Have you ever noticed an orange light ring on your Alexa device? These lights aren't just for show; they tell you what's happening inside. Alexa uses a solid, flashing, or spinning light to communicate. When you first talk to your Alexa speaker, a spinning orange light ring might just catch your eye.
Note: The yellow and orange light rings are often mistaken for each other. If the instructions in this article don't work for you, then I recommend checking out my guide to the Alexa yellow ring here.
Also, you can watch my video below where I discuss the topics covered in this article.
What does the Alexa Orange Ring mean?
If your Alexa Echo or Echo Dot is displaying an Orange ring, it can mean one of two things.
- Firstly, it can indicate that your Echo device is in setup mode and awaiting a Wi-Fi connection.
- Secondly, it can tell you that your Amazon device is facing issues connecting to your Wi-Fi network or the network does not have an active internet connection.
Unlike other flashing lights on your Amazon Alexa device (such as the green ring that has two variations – pulsing and spinning), the orange flashing light only spins.
I’ve had to set up and reconfigure Wi-Fi on my various Echo devices, multiple times down through the years. You can see an example of my Echo Dot 3rd generation spinning below.
How to resolve a spinning Alexa Orange Ring
1. Alexa Setup
The initial setup process for your Echo device is pretty straightforward.
- Plug your speaker into a power outlet (I recommend using the power cable that comes with the device as other cables might not supply enough power).
- Wait for the orange light ring to start spinning, then open the Alexa App (If you don’t have the Alexa App then download from the App or Play Store and log in or register an account). I recommend staying close to the speaker during setup as if you’re in a different room, it might not pick it up.
- At this point, you might get a pop-up to say an Echo device is ready to set up. If not click Devices at the bottom, and then the plus icon on the top right. Click Add Device.
- Click Amazon Echo and then select the type of Echo device you are configuring.
- From here the App will Search for the device and once found you can configure the Wi-Fi settings if it's a new network, or select a previously set up Wi-Fi network to use the saved credentials.
- Once the setup process is complete, the orange ring should disappear and Alexa is operational.
Step by Step Screenshots
2. Changes to your Wi-Fi Network
You might also encounter the orange flashing light after you have already set up your Amazon Alexa device.
If for any reason, your Wi-Fi connection is disrupted (Such as a new Wi-Fi router, change to the network name or a new password), the connection to your Alexa device will break and the device will need to reconnect to your Wi-Fi network.
This is when you will see the orange light flash again.
If the Wi-Fi network has changed, follow the below steps to reconnect your Echo device.
- Open the Alexa app and go to your Echo device settings (cog on the top right) and hit change under Wi-Fi Network.
- You then hold the action button on the Echo device to reset it,
- Enter the credentials for the new or updated Wi-Fi network.
Step by Step Screenshots
If you periodically see the orange light, which goes away by itself, then it’s possible that your Echo device has a weak signal and is at the limit of the router's range. Or there may be too many devices on your network causing congestion. In these scenarios, you may need to consider upgrading your hardware to improve the Wi-Fi signal or decrease the number of devices on the network.
3. Alexa Orange Ring: Issues with your Internet Connectivity
If your Wi-Fi network is unchanged and stable, then it's possible that there’s an issue with your internet service provider.
Like any service, there can be scheduled and unscheduled downtime, such as for network maintenance or during storms. In these situations, your Wi-Fi router won’t be able to communicate with the outside world.
The first step I take to determine if this is the issue is to restart or power cycle my router. (Turn it off, wait a minute and turn it back on). If that works, your network will be back online and the orange light will disappear.
If that doesn’t solve the problem, I usually check online to see if other people are having the same issue. Downdetector.com is a good resource along with Twitter or Google News. If others are experiencing the same problem, I usually wait for the ISP to resolve the outage or get in touch with them to get an ETA on when it’ll be back online.
Conclusion
That’s it! Hopefully the above instructions solve the spinning orange ring and help you get your Alexa device back online.
Let us know what worked for you in the comments below!
9 Comments
Paula
Now its flashing a Purple light !!!!!! I have had this device for a 18 months and never
ever had a problem before !!!
Douglas Spahr
The Dot 4 works fine, turns blue when speaking to it and appears to be connected. Have a strong wifi signal. At rest the orange ring is always visible until I give it a command.
Brenda
Sounds like you’re experiencing some type of connectivity issue. Does the speaker work? I’d check it out because you shouldn’t have an orange ring if the setup was done correctly and completely.
Jj
This did not resolve my issue
Paula
My Alexa has always been ok but now silent and is now flashing an orange light around , its driving me mad trying to solve it !!!
Melissa Wiesen
My echo dot has been orange with a ring around it for almost 12 hours now. It tells me that it’s updating. I have unplugged it, still has not helped. I went into my echo dot app, says it’s offline, my internet is working just fine, no lose of power, no slow connection. Suggestions??
Peter Lowthian
restart your router it worked for me
Mary
We have had ours for about 5 years with no problems. Now it continues to show the orange ring. I’ve disconnected also but no success. Out tv internet is fine.
Brian
Best suggestion is to go on Amazon and buy a new one. Just buy the cheapest one they have. I have had two 3rd gen dots. The first one worked great for several years and then started the orange ring thing. Nothing I did fixed it so I eventually ordered a new one when they were on sale. New one worked flawlessly out of the box. If you have this orange light issue and resetting it and reconfiguring the wifi doesn’t fix it (or if it fixes it for a while and it happens again) it’s not worth the time and effort and aggravation when you can just solve the issue for probably less than 30 bucks.