You have control over your Alexa experience. We make it easy for you to update your privacy settings (try saying, “Alexa, update my privacy settings.”), and you can always view and manage your Alexa interactions at Alexa Privacy Settings or in the Alexa app (Settings > Alexa Privacy).

Tip: if you prefer to access Alexa Privacy Settings online but don’t have the link handy, you can always type amazon.com/alexaprivacysettings into your browser. Here’s an overview of the information and settings that you’ll find, along with instructions for the quickest way to complete specific actions.

Voice history

The Review Voice History section of Alexa Privacy Settings shows your voice interactions with Alexa. You can filter by date, device, and profile, and choose an entry to see what Alexa heard you say and how Alexa responded. You can even listen to the voice recording of each request. All of your voice recordings are saved by default, but you can choose to delete them at any time and there are a number of ways to do that.

How to review, manage and delete your voice recordings

Why might you want to save your voice recordings? For starters, your voice recordings help Alexa adapt to your voice and your preferences so your interactions are more accurate and convenient. Learn more about personalization. But it’s not just you that benefits. Requests from a diverse range of customers helps Alexa understand everyone better—people with all kinds of speech patterns, accents, and dialects. Learn how data fosters inclusion. One immediate benefit to saving your voice recordings is the ability to create a voice ID for enhanced personalization. For example, if you ask Alexa to play music, you’re more likely to hear songs based on your past requests instead of those made by others in your household. Like reviewing your Order History on Amazon, saving your Voice History can also help jog your memory. What was that song you were dancing to last week? What about that funny joke Alexa told you this morning? Those answers are only a few clicks away if you save your voice recordings.

What happens to your voice recordings after you delete them? If you choose not to save your voice recordings (Settings > Alexa Privacy > Manage Your Alexa Data), they will be automatically deleted after Alexa processes your request. All previously saved recordings will also be deleted. You will still be able to review the transcripts of your Alexa requests for 30 days before we begin automatically deleting them. If you would like to delete your transcripts before 30 days, you can always do so in the Review Voice History section of the app. Note that, when first choosing “Don’t save recordings,” it may take up to 36 hours for our systems to apply this setting. If you choose to manually delete one or more recordings, the voice recordings and their associated text transcripts will be deleted from Amazon’s cloud.

Smart home device history

The Review Smart Home Device History section of Alexa Privacy Settings shows you information about the status and use of your smart home devices connected to Alexa, such as the state of your smart light (on/off). You can review this information for the most recent 30 days, or request an email with your Alexa smart home device history and insights about your smart home device use. You can also choose to delete from Alexa some or all of your third-party smart home device history.

History of detected sounds

The Review History of Detected Sounds section of Alexa Privacy Settings shows recordings of events you have opted to have Alexa detect, such as sounds of glass breaking or smoke/CO alarms. You can filter by date, select an entry to see details, and choose to delete some or all of them. To update how long your Detected Sounds History is saved, visit Manage Your Alexa Data (Settings > Alexa Privacy > Manage Your Alexa Data) and select Choose how long to save history which includes three options: save your history until you delete it or for 3 or 18 months with older history automatically deleted.

Skill permissions

From takeout dinner to games, skills mean Alexa can do more. There are skills for everyone, whether you’re looking for a virtual personal trainer, a recipe, or some quick first aid help. When you use a skill, we may exchange related information with the developer of that skill, such as your answers when you play a trivia skill, your ZIP code when you ask for the weather, or the content of your requests, which may include text transcripts (but not your voice recordings). By default, we do not share your personal information with skill developers. You can choose to grant us permission to share additional information with a skill developer (such as your name and email address with a restaurant booking skill to make a reservation).

You can see and manage Alexa Skills that have requested permission to access data by visiting the Manage Skill Permissions page of Alexa Privacy Settings (Settings > Alexa Privacy > Manage Skill Permissions). You can then choose the type of data being requested (ex. postal code) and toggle individual skill permissions on or off. You can also disable skills through the Alexa app (Skills & Games > Your Skills > [Select a skill] > Disable Skill) or by voice, “Alexa, disable [name of skill].”

Help improve Alexa

Your interactions with Alexa are used to help make Alexa more accurate and useful to you over time and to build new Alexa experiences. We collect data when it benefits our customers, and we strive to invent more with less data. Training Alexa with real world requests from a diverse range of customers is necessary for Alexa to respond properly to the variation in our customers’ speech patterns, dialects, accents, and vocabulary and the acoustic environments where customers use Alexa. This training relies in part on supervised machine learning, an industry-standard practice where humans review an extremely small sample of requests to help Alexa understand the correct interpretation of a request and provide the appropriate response in the future.

If you ever need a reminder for how to manage or review your privacy settings, just say, “Alexa, how do I review my privacy settings?” and Alexa will send you a direct link in the Alexa app to Alexa Privacy Settings.