Alexa Devices Media Player Feedback

Development
1

Placeholder for feedback on Alexa Devices Media Player functionality.

This is for core Alexa Devices integration not the custom Alexa Media Player integration.

We are looking for feedback on what you want to use the media player for and what features you need to realise that.

4

Good day, thank you for this component. I've upgraded to 2026.6 and the new voice event appears but there's no change when alexa is invoked. Could you provide an example of how to use it?

5

Looks like it’s time for me to start switching over to Alexa Devices component. Built-in is generally better than bolt-on like HACS, except maybe for timing to release fixes/upgrades –but that shouldn’t matter much for stable components.

My current use case is basically just using Alexa devices for notifications from HA. But with very Important feature of always prefixing TTS output with a “chime” of some sort, so I don’t get a voice just start speaking out of nowhere.

Currently using AMP with “Chime TTS”, which can do that prefix sound (by pasting together clips before playing it as one piece). Also does other things like volume control before/after announcement, & joining/disjoining devices into groups before/after announcements. My main thing is the prefix sound. Which I now see can be done with Alexa voice markup, with some complexity.

I’m moving from Chime to Ticker integration, to better manage & centralize my notifications, since (at my request) Ticker now allows prefix sound.

I’m wanting to move to local voice assistants, but utilizing good speakers that are already in various rooms, including esp. Alexa devices. So… Media Player for voice asst speakers (w/out prefix chime, of course).

Also currently using native Alexa for my music playing, but longer term, planning on moving to Music Assistant. Keeping Alexas as speakers –with all mic’s muted– and adding additional player devices. I’m hoping for pretty equivalent experience to native Alexa music playing– moving music from one room or group to another, some use of sync sound (w/ sendspin), voice control of volume / mute / skip, etc. I assume it’s unlikely for sendspin w/ Alexa speakers?

6

Despite the new version of Alexa Devices having mediaplayer functions, Music Assistant still is unable to use my Echos. That is what i am waiting for...

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The devs, just this weekend, reached out to the MA team and are inquiring about compatibility and integration.

AD, itself, is almost up to par with AMP, otherwise. It's only missing Fire TV media controls (there's a PR to add them) and connected devices (like the echo glow). It does have features that AMP doesn't have, like sensors for the air quality monitor and voice event attributes. There's also a PR, which looks to be implemented on the next release or two, that will add todo features, bringing the Alexa shopping list and task list into HA.

It's only a matter of time, but AD will be fully featured offering benefits that AMP doesn't provide.

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Yes, this would of course also be very welcome!

9

Hi everyone :call_me_hand:,

Great job on this first milestone! Really happy with the progress so far, thanks to the DEVs for the top work! :trophy:

Just wanted to share my feedback and what I’ve noticed:

  • Media Player Card & Delay: I built a custom card that detects when my Echos are playing music and pops up a small media control card at the bottom. When playing music, it works perfectly with just a 1-2 sec delay, which is really good.
  • Timers: The only thing is that timers seem to take a bit longer until they are actually shown or updated in HA compared to the music states.
  • TTS & Music Assistant: Like @hewimeddel mentioned, connecting this with Music Assistant would be an absolute revolution lol xD Currently, sending my own TTS or music from HA directly to the media player doesn't work yet. The Alexa API is probably still striking a bit there...
  • Feature Request: An Alexa shopping list feature would also be a very, very cool addition for the future!

Looking forward to the next updates, keep it up! :+1:

10

Confirming this from real-world testing: I have 11 Alexa devices integrated (Echo Dot, Echo Show, Echo Flex x2, Echo Studio/Show, Fire TV, etc.) via the native Alexa Devices integration. Tried every angle I could think of to get any of them to actually speak an arbitrary TTS message from HA:

  • alexa_devices.send_sound works fine (predefined sound library, bells/chimes/etc.) - confirms the media_player entities and command path are alive and well.
    • No service exists yet to send free-text TTS or announce a custom message - matches what’s reported above.
    • As a fallback, tried reinstalling the unofficial Alexa Media Player (HACS) purely for its TTS notify service, but got permanently stonewalled by Amazon’s CVF phone-verification challenge on that login proxy - nothing to do with credentials or 2FA, just Amazon quietly showing the door to anyone using a “non-approved” client.
      Bit of an irony, really: this community is full of people who’ll happily reverse-engineer a vacuum’s cloud API or write a Jinja template to shame their own smart plugs into saving electricity, and yet Amazon still won’t let us, of all people, put words in Alexa’s mouth. You’d think the “sophisticated home-automation nerd” demographic would be exactly who they’d want talking to their devices - apparently not. So for now, my 11 Echos remain excellent at making chime noises and utterly silent on everything else.

That said, credit where it’s due: between this thread and the wider HA community I got further in an afternoon than I would have in a week on my own - the diagnostics, workarounds, and even the “yeah, Amazon does that to us too” reassurance here are genuinely what make this ecosystem worth sticking with. Native TTS/announce support in this integration would be the cherry on top whenever it’s feasible - no rush, you’ve already given us plenty to be grateful for.

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If you want to just have text output from the devices then you can do that using notify.send_message there are a few examples in the docs Alexa Devices - Home Assistant