Amazon Echo users will no longer have the option to process their Alexa requests locally, which means all of their voice recordings will be sent to the

In short, everything you say to your Echo devices after March 28 will be sent to Amazon’s cloud, and there isn’t anything anyone can do about it. If users continue to make Amazon delete recordings, they will also lose access to features their devices had by default when they were purchased.

Amazon Echo models that were previously able to process Alexa requests locally will no longer do so, instead sending those voice recordings to the cloud. An Amazon spokesperson confirmed the change to The Verge after a Reddit user posted a PSA about it on Friday,

If you own an Echo smart speaker, it will soon lose a key privacy feature — and be replaced with cloud processing of all voice commands.

Amazon is discontinuing a feature that allowed users of some of its Echo smart speakers to choose not to send their voice recordings to the cloud. According to an email the company sent to users that was posted on Reddit, it will disable the feature that allowed select Echos to process Alexa requests locally on the device on March 28th, 2025.

While Amazon said Echo users will still have the option to not save their voice commands, certain features of Alexa+ might not work in that case.

For your bedside table, the Echo Spot could make for a nice companion, as long as you don’t expect great audio quality.

Some Echo devices have a feature that allows you to block voice recordings from being sent to the cloud, but Amazon is killing it.

All voice recordings of commands or queries given to Amazon voice assistant Alexa on the company’s Echo devices will go to the Amazon cloud starting March 28.