What to Do When Alexa Goes Down

How to Control Your Smart Home when Alexa Goes Down

Using Your Echo During an Alexa Outage

Today, for the first time, Alexa experienced widespread outages.  Sometimes, she'd light up, and the blue ring would keep flashing, but she would not respond to any commands.  Other times, Alexa would blink red, indicating she was not connected.  Additionally, even if she was not flashing, she failed to respond to any commands. Sometimes, she would apologize. Other times, she'd look like she was listening and responding, but she would just fade out.  Alexa was unable to respond to a simple command, such as "What time is it?" let alone operate any Smart Home Devices.

As of the time I write this, Alexa still has not come back.  And unlike in the Super Bowl commercial, there are not a stable of celebrities waiting to take her place.

So what can you do when Alexa goes down? Does it mean you are out of luck until the network issues resolve?  Thankfully, there are some ways you can still command your Smart Devices, even when your Echo is not responding.

Controlling Devices During an Alexa Outage

Use the Alexa App

Many Alexa users found that if they issued a command via the Alexa app on a mobile device, Alexa would respond.  What she was able to do was somewhat limited, but she was still able to toggle Smart Devices on and off through the app.  

The Alexa app may take a LONG time to open during an outage. Be patient; it will come up eventually.

Use the Smart Device's App

Every Smart Device has its own control app, and most require you use that app for initial set-up.  Once they've integrated the device with Alexa, many users forget that they can still control a device using its own app.  When I asked Alexa to turn on my Hue Lights, and she didn't respond, I merely grabbed my cell phone and used the Hue app to control my lights.  Likewise, I used WeMo to control my WeMo Smart Outlet, and Kasa to control my TP-Link devices.

Here is where the generic Smart Plugs fail to measure up.  The app to control my Hausbell Smart Plug refused to open, and I was unable to control this outlet while Alexa was down.  My no-name Chinese Smart Plug, likewise, had difficulties working at all during the outage.

I was unable to get my morning news brief, and I was unable to control my TV via voice.  But again, the Harmony App still functioned, and I was able to use my Smartphone app to turn on the TV and change the channels.  And of course, my TV's original remote continued to function.  

Use a Third-Party Smart Control App

If you use Yonami or IFTTT, you may similarly use these apps to issue Smart Device commands while Alexa is down.  Third party Hue control apps also continued working while Alexa was down.

What About Timers and Alarms?

Timers and alarms that were set BEFORE the Alexa outage worked like they should.  I had set BOTH a "Wake me to music" alarm AND a "Wake me in 8 hours" timer when I went to bed last night.  Both the alarm and the timer functioned as they should have.  Amazon has always claimed that timers and alarms would sound even during an internet outage, and today, I was able to confirm this.  You cannot set up any new timers or alarms while Alexa is down though.

However, turning OFF the alarms and timers was difficult.  Even though she was flashing blue at the time, Alexa was able to turn off the alarm via a voice command. I was not as lucky with the timer.  And trying to turn off the timer with the Alexa app was not working for me either.  I ended up unplugging Alexa.  After she rebooted, I was able to turn off the timer using the app.  

Will Devices Need Reconfiguring when the Outage Ends?

The good news is that Alexa retained all of her settings during the outage.  ALL of my smart device control came back beautifully when the outage ended. I did not need to relink any accounts, re-enable any skills, or rerun Device Discovery.  If you have a particular device that is acting wonky after an Alexa outage, first try rerunning Discovery. If that does not work, disable then re-enable the specific Alexa skill.  But again, so long as you let Alexa save settings to Amazon, this should not be necessary.

If you choose NOT to save your wifi settings to Amazon, you may need to update the wifi on each of your Alexa devices, so that she can reconnect. You do this through the Alexa app.  Open the Hamburger Menu and select "Settings." Then tap on the name of the specific Echo Device (Echo, Echo Dot, Fire TV, etc.).  This will open the device's Setup Menu. Tap on "Update Wifi", then on "Connect to Wifi." You will need to enter the SSID and password. To avoid having to do this in the future, consider saving your wifi credentials to Amazon so your devices will automatically reconnect after an outage.

Summary

Today, Alexa experienced an outage that appeared to effect folks nationwide.  This is really the first time the Alexa ecosystem has experienced such an outage, and the outage was resolved after several hours. Although Amazon itself did not announce the issues, Twitter and Down Detector were full of folks reporting Alexa difficulties.  Many of us were alerted to problems by a blue ring that would not go off, and by Alexa failing to respond to any commands.

This outage was more of an annoyance than a catastrophe.  We were still able to control Smart Devices, only we were unable to do so via voice.  Instead, we needed to use apps as a backup for control.  Some functions still worked if you used the Alexa app, rather than a voice command. Control also continued working through the device's own app.  

Were you affected by the Alexa Outage? How did you cope until the outage was resolved? Did you panic? Did you think the issue was with you, or your own setup, rather than with your Alexa-enabled device?  Let us know in the comments section.  Hopefully, the next time an outage occurs, you will be more prepared to deal with it, and you will know how to adapt until Alexa comes back.