle off all items on this screen. (Note — these settings only affect announcements on Echo speakers, you will still get any push, email or other notifications you’ve signed up for.)

Happy Holidays!!!

Comments

Popular posts from this blog

Link State Routing Protocol

Link state routing is a method in which each router shares its neighborhood’s knowledge with every other router on the internetwork. In this algorithm, each router in the network understands the network topology and then makes a routing table depending on this topology. Each router will share data about its connection to its neighbor, who will, consecutively, reproduce the data to its neighbors, etc. This appears just before all routers have constructed a topology of the network. In LSP, each node transmits its IP address and the MAC to its neighbor with its signature. Neighbors determine the signature and maintain a record of the combining IP address and the MAC. The Neighbor Lookup Protocol (NLP) of LSP derives and maintains the MAC and IP address of every network frame accepted by a node. The extracted data can support the mapping of MACs and IP addresses. The link-state flooding algorithm prevents the general issues of broadcast in the existence of loops by having every node mainta...

Matter: A next generation home standard

The smart home is evolving. To date, if you've wanted to get into developing a smart home, you've had to deal with the multitude of smart home ecosystems, and making sure that each device you buy is compatible. That, however, may soon change — thanks to new smart home standard called Matter. Matter isn't available just yet, but when it is finally released, it could completely change how you buy smart home products, for the better. All of the best smart home devices could soon support the standard, helping them all work together nicely, and ensuring that no matter what products you buy, you'll be able to use them. Matter is basically the name of a new smart home connectivity standard . But this standard is a little unlike others. That's because of the fact that it's being developed by the Connectivity Standards Alliance, which counts hundreds of companies as members. That includes the likes of Google, Alexa, and Apple. So, whether you prefer to use Google Assista...

New interactive stickers for Stories

Instagram has introduced several new features to Stories, offering interactive ways to share music, photos, and videos. One of the most interesting additions is a feature called Reveal , which blurs the content of a story post and requires viewers to DM the person who shared it in order to see it. Instagram's head, Adam Mosseri, has emphasized the importance of direct messages on the platform, with stories and DMs driving most of Instagram's growth. Requiring a DM to view content represents the next step in boosting engagement, and creators are likely to use it as a tactic to increase their stories' engagement. Another new feature, Frames, adds a Polaroid overlay to images that initially appear gray. Users can shake their phone to reveal the photo, resembling the process many people associate with Polaroid pictures, despite the fact that shaking Polaroids is not recommended by the company during development. Instagram has also introduced a music-based template feature calle...