Voice assistants are one of the most fashionable technological innovations in recent years since we can use them both on smartphones and through smart speakers, ready to capture all our voice commands without having to press anything.
To do its job, especially when we use loudspeakers, the microphone must always remain on, so that we can pick up the command.O“or” Hey, Alexa “when pronounced with our voice. But what happens when we don’t use voice commands?
How to Delete Voice Recordings from Alexa and Google Assistant
All recordings end up on a server, and may also contain private conversations, credit card numbers, or password numbers on the sites, in addition to our expletives. Fortunately, the two most popular services,Google Assistant and Amazon Alexa allowdelete all voice recordingsin a few simple steps.
In this guide, we will show you the steps to follow to delete voice recordings captured by Google Assistant and Amazon Alexa devices if we had used these assistants on smartphones or if we had used one of the smart speakers,Google Home and Amazon Echo.
1) Clear voice commands from Google Assistant
To check registrations and delete them for a specified period or delete all registrations, turn on a PC, open any web browser (Chrome, Edge, etc.) and go to the Google account management page, which can be accessed from here: Google account.
We enter the access credentials of the Google account used for the voice assistant and, on the page that will appear, click onData and customization in the bar on the left.
On the new page that opens, click Voice and audio activity, and then clickManage history.
From this page we can see all the recordings captured by the smartphone and by a Google Home speaker; to delete one or more recordings, just click on the three dots next to a specific date or recording and use the buttonDelete.
To do a complete removal, clickDelete the activity topresent on the left side, select Always from the drop-down menu that will appear and then indicate today’s date in the fieldBefore.
Let’s click the button at the bottomDeleteand we confirm the deletion, in order to delete all the records stored on Google’s servers.
If we want to delete the records from Android smartphones (where the account is associated to delete records) or from the Google iOS application, we open the applicationGoogleand we selectGoogle accountup to the right.
From the menu that will open we go to the tabData and customization then we selectVoice and audio activityin the sectionActivity management.
In the new screen that will appear we beginManage history …… and then select …Date filter; filtering the elements (as has already been seen on the PC) it will be possible to erase any recording prior to today.
If we don’t know about Google Home features yet, we can fix it right away by reading our guideWhat Google Home Can Do: Voice Assistant, Music, and Home Automation where we show you the features related to home automation and interactive web services that you can use with a Google speaker.
2) Clear voice commands from Amazon Alexa
If we use an Amazon Echo speaker from Amazon or the Amazon Alexa application on our smartphone, we can delete all the history of voice recordings by taking it to the Alexa privacy page available here –
We will be asked for the credentials to access your Amazon account, in case your browser does not already have access configured; once you have entered your credentials clickCheck voice historyand select from the drop-down menuDate range voiceComplete chronology.
Under the title will appear the inscriptionDelete all records of the whole history so that all the recordings made with the Alexa voice assistant can be deleted at once.
If you want to delete only part of the recordings or only those of a certain period of time, simply change the indication in the drop-down menu Date range(to be able to delete only the records of a day or a month; to delete a single record we open the record to be deleted (by clicking the button at the tip of the arrow) and select the elementDelete the record.
Clear Alexa history from your smartphone?
First of all we are going to download the Alexa application for Android and iPhone, then touch on the upper left corner of the side menu icon, it will take us tosettingsand thenAlexa account.
In the new screenshot we can use the drop-down menuFilter by date to limit the dates in which we want to do the elimination; As soon as the recordings are visible, tap on them and select the Delete Voice Recording button to delete any recording that is compromising or has too personal content.
Unfortunately, it is not possible to completely erase all the recordings from the mobile: if this is our goal, it is better to proceed as seen from the PC where everything is much simple since it only takes one click.
Delete voice recordings from Amazon Echo
You can also recently delete voice recordings of requests made to Alexa using a voice command, telling the Amazon Echo the command.Forget.
With the phrase “Alexa, delete what I just said”you can erase the last spoken voice command, while with the phrase”Alexa, delete everything I said today.”All day’s recordings are erased.
However, to use this function, it is necessary to activate, in the Alexa history settings, “Enable voice command erase”
Do you want to try other smart speakers that can be integrated with Alexa less harmful in terms of privacy?
In this case we recommend that you read our guidethe best alternative to Echo with Alexa and voice commands, in which we can find other quality speakers that also offer greater control over privacy since they can activate voice commands only on request (that is, by pressing a special button).