Alexa Hunches: What They Are and How to Turn Them Off

Last updated: October 2026

Alexa Hunches were Amazon’s way of letting Alexa act on a hunch: Alexa learned your daily habits, then stepped in when something looked off, like a light left on after you said goodnight. The feature had its fans and its critics, but the bigger news is that most of it is gone. On June 9, 2026, Amazon retired most Alexa Hunches features and now steers people toward Alexa Routines instead. This guide explains what Hunches did, what changed, how to switch off anything that remains, and how to rebuild the automations you miss.

Quick answer: Alexa Hunches let Alexa notice patterns in your smart home and either suggest an action or perform it for you. On June 9, 2026, Amazon shut down most Hunches features, including the automatic actions for lights, plugs and switches. The main thing left on the Hunches screen is automatic grouping, which is on by default: to stop it, open More, then Settings, then Hunches, tap the Hunches Settings icon and turn off Groups. To recreate the old automatic behavior, build it yourself with Alexa Routines.

What are Alexa Hunches?

A Hunch was Alexa making an educated guess about what you probably wanted, based on how you normally used your Echo and your connected devices. Amazon introduced the feature in the United States in 2018, offered it free as part of the standard Alexa experience, and then wound most of it down on June 9, 2026. In its notice to customers, Amazon said that most Alexa Hunches features will no longer be available.

While it was active, Alexa built these hunches by watching your routines over time. If you turned off the living room lights around 11 p.m. most nights, locked the front door before bed, or nudged the thermostat down when you left, Alexa learned the pattern. When it later noticed you had broken that pattern, it formed a hunch that you had simply forgotten.

The classic example was bedtime. You said, “Alexa, goodnight,” a lamp was still on in another room, and Alexa replied that it had noticed the light and asked whether you wanted it turned off. Other common hunches included a door still unlocked well past the time you usually locked it, or a plug left running when the house looked asleep. It was the same idea every time: Alexa spotted the exception and offered a fix.

Hunches that asked vs. automatic actions that didn’t

Understanding how Hunches worked makes the change easier to follow, because there were two very different modes. By default, Alexa asked first. A hunch showed up as a spoken prompt or a notification, and nothing happened unless you said yes. Alexa would not touch your lights or locks on its own in this mode. It only suggested.

The second mode was Automatic Actions, and it was opt-in. When you turned it on, Alexa stopped asking and just did the thing. Amazon limited automatic actions to three categories: Lights, Plugs and Switches, and Groups. Most of this ended on June 9, 2026. The proactive hunches that switched off a forgotten lamp or plug on their own are gone, and Amazon’s notice also named vacuum and water heater actions. If Alexa used to act without asking and has gone quiet since June 2026, that is why. The exception is Groups: automatic grouping, where Alexa adds your devices to groups based on their names and how you use them together, is still on by default.

What Hunches could and couldn’t control

While the feature was live, Hunches worked across most of the smart home gear you had linked to Alexa. Prompt-style hunches, the kind that asked first, could involve your lights, smart plugs, smart switches, smart locks, and thermostats. Whether a hunch showed up at all depended on you actually having those devices connected and used often enough for Alexa to learn a pattern.

Silent automatic actions were always more limited on purpose. Alexa would only act on its own for lights, plugs and switches, and groups. Locks were left out of the automatic bucket, since an unexpected unlock carries more risk than a light clicking off, and thermostats only got automatic adjustments on Amazon’s own Smart Thermostat. After the June 2026 changes, the automatic light, plug, and switch actions are gone. The Amazon Smart Thermostat is the one exception Amazon kept: it can still lower or raise the temperature when Alexa detects you are asleep or away, a feature now called Alexa automatic control. You find it in the Alexa app under Devices, then Thermostat, then your thermostat, then Device Settings, and it works on one thermostat per account. For everything else, Amazon’s answer is to build what you want with Routines.

If you are still building out which devices Alexa controls, our roundup of the best Alexa devices and the best Alexa smart bulbs is a good place to start.

How to turn off Alexa Hunches

Because Amazon retired most Hunches features in June 2026, most people will find little or nothing left to switch off. If your Alexa app still shows a Hunches screen, here is how to disable whatever remains, from turning everything off to trimming just the parts you do not want.

To turn off Alexa Hunches completely:

1. Open the Alexa app on your phone.
2. Tap More in the bottom-right corner.
3. Tap Settings.
4. Scroll down and select Hunches.
5. Tap the toggle so it turns grey and reads Disabled.

That stops any suggestions and automatic actions still active on your account. If Hunches is not in the Settings list, some owners have found it under Settings, then Smart Home. If it is not there either, it has been removed from your account and there is nothing more to do.

To stop Alexa grouping your devices: open the same Hunches screen, tap the Hunches Settings icon, and turn off Groups. Automatic grouping is the one Hunches action that is still switched on by default, and it is why new devices can show up in groups you never created. The same screen lists Lights and Plugs & Switches, and you can turn those off too if they still appear.

To stop only the phone notifications: on the Hunches settings screen, turn off Mobile notification for Hunches. Alexa can still act on your Echo, but it stops pinging your phone.

By voice: you can also say, “Alexa, disable Hunches.” It works when the feature is still present, but it is hit or miss, so the app is the reliable route.

What to use instead: Alexa Routines

With Hunches mostly gone, Amazon’s official replacement is Alexa Routines. A Routine does the same kind of job, but you define the trigger and the action yourself, so nothing is left to a guess. That trade of a little setup for full control is exactly what many people wanted from Hunches anyway.

To recreate the classic bedtime hunch, open the Alexa app, go to More, then Routines, and tap the plus icon. Set the trigger to a schedule, such as 11 p.m., or to a voice phrase like “Alexa, goodnight,” then add the action to turn off the lights or plugs you choose. Save it, and Alexa will run it every time without asking.

For the presence-based automations Hunches used to handle, Amazon offers occupancy Routines that trigger when a room is occupied or empty. The Echo itself is the sensor: an Echo or Echo Dot (4th gen or newer) detects movement with ultrasound, and an Echo Show can use its camera, with the processing done on the device. When the Echo picks up no activity for about seven minutes, Alexa treats the room as empty, so a Routine can turn the lights off after the last person leaves and you get the forgotten-lights behavior back, this time on your terms. Our guide to the best smart displays compares the Echo Show models if you want one that does this with its camera.

A separate motion sensor works too, as the trigger of a regular Routine, which helps in rooms without an Echo. Our guide to motion sensors for renters covers no-wiring options that work with Alexa, and a smart button can start a Routine with one press. In rooms where people sit still, our presence sensor vs motion sensor guide explains why a presence sensor keeps the lights on where a motion sensor won’t.

Hunches vs. Alexa’s “By the Way” suggestions

If you came here because Alexa keeps chattering at you, know that Hunches is probably not the culprit anymore. Alexa also serves up “By the Way” suggestions, the little add-on tips you hear after a normal request, like a feature nudge after you ask for the weather. Those are a separate setting from Hunches, controlled under Alexa’s notifications and voice responses, and they are still active.

For a genuinely quieter Echo, dig into the notifications settings to trim the “By the Way” prompts. With most Hunches automations already retired, that setting is where most of the remaining unprompted talking now comes from.

Should you still use Alexa Hunches?

For most people this is no longer a real choice, because Amazon made it for them in June 2026. If you still see any Hunches options in your app, the trade-off is the same as it always was: convenience against the occasional surprise. Leave them on if the gentle reminders help, or switch them off if you would rather Alexa only did exactly what you tell it.

Either way, the durable answer now is Alexa Routines, where you define every trigger and action yourself. It takes a few minutes to set up, but it does not disappear in an update, and it does not guess.

One thing to keep clear: turning Hunches off, or losing them to the shutdown, is a comfort-and-control change, not a data-deletion tool. It does not change what Amazon already stores about your usage. Note too that Hunches was the free, built-in feature everyone had. Amazon’s newer Alexa+ is a separate upgrade with broader, more agentic abilities, free with Prime or $19.99 a month without it, and it is not the same thing as the Hunches toggle covered here.

Written by Evan Mercer

Founder & Lead Researcher, Smart Home Matrix

Evan digs through spec sheets, firmware changelogs, and thousands of owner reviews so you don’t have to. Every guide starts with a compatibility check and ends with picks he would install in his own home. Read more about Evan and this site, or see exactly how we choose products.