Alexa Profiles
When will Alexa voice profiles / household come to Sonos? I have a Beam and a Sonos One and love it but the Alexa functionality is really starting to lag. I live with my partner and we have different Amazon and Spotify accounts and we can't access them using our devices. The Amazon products have voice profiling that can figure out who is talking and then use their own amazon and Spotify accounts. This is super important for anyone with more than one person in a house. Can someone please update on the likely release of this functionality? Thanks 🙂
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In the Amazon App goto 'Settings/Alexa Account/Amazon Household' and ensure both accounts are there. If not, either you, or your partner, need to set the Amazon household up online in your Amazon Account and go through setting up the sharing of the things you each have available.
When done each of you then setup the Amazon App on each of your own mobile devices and you will automatically see that you are linked together in 'Settings/Alexa Account/Amazon Household'.
Note you will each have to setup your own different skills and services etc. and if you each have Amazon music services, you can set those both in the Amazon App and also the Sonos App.
When all done to switch profiles ... simply say to Alexa...
'Alexa, switch profie'
'Alexa, switch to Christine's Profile'
Alexa, whose profile am I in' ... Alexa will tell you which account is currently in use.
Amazon Households are currently available now in many countries like US, UK etc.
When done each of you then setup the Amazon App on each of your own mobile devices and you will automatically see that you are linked together in 'Settings/Alexa Account/Amazon Household'.
Note you will each have to setup your own different skills and services etc. and if you each have Amazon music services, you can set those both in the Amazon App and also the Sonos App.
When all done to switch profiles ... simply say to Alexa...
'Alexa, switch profie'
'Alexa, switch to Christine's Profile'
Alexa, whose profile am I in' ... Alexa will tell you which account is currently in use.
Amazon Households are currently available now in many countries like US, UK etc.
Hi Ken,
Thanks so much for that. I actually asked the Sonos support team this question 4 September and got this response:
"We have noticed that creating an Amazon Household with multiple Amazon accounts can often duplicate Sonos as playable devices within Alexa and is likely to prevent reliable playback. We will put this forward for you as a feature request with Amazon for consideration."
Are you saying you have done this with a Sonos device and it works reliably?
Aslo - the Amazon devices don't need you to say 'Alexa, switch profile' they can now just figure out who's profile to use by the sound of their voice. Curious if that works as well?
Finally - do Sonos support ever monitor / answer in these forums?
Thanks again for your time!
Cheers,
CB
Thanks so much for that. I actually asked the Sonos support team this question 4 September and got this response:
"We have noticed that creating an Amazon Household with multiple Amazon accounts can often duplicate Sonos as playable devices within Alexa and is likely to prevent reliable playback. We will put this forward for you as a feature request with Amazon for consideration."
Are you saying you have done this with a Sonos device and it works reliably?
Aslo - the Amazon devices don't need you to say 'Alexa, switch profile' they can now just figure out who's profile to use by the sound of their voice. Curious if that works as well?
Finally - do Sonos support ever monitor / answer in these forums?
Thanks again for your time!
Cheers,
CB
CB,
When My wife Jane and I created our Amazon shared household initially, we did it for the purpose of adding further Harmony Hubs/Alexa skills, to our home.. There are currently two Harmony hubs per Alex accounnt allowed and we had three... however both of us did later add the Sonos Skill to each of our accounts and it did not actually duplicate the devices in the smart-home section of the App, but we did have some duplicate entries in the Alexa App settings, but this did not stop things working from a sonos perspective.
I later went back to Sonos on just the one Amazon account as we decided to just have the one Amazon individual user music subscription, rather than either using the slightly dearer 'family subscription' or two separate individual music subscriptions.
Anyhow it did all seem to work fine for us with the Sonos Skill installed on each of our Alexa Apps... note Alexa does give a warning when you install the Sonos Skill on the 2nd account, saying something along the lines of ... 'another user in the household already has this skill enabled' ...but it asks if you wish to continue with the install ... I just answered yes to that and the Sonos Skill worked fine on both of our mobile devices and accounts.
Obviously like I said in the earlier post above, just create the household online first, in one of your Amazon accounts and then simply treat the Alexa App and each of the skills on each of your mobiles, as if they were just your own standalone App... then obviously use the Alexa commands to switch accounts/profiles, before giving instructions.
Here in the UK, Amazon Alexa does not recognise the account in use by voice recognition, but I cannot say if that feature works in the US, or not. We presently have to ask Alexa to switch our profiles/accounts.
Hope that helps ... if you do try these things, perhaps let me know how you get on.?
When My wife Jane and I created our Amazon shared household initially, we did it for the purpose of adding further Harmony Hubs/Alexa skills, to our home.. There are currently two Harmony hubs per Alex accounnt allowed and we had three... however both of us did later add the Sonos Skill to each of our accounts and it did not actually duplicate the devices in the smart-home section of the App, but we did have some duplicate entries in the Alexa App settings, but this did not stop things working from a sonos perspective.
I later went back to Sonos on just the one Amazon account as we decided to just have the one Amazon individual user music subscription, rather than either using the slightly dearer 'family subscription' or two separate individual music subscriptions.
Anyhow it did all seem to work fine for us with the Sonos Skill installed on each of our Alexa Apps... note Alexa does give a warning when you install the Sonos Skill on the 2nd account, saying something along the lines of ... 'another user in the household already has this skill enabled' ...but it asks if you wish to continue with the install ... I just answered yes to that and the Sonos Skill worked fine on both of our mobile devices and accounts.
Obviously like I said in the earlier post above, just create the household online first, in one of your Amazon accounts and then simply treat the Alexa App and each of the skills on each of your mobiles, as if they were just your own standalone App... then obviously use the Alexa commands to switch accounts/profiles, before giving instructions.
Here in the UK, Amazon Alexa does not recognise the account in use by voice recognition, but I cannot say if that feature works in the US, or not. We presently have to ask Alexa to switch our profiles/accounts.
Hope that helps ... if you do try these things, perhaps let me know how you get on.?
Userlevel 5
+13
@Ken_Griffiths - voice profiles are now supported in the UK, I noticed they were there last week. Not sure when they were added, but it is only recently.
Just tried it and the Alexa enabled Sonos speakers behave just as @CB says.... it responds with the primary account.
If using an echo device, Alexa can distinguish if it is me or my wife by the voice and respond appropriately.
Just tried it and the Alexa enabled Sonos speakers behave just as @CB says.... it responds with the primary account.
If using an echo device, Alexa can distinguish if it is me or my wife by the voice and respond appropriately.
Userlevel 5
+13
Another thing, when my wife was training her voice profile on a Sonos One, Alexa kept picking up her name as a wake word when she was saying it herself.
So as part of the training Alexa prompts you to say phrases like:-
“Say “Alexa, order a stainless steel thermos flask””
But they became :-
“Say Alexa, ....... “ pause for command.
I had to say “continue” and then “Alexa, order a stainless steel thermos flask”.... I don’t seem to have a flask on order, thankfully
So as part of the training Alexa prompts you to say phrases like:-
“Say “Alexa, order a stainless steel thermos flask””
But they became :-
“Say Alexa, ....... “ pause for command.
I had to say “continue” and then “Alexa, order a stainless steel thermos flask”.... I don’t seem to have a flask on order, thankfully
Yes (thank you), I have done my voice training and waiting for my wife Jane to do hers and then will try things and see how it goes.
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