Will Alexa Work in Canada?

By now, you probably know that Alexa is not officially available in Canada… yet. [UPDATE Nov 15/17: Alexa is now available in Canada!] Get Alexa Here!

But, that hasn’t stopped many people from going out of their way to get their hands on their very own Alexa with the hopes that it will work in Canada.

So, let’s say you’re one of those people considering getting an Alexa device (hypothetically speaking, of course). The next logical question is, will it work in Canada?

Well, I can tell you the answer is a resounding YES! Alexa WILL work in Canada … with a few caveats.

First, the YES part of the answer:

Alexa works almost the same way in Canada as it does in the States. Just about all of the basic functions work, and the vast majority of the Alexa skills also work just fine. You can ask Alexa to stream music, control your home, give answers to various questions, etc., and she will happily oblige.

Now for the caveats:

Nothing thing major here, but that are a few things that you should be aware of.

1. Use the Amazon Echo App to setup and control the Alexa functionality.

Because Alexa is not officially in Canada yet, the app is not available in the Canadian iOS App store nor the Canadian Android Play store. Fortunately, there is a way to get around this. The easiest way to setup your device is through the Amazon Alexa website at http://alexa.amazon.com. Once you get your device, just go to the website and it will walk you through what to do. This is the most simple way to set-up Alexa to work in Canada.

2. Use a made-up, but real, US address when setting up your echo device.

Officially, Alexa does not accept Canadian addresses when setting up devices (there are reports this is changing… read on). So, for some of the location services/skills, it’s best to trick Alexa into thinking you are in the Sates. It makes sense to choose a US location as close as possible to your location – this is particularly useful if you live along the Canada-US border. If you are some distance away, it doesn’t really matter what you choose.

This is important for location-based skills such as weather reports. If you just say, “What’s the weather?” you will get the report for the location that you made-up. Fortunately, there is a workaround for this too – just simply specify which location you want the weather for, such as “Alexa, what’s the weather in Vancouver?”

Now, here’s the interesting wrinkle in the Alexa location-based skills: Some Canadians have been reporting that Alexa is now accepting Canadian addresses, so it’s definitely worth a try to see if your address is accepted. If it is, you’re good to go. If not, use that made-up US address until your Canadian address is supported.

In either case, this will have no impact on skills that do not rely on location services, and they will work in Canada without any problem.

3. When it comes to streaming, the best option is Spotify.

Spotify is what I use and I am a big fan. Ideally, Alexa is optimized to work with an Amazon prime account for music streaming, but unfortunately Canadian Prime accounts don’t work with Alexa. So in Canada, your options are Spotify, iHeartRadio, and TuneIn. I recommend Spotify – it’s a great service and it will work with Alexa in Canada perfectly. To get Alexa to start playing some music, just just say something like, “Alexa, play Maroon 5 on Spotify.” and you can start dancing.

4. There are a few other minor issues that are easy to deal with.

For example, you can easily change the measurement units from Fahrenheit to Celsius in the Settings.

When asking for local movie times, you will also run into some problems. Again, this is because the Canadian location services are not enabled. For this, we’ll just have to sit tight and wait for the official Canadian release date.

The bottom line?

With over 20000 Alexa skills available, the number of skills that you may run into trouble with at this time is very few.

So, will Alexa work in Canada? Absolutely! As far as I am concerned, the limitations are so few that I very rarely even notice them.

Have you noticed any problems with using your Alexa in Canada? If so, comment below – we want to know!