Echo Dot, Bluetooth speaker, music stored in phone. Can they get along?

December 6, 2017 1:42 PM

I just got a new Echo Dot from the Canadian release. I’m getting the hang of it but am curious about Bluetooth speaker pairing and playing music stored on my phone.

Is it possible to pair the Dot with a speaker, and also pair my phone (an iPhone 8) with the same speaker to play music that’s on my phone, and have them work at the same time?

The end result I’m looking for is that I’m playing music from my phone, then I say something to Alexa and the music cuts out to answer my request and goes back to playing music from my phone.

I have an older BT speaker that I believe only pairs with one device at a time. Would I need a newer speaker (do newer speakers pair with multiple devices at the same time?) or could I connect the Dot via aux cable and continue to pair my phone with my speaker as normal?

Also if I get my husband added to the Dot’s household profile is that going to make things even harder? He’s an Android guy if that makes a difference.

Any suggestions or insight (or any other tips for this Alexa n00b) is welcome. Thanks!

posted by melissa to Computers & Internet (4 answers total)

Best answer: I'm not sure if the solutions here will work (my understanding is that most speakers won't take more than one audio input at a time), but if I were you, I would connect the Dot to the speaker via the aux cable and then pair your phone WITH THE DOT over bluetooth. Basically, you funnel your music through the Dot rather than directly to the speaker. I just verified that this works on my Dot.
posted by Betelgeuse at 2:58 PM on December 6, 2017 [1 favorite]

Response by poster: I haven't been able to scare up an aux cable today (there's one here somewhere, but no idea where!) but this makes sense. I will test once I get an aux cable tomorrow and report back.
posted by melissa at 5:58 PM on December 6, 2017

Interesting - I didn't know you could pair your dot to a phone over bluetooth.
posted by bbqturtle at 12:09 PM on December 7, 2017

Response by poster: I finally got the cables and set things up the way Betelgeuse described. It worked perfectly. Thank you!
posted by melissa at 2:42 AM on December 8, 2017