- A post on the Amazon Echo subreddit indicates that an Alexa Plus subscription can make unintended changes to Echo devices.
- User Setati said that their Echo Show 5 had stopped persistently showing the time on its home screen, instead surfacing news and other content.
- Setati says that canceling Alexa Plus removed the unwanted additional content from their Show 5’s screen.
Alexa Plus is Amazon’s new paid digital assistant. Available for $20 per month (or included for free, if you’re a Prime subscriber), Alexa Plus injects extra AI functionality into your Amazon devices, like the ability to engage in more natural conversation-style interactions with Alexa through an Echo device. Turns out, it can also make some unhelpful changes to your Echo Show’s home screen.
In a post on the Amazon Echo subreddit, user Setati complains that their Echo Show 5 has recently become less fit for one of their primary use cases: telling the time. Setati writes that “about the same time as Alexa+,” their Show 5 started showing content that it didn’t before, replacing the full-screen clock with “news briefs and things it thinks I want to see.”