I've had Bose Smart Soundbar 300 for a few weeks. All was OK and Alexa was working fine, but now we're having similar problems. Alexander will answer questions such as "what's the weather", but when asked to play BBC radio 2 she replies stating "there is a problem". When asked to play something on Spotify (we have Premium), she replies "sorry, that device is offline". We can play Spotify via the Bose App. I have tried all the suggested solutions to no avail. Help, please!
Tried everything here without success, then I figured out something that worked in my case. In the Alexa app, in devices/all devices I had TV. My Bose speaker also appears under Echo&Alexa so I disabled TV. I guess it was getting some confusion with the devices? In any case this did it for me. Problem solved.
I would like to add that like user ognistik above me, I had a device named "Office TV" in my Alexa devices list. I found it by going into the Alexa app and showing all devices. The icon was a TV/monitor. I deleted that device and now I can say "Alexa, play <music> in the office" and it works.
It seems like Alexa skill is adding a device for both the speaker and the TV and it screws things up when you try to play music using Alexa.
Like others in here, I was able to play music from the bose app or spotify app with no issues, it was only when trying to use Alexa to initiate the music playback that the problems occurred.
Hopefully this helps others.
Now if Bose would add multi-room music we'd be all set!
OK try this, it's just worked for me... But early days
Reading through pages of comments people had tried everything... Their Bose system (whichever they have, most have been named) Alexa settings and Spotify settings. Nothing worked.
I've done the following in the phone settings and fingers crossed it's worked...
Settings> device care> Battery> Spotify> Put app to sleep is turned to OFF or put in never put to sleep list.
It's worked for me, but might need re-doing after phone updates. Hope it helps others but like I say I've only just done this, yet to see if alls OK in hrs days and weeks to come
Update on above post...
Doesn't work either Ptff
Back to the device is offline again this morning
I came across this thread because I too had the issue "This device is offline" when asking Alexa to "play music" on my Bose device from Spotify.
I have multiple Echos around the house and there is no issue with playing Spotify from them. As well I could play something on my Spotify phone app and tell it to play on the Bose speaker. Its just that Alexa and the Bose would not connect to Spotify itself.
After reading four or five pages of this thread, and trying various "solutions", I gave up on it. Bose has just made terrible SW and whenever they patch it they do not do end to end testing. Great speaker company, but their sw development is not good.
Anyway, I got my Bose speaker's Alexa to work with Spotify now. I am just not sure what will not work with my TV after this change. In the past I had issues with my TV connecting via HDMI. The thing that seemed to fix the issue at the time (it stopped working after a few weeks) was to go in the Bose APP on my phone and change the Advanced CEC setting to "on". That worked for a while. But then for unknown reasons, it stopped. I just bought an optical cable and connected to the tv directly. Oh well I need two remotes, but I get good sound from the TV which is what I wanted to have to begin with.
I have had Spotify for years, but on my Bose I had never actually set it up as the default music player. I had amazon music too. So no big deal. But now I wanted to use Spotify exclusively. All my playlists are there for the whole family. However, when I ask Alexa on My Bose to "play music" it gives the response that the "device is offline".
So after reading most of this thread and realizing that Bose has no idea either, I just went back to the Advanced CEC settings in the Bose App. I changed it to "Alternate" and voila.
Seriously Bose... your integration with Alexa, and Google, is pathetic. Fantastic HW, but SW.. jeez.
and its also annoying that you cant add a bose speaker o an "everywhere" group.
I am having the same issues. But I am feeling better after reading this thread and seeing I am not the only one!
and yes, I have done all the plugging unplugging deactivating reactivating deleting re download all while sticking out my tongue and humming 'I'm a little tea pot.' Still Alexa tells me audibly that I have a bose 700 sound bar.. but need to set the 'skill' in the app. But I do have the skill (not for sound touch) it is 'offline' still. ..I... I just want to use my sci-fi style voice commands to play music on my epic new sound system.
What are the chances this will get fixed in an actual update from the Alexa app or the Bose App? or a software/firmware update for the speakers? instead of having to do all this witchcraft of powering on and off and deactivate-reactivate uninstall dance?
also, is there an easy way to change the WiFi source on the 700 sound bar? I wanted to change from the 5G to the 2.5G to see if that would maybe adjust it. But... I cannot for the life of me find anywhere to manually change the Wifi source for the bar.
I look forward to this issue being resolved under the hood.
Hello Orchamedes,
Thanks for getting in touch, I am sorry to hear that you are also experiencing difficulty with your Alexa on the Soundbar 700. You are following the right path of troubleshooting with testing the 5GHZ connection, you will only be able to test this connection if your router is emitting both 2Ghz and 5Ghz. If your router can do this then you can lightly test this by connecting to 5Ghz by setting up the Soundbar again. To put the Soundbar in set-up mode, on the remote control, simultaneously press and hold the TV icon and Skip Back buttons for five seconds until the light bar on the soundbar glows amber. Then you can go through the process again selecting the 5Ghz network and then test Alexa again. If this solves the issue then you will need to factory reset the Soundbar, as the Soundbar will remember the 2Ghz connection and switch between the two. By factory resetting the Soundbar you can set it up with the 5Ghz network only.
To restore the factory default settings (Note: This reset erases all settings and returns your product to its default out-of-box state. Once reset, open the Bose Music app to reconfigure your product):
- Open the Amazon Alexa app and view the smart devices associated with your Amazon account.
- Remove the Bose product you want to reset from the smart devices listed in the Alexa app
Tip: Your Bose product might appear more than once. Remove all instances of it - If you do not plan to use other Bose speakers with your Amazon account, view the installed Skills in the Alexa app and remove the Bose skill.
- Open the Bose Music app and remove Alexa from your Bose account.
- Remove the product from your Bose account.
- On the remote, press and hold the Power and Skip forward buttons simultaneously for 5 seconds. The product reboots and, when complete, the light bar on the front glows solid amber.
You mentioned that you had previously reset the Soundbar can you confirm that this was a soft reset, which can be done by disconnecting the system from power for 30 seconds?
I hope this helps, I look forward to hearing from you!
Kindest regards,
Zoe C
Hi Tony,
Thanks for getting back to me. To be honest i spent about nearly 2 hours last night rtying to troubleshoot and i think it may be linked to my other topic i posted about. Yes i do have another device near by (speaker 500 about 7m away in my kitchen). The issue is that the speaker 500 doesnt respond at all even when im right next to it and the soundbar responds wih "the device is offline". I did the following last night:
1. Rebooted both the soundbar and speaker - Unplugged for 2 min - This didnt fix the problem
2. Deregistered both the speaker and the soundbar from Alex app as well as the bose music app - This appeard to temporarily fix the "device is offline" issue but then resulted in a number of other issues including soundbar not responding at all.
3. Deregistered all devices again and rebooted again - was able to register Alexa on the speaker 500 but could not get the soundbar registered.
I now currently have Alexa disabled on both the Speaker 500 and Soundbar. and will look at it agian tonight when i get home