Echo Show is the only Amazon Echo product with a home screen. When you’re not using it, the show will offer voice commands, show your events, and even present current events. If you don’t like what you see, you can customize the background photo and which cards Echo Show displays when it’s not doing anything else.
To customize the Echo Show home screen, swipe down from the top of the screen and tap Settings.
At the top of the list, click Home Screen.
There are two ways to customize your home screen here. First, let’s start with the background. Click on that and you’ll see three home screen background options:
Default: this option will pull the selected photos from the Amazon Photo Library. This is the option that Echo Show uses out of the box, so it should already be selected.
Alexa App Photo: This will allow you to upload your own photo to the Echo Show. It will only display one photo and not iterate over multiple. To set this up, you need to use the Alexa app that controls your device.
Prime Photos: if you use Amazon Prime Photos to store your photos, you can choose one of the albums in your account as your background. Your echo show will cycle through each photo in the album.
We’ll show you how to change the background on a single photo. Click Alexa App Photo.
Your echo show will tell you that you need to add a photo with the Alexa app. Open the app on your phone. Click the menu button in the top left corner and select «Settings».
Scroll down the list to find your Echo Show and click on it.
Just below the home screen background, tap the blue «Select Photo» button.
In the file selection window that opens, select the photo you want to use as the background.
On the next screen, you can move or enlarge the photo only in the region you want. The overlay will show you how much of the photo will be visible on the screen.
Your photo will now be set to the background of your Echo Show! If you want to go back to default or Prime Photos, you can do so on the Echo Show itself. However, if you want to change it to a different background, you will need the Alexa app again.
Back at the home screen menu, there is another setting option called «Home Map Settings». Click on it.
The first option at the top of the screen is labeled Rotate. This determines how often the Echo Show rotates cards — things like your events or news — on the home screen. By default, this setting is set to «Permanently Rotate», which will permanently change which map is displayed on your screen. If you choose Rotate Once, the cards will cycle through once when you go to the home screen, but otherwise you’ll have to move from one card to the next to see new ones.
Below you will find the really interesting part. Here you will see a set of radio buttons for the types of information that can be displayed on the main screen. There are four switches that you can turn on or off. Notifications will show you alerts for new skills or prompt you to try voice commands. Upcoming events will pull information from your calendar and let you know what’s next. Drop In will show you who you can quickly contact using Amazon’s drop in feature (unless you’ve turned it off entirely). Finally, Trending Topics will show you cards with news and current events. If you don’t want to see this information, disable these switches.
The Echo Show home screen doesn’t do anything, but it doesn’t need to. Luckily, you can customize just about every aspect of what Amazon shows you when you’re not using Echo Show with just a few taps.
