Amazon Alexa Smart Home

How do you make the Echo Show 5 work with a Ring doorbell?

Echo Show 5 Ring doorbell
Smarter home: answer the door from your Echo Show 5

The Amazon-owned Ring doorbells would – you might think – work seamlessly with devices such as the Echo Show 5. That’s not quite the case. Although the two devices can be linked the integration is clunky and you have to learn specific voice commands to talk to your visitors from your Echo Show.

Here’s everything you need to know about getting the two devices to work together.

Install the Ring skill

The first thing you need to do is install the Ring skill – Alexa’s version of apps – for your Echo device(s).

The easiest way to do this is to open the Alexa app on your smartphone or through the Alexa website. Click on Skills & Games, search for “Ring” and then follow the on-screen instructions to install the Ring skill.

You will be asked to link your Ring account to the Alexa skill, so make sure you have your Ring username and password handy.

How do the Ring doorbell and Echo Show 5 work together?

Once everything is installed, when someone rings your Ring doorbell, you will get an alert on every Echo speaker in the house, even those without screens.

However, Echo speakers without screens CANNOT talk to the person at the front door. Only devices such as the Echo Show 5, the full-size Echo Show and the Echo Spot can do so.

To talk to the person at the door, you must say: “Alexa, talk to the front door” or “Alexa show my front door” – assuming your Ring device is called ‘front door’. The Echo Show 5 won’t answer the door automatically.

There are two things to note. First, it can take a couple of seconds for the video to kick in. Second, the two-way audio is turned on automatically, so be quick to whack the on-screen mute button if you decide you just want to screen the person at the front door and not talk to them.

You don’t have to wait for someone to press the bell to see the camera. If you suspect someone is loitering around your property or want to see if the cat’s waiting to be let in, you can use the “Alexa, show my front door” command to get a live view. However, you need to have the Live View setting enabled in the Ring app first. Note that Live View does have a detrimental effect on battery life.

If you have other Ring devices, such as security cameras, you can also view these using the Echo Show 5 – just replace “front door” with the name of the camera when using the “show” command above.

About the author

Barry Collins

Barry has scribbled about tech for almost 20 years for The Sunday Times, PC Pro, WebUser, Which? and many others. He was once Deputy Editor of Mail Online and remains in therapy to this day. Email Barry at barry@bigtechquestion.com.

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  • Have read your instructions a number of times to make sure I haven’t anything and have for the last 3 hours bring to get echo show to find ring, to no avail, my dot has found it, My iPad, iPhone,imac has all found rind and echo show. I have followed your instructions, and other sites as well to no avail. I ask echo to find ring, say’s no device found. The device is listed on Alexa app just Ring. If there is any thing I am missing, I would be glad to receive it. Thanks

  • I tried everything possable to try to connect my ring door bell to my echo 5 show and it won’t do it . I down loaded Amazon alexa and ring app and nothing . so what am i doing wrong if i followed everything.