Why is my Alexa red? Is Amazon Alexa down and why is Alexa not working?

Thousands of UK Alexa users reported that their voice assistants were not working this morning.
Thousands of users reported problems with the smart home devices this morning.Thousands of users reported problems with the smart home devices this morning.
Thousands of users reported problems with the smart home devices this morning.

Amazon Alexa, the smart assistant paired with the global corporation, is dealing with a UK outage today on January 21st.

Alexa and Echo devices are compact smart home devices that work through voice activation.

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They are used to set alarms, play music, organise calendars, and can also connect to other smart home devices like lights, speakers, and more.

Thousands of UK users reported issues this morning.

It seems to be part of wider problems affecting other Amazon services as well.

Here’s what you need to know about the outage.

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Is Amazon Alexa down?

As of 8.18am on January 21st, 7,816 people had reported issues with Alexa via DownDetector.

A further 1,145 reports were logged by 9.18am.

Of that number, 60% stated they were having issues with the server connection, 21% with the website, and 18% with the app.

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At the same time, DownDetector showed that 322 people reported issues with Amazon UK as a whole, suggesting it’s part of a wider problem.

51% of these problems were to do with the website, 43% to do with the app, and 6% with logging in.

Why is my Alexa red?

Usually, Alexa turning a solid red means that the microphone is turned off and it will not be responding to your voice.

You can normally fix this by pressing the microphone button on the top to turn the mike back on.

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However, in this case it seemed to be an error that means it cannot connect.

Why is Alexa not working?

Since then, an Amazon spokesperson told the Scotsman that: “This morning we had an issue that impacted some Alexa customers’ ability to interact with the service. The Alexa service is now operating normally.”

According to social media reports, there were a range of issues with Alexa and Echo devices today.

Devices are showing as 'offline' when they shouldn’t be, or are displaying a red light ring instead of the normal blue.

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Voice prompts such as "I'm having difficulty understanding right now" and "'something has gone wrong" are very common, as well as Alexa being very slow to process requests.

Many people use Alexa and Echo devices first thing in the morning for alarms, reminders, and to get news and updates about their day.

It’s a bad time for many of them to go offline, leaving thousands of users frustrated across the country.

The problems seemed to be contained to the UK, including the problems with the Amazon website itself.

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