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

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.