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(Pocket-lint) - The years before smart speakers seem like a distant memory now. Amazon Echo - for a lot of people - has become the default way to listen to music for a lot of consumers, and that means the days of manually pairing to a battery-powered Bluetooth speaker are long behind us.
Thanks to Amazon, smart speakers have become all the rage in recent years. Whether you're using yours to listen to multi-room music, issue smart home commands by voice or just setting timers while cooking, there's a lot they can do.
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While all the voice-activated stuff is great, there are times when you just need to connect to a regular Bluetooth speaker. Sometimes that method is more convenient, especially if you want to play a file that's on your phone. Thankfully, Echo does that too. In this guide, we'll show you how to connect to it from your phone to use it as a Bluetooth speaker.
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We'll also show you how to connect your Echo to another Bluetooth audio device. This might be useful if you have a smaller Echo Dot, and/or you have a much better-sounding Bluetooth-equipped stereo you'd rather hear the audio from. But first, connecting your phone...
Get your phone ready
Before doing anything with the Echo speaker itself, make sure your phone's Bluetooth is on and you're in your Bluetooth pairing screen.
On iPhone:
- Open Settings > Bluetooth
- Toggle Bluetooth on (if it isn't already)
- Scroll down to the bottom where it says 'Other Devices'.
On Android (process my differ slightly by manufacturer):
- Open Settings > Connections > Bluetooth
- Toggle Bluetooth on (if it isn't already)
- Tap 'Scan' or 'Pair new device' (whatever your particular Android version says)
Now on your phone, the list will automatically show any nearby device that's in pairing mode.
Tell Alexa to pair
Now's the time to use your Amazon Echo's smart skills. Just say "Alexa, pair" or "Alexa, Bluetooth on", and it should start pulsing its blue light and searching.
Once you've done this, the Echo should appear on the list on your phone screen. Tap on its name in the list, and confirm pairing. Now you're connected, and any music or audio from your phone will now play through the Echo as if it was a standard Bluetooth speaker.
Now, whenever you want to connect to that particular phone from your Echo, you can just say "Alexa, connect to [device name]" or "Connect to my phone" and it'll do so.
To disconnect, just manually select the disconnect option from within the Bluetooth menu on your phone. Or say "Alexa, disconnect from my phone".
Use Echo's Bluetooth to connect to another speaker, stereo or headphones
If you have a better-sounding audio system that's Bluetooth and want to use it to play the audio from your Echo you can do that too. Or, if you want to connect Bluetooth headphones to your Echo, that's also a possibility. Just follow the following simple steps:
- Ensure your Bluetooth speaker/stereo/headphones pairing mode is active
- Open the Amazon Alexa app on your phone
- Find 'Devices' then tap 'Echo & Alexa'
- Now tap on the specific Echo device you want to use
- Under 'Bluetooth Connections' tap 'Connect a device'
Now your speaker/sound system or headphones should show up in the list on your screen. Tap the system you want to connect to, and now your Echo is connected wireless to an external audio device.
To connect to it again at any point, you can use your voice command to say "Alexa, connect to my speaker" and it'll do so automatically. To disconnect, say "Alexa, disconnect from my speaker".
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