Recently I was asked a question by a YouTube viewer and I thought the answer would actually prove helpful to a lot of you out there so I decided to post it here on the blog. The question is about whether your Apple devices like Apple iPhone or iPad and specifically the Apple Music service can pair and play nicely with Amazon’s Echo devices like Echo Dot, Echo Show and more.
How to change default music on Amazon Alexa devices
How to use Bluetooth to play Apple Music on an Amazon Alexa device
You can play Apple Music on an Alexa device in a couple of ways: Using Bluetooth from your phone to the speaker, or by first linking Alexa to Apple Music, then by asking Alexa to play what you want, and draw it from Apple Music.
Step 1: put the Alexa device into pairing mode
Make sure the Bluetooth is on on your iPhone. The first thing you’re going to need to do is get your Amazon Echo device, like Echo Dot or Echo Show into pairing mode and it’ll be in Bluetooth pairing mode. You can do this by saying, “Alexa, pair”. She will say, “Searching”.
Step 2: use Settings>Bluetooth to connect
Step 2: use Settings>Bluetooth to connectThe next thing you’ll need to do is go to your iPhone’s Bluetooth menu and look for the Amazon device. Touch it to connect and give it a sec.
After you do this once, the next time you won’t have to go manually make the connection, and you can just ask Alexa to pair to the phone, and it should connect automatically.
Step 3: play music
Next, load up your music app and hit play. This hack will work with pretty much all of the iPhones and all of the Amazon Echo devices.
So, there you go: The answer to the question, ‘do these two devices play nicely together?’ is yes.
Watch my video to see it in action.
How to use your voice to play Apple Music on an Amazon Alexa device
The other option if you want to be completely hands-free is to link the Alexa app with Apple Music. Doing this will mean that whenever you ask Alexa to play music, she’ll pull from your Apple Music library by default. Here’s how to get Alexa set up for voice control with Apple Music:
- Go to the Alexa app
- Select More at the bottom right.
- Choose Music & More. You may get a pop-up that encourages linking right away.
- If you don’t get the pop up, or you miss is, choose the gear icon in the top right.
- You now have two options; to link a Family account or an Individual account.
- Choose Link New Service
- Then you can select where Alexa should default to when pulling music or podcasts.
You may need to Link your Apple music account to Alexa before you can do this. This will involve essentially signing into your Apple Music account via the Alexa app and she will walk you through how to do that, so have your Apple ID info handy. You will also see More>Link New Service if you want to do this first. You can also link and make other music services the default setting if you want to. Alexa has support for Spotify, Tune In, SiriusXM, Deezer, Vevo and more.
That’s how to use your Apple Music or podcasts with Amazon Alexa devices.
