Amazon is taking away this Alexa feature from Echo speakers for no real reason

Amazon’s Echo lineup has been quietly moving away from the humble 3.5mm jack for years. The last mainstream Echo speaker to include one was the fourth-generation Echo from 2020, and newer models have leaned increasingly on wireless connections instead. Now, Amazon is taking that retreat a step further by removing part of the functionality from Echo speakers that still have an AUX port.

According to emails sent to affected customers (as reported by Ars Technica), Amazon has disabled Alexa voice commands for controlling the AUX input on several older Echo models. That means commands such as “Alexa, play from line in” or “Alexa, stop aux input” no longer work. Amazon confirmed the change to Ars.

The affected hardware includes the second-generation Echo Plus (2018), third-generation Echo (2019), first-generation Echo Studio (2019), and fourth-generation Echo (2020).

Importantly, Amazon hasn’t killed the physical port itself. You can still connect an external audio source through the 3.5mm jack and play sound through the Echo. The Alexa app can also still switch supported devices between AUX input and output modes. What disappears is the convenience of telling Alexa to control that wired connection with your voice. Bluetooth remains another option.

Amazon told Ars that very few customers use voice commands for AUX playback, but it didn’t explain why it needed to remove the capability or how many people are affected. That matters because these aren’t newly discontinued features. They’re controls disappearing from speakers customers already bought, and Reddit reactions show some owners are understandably irritated.

The wider industry has certainly been drifting away from 3.5mm connections, especially on phones and newer smart speakers. Still, wired audio has advantages: it’s simple, dependable, and doesn’t require pairing anything.

Amazon is trimming functionality from some aging Echo hardware as competition in the smart home space is heating up again, with Apple preparing a broader push into connected home products. But for anyone still squeezing every useful year out of an older Echo, one small piece of that original experience has now vanished.