iPhone 16 Pro randomly connects to Echo Dot devices via Bluetooth

Closed without resolution usually means that the problem was solved, but the original poster didn’t have the courtesy to say so.

And one previous thread doesn’t mean much when there are 2 billion iOS devices around the world. If you saw 10,000 posts that would be concerning.

If it shows connected with no i then it is connecting to some app on your iPhone; that’s the only way a BLE device can connect. Think about all the apps you have that might be related. the Amazon app, Amazon Music, etc.

I am having this same issue. IOS 26 has not helped, at all. I notice this mostly at home when I am connected to a Bose speaker or my AirPods. I get interference, audio stops or stutters anywhere from 10-30 seconds. When I look at my Bluetooth settings during the interference, there are 3-4 Echo devices randomly connecting and disconnecting. I was hoping turning off Amazon Sidewalk would help, but from your comment, it looks like it doesn't. I don't think I live close enough to anyone else to be picking up their Echo devices, so they have to be mine. I didn't have this problem prior to upgrading to an iPhone 16 Pro Max. Hoping for a solution soon, it's very aggravating when listening to an audiobook, having to constantly rewind 30 seconds to hear missed audio.

Thank you for making this thread- I've been experiencing this and it's deeply frustrating! I didn't realize this was the issue until I found this thread- my bluetooth audio quality would suddenly crash for a few seconds at random intervals. I finally noticed that when it was happening, an "echo dot" would show up in my BT settings attempting to pair. I think my neighbors recently got an Echo Dot as I didn't have this happen until a couple weeks ago (still on 18.6.2 so a new update didn't cause it).

Hope they release a fix soon- aside from the convenience issues this feels like a pretty serious privacy and security violation that random devices like that can attempt pairing with our phones.

It is a smart scale and my guess was that was trying to connect to scales all the time and got confused by echo dots.

i do have Alexa’s in the house and sidewalk is off and I did turn Bluetooth off in Amazon Alexa app along with background app refresh.

btw - taking no credit just had more inside

https://www.reddit.com/r/amazonecho/s/3KiSB4sDwY

You say in your reply that, “your iPhone will not attempt to connect to anything via Bluetooth until it is placed in pairing mode.” This is incorrect.

I’ve had intermittent slowdowns when using my home wifi and it wasn’t until

today that I got a clue about the possible cause. I had seen and known about the Echo device BT problem for some months now and have tried all the possible solutions I could find, with varying success.

But today when my wifi became unresponsive I toggled wifi in Settings and when I attempted to reconnect I got an error message that I had too many BT devices connected. Upon checking, I had 8 of my Echo devices actively connected to my phone’s BT. Some of these I’ve never connected to via BT, ever, and others are ones I connected to and then forgot to try to keep them from doing this again. They were already connected (and others were trying to) when I opened the BT settings, as indicated by the error message.

FWIW, my kid and spouse have the same model phone as I do, same iOS version, and have never run into this problem.

Eve, if it helps, the name of the device in BT settings is the model and the last 3 characters of the serial number. So “Echo Dot-1XY” corresponds to, say, “Kitchen Dot” in my home.

It’s a pain to look each one up but I’ve noticed it’s consistently about half of my devices that are causing the problem. They don’t share any single feature (different models, generations, etc.) because that would make troubleshooting too easy.

And, as I mentioned, they are not causing interference, something else in that neighborhood is causing the problem.

Any resolution? I am having the same issues with IOS 26