Delete Voice Assistant Recordings: Alexa, Google, and Siri

In short: You can delete Alexa recordings in the Alexa app under Settings > Alexa Privacy > Review Voice History, delete Google Assistant and smart-speaker queries at myactivity.google.com/product/home (see Google's Gemini for Home help page), and erase Siri's on-device history via Settings > Siri > Siri & Dictation History. All three companies also offer auto-delete schedules, but none of them guarantee that every copy of a recording disappears everywhere it's been stored.

Smart speakers only start sending audio to the cloud after they hear a wake word — they aren't supposed to record everything you say all day. But what happens after that moment varies a lot by company, and "deleting" a recording doesn't always mean what people assume it means. Here's what Alexa, Google Assistant, and Siri actually keep, how to find and delete it, and where the limits are.

What do smart speakers and voice assistants actually record and keep?

Alexa devices listen locally for the wake word and only send audio to the cloud "after detecting it or being activated," rather than streaming audio continuously, according to Total Defense's summary of Amazon's own help documentation. Once a clip reaches Amazon's servers, it's "saved to your Amazon account for viewing later," and Amazon uses those saved recordings for what it calls supervised machine learning — a process where reviewers examine small audio samples "to ensure accuracy for Alexa's training," per Android Police's walkthrough of Amazon's documentation.

Google's setup works similarly but the recording setting is off unless you turn it on. Google says this "voice and audio activity setting is off unless you choose to turn it on," and if it is on, "samples of audio saved on Google servers... are analyzed by trained reviewers, who listen to, transcribe, and annotate it," according to Google's own support page on managing audio recordings. Separately, queries made to smart speakers and displays save to "Home History" inside My Activity, and by default that activity "saves for 18 months," per Google's Gemini for Home help page.

Apple takes a different default stance. Unless a user opts into "Improve Siri and Dictation," Apple states plainly that "your audio data is not stored by Apple." If someone does opt in, Apple keeps more than just the clip: it stores "the category of request you made and whether it was completed successfully, device specifications, device configuration, performance statistics, and, if you have turned on Location Services for Siri, the approximate location of your device," according to Apple's Siri, Dictation & Privacy page. That data is tied to a rotating device identifier rather than your Apple account, and Apple "may retain and use this data for up to two years." A subset of transcripts reviewed for quality can be kept even longer than that.

Across all three platforms, the metadata matters as much as the audio itself: timestamps, device information, approximate location, and transcripts can outlive the original clip or exist independently of it. For a deeper walk-through of Alexa's specific privacy toggles, see Privacy Unpacked's guide to Alexa privacy settings.

How do I delete my Alexa recordings?

Open the Alexa app, then go to More, then Settings, then Alexa Privacy, then Review Voice History. From there you can filter by date range or choose "All History" to remove everything at once, then tap "Delete all of my recordings" and confirm in the pop-up, following Amazon's documented deletion steps as compiled by Android Police.

One limit worth knowing: Amazon's own instructions say deleting voice recordings "does not necessarily remove every type of Alexa data" — for example, it does not delete Alexa messages, which have to be managed separately, according to Total Defense's summary of Amazon's documentation. Voice-command deletion also isn't supported everywhere: Amazon notes it "is not supported with Alexa+ or on Amazon Kids-enabled Alexa devices," so those users need to rely on the app's privacy menu instead.

How do I delete my Google Assistant recordings?

Go to myactivity.google.com/product/home and choose what to delete, per Google's Gemini for Home help page: all Gemini for Home activity at once, just the last hour or day, a custom date range, a specific day, or a single item, by clicking the Delete icon next to the option you want. Google says that once you delete something, "we aim to immediately remove it from view" and then begins a process to "safely and completely delete the data from our storage systems."

For broader Google account activity, including older Assistant and Search audio history, the general process is similar: scroll to the activity, use the search bar or filters to find it, and click Delete on individual items — or click "Delete Results" next to the search bar to remove everything that matches your filter, according to Google's account activity deletion page. Note that turning off the voice and audio activity setting does not erase anything already saved — Google says recordings made while the setting was on stay in place until a user deletes them separately, per Google's audio recordings support page.

How do I delete my Siri recordings?

On an iPhone, Apple's documentation directs users to Settings, then Siri, then Siri & Dictation History, then "Delete Siri & Dictation History." This removes the transcripts stored on the device itself, which Apple uses "to personalize your Siri experience," per Apple's Siri and Dictation privacy page.

On a Mac, the same on-device deletion is available through Apple's Mac Help guide, but Apple warns that it's a separate action from the server-side setting: "Deleting Siri and Dictation history doesn't change the choice you made about sharing audio recordings," according to Apple's support guide for deleting Siri and Dictation history on Mac. To stop audio from being shared with Apple's servers in the first place, you have to change the Improve Siri and Dictation setting separately.

Can I set voice recordings to delete automatically?

Yes, on Alexa and Google, with different defaults. In the Alexa app, under More, Settings, Alexa Privacy, Manage Your Alexa Data, turning on "Enable deletion by voice" also unlocks retention choices: save recordings for 18 months, save for 3 months, or "Don't save recordings" at all. Amazon says "it can take up to 36 hours for the changes to take effect," according to Android Police's walkthrough of Amazon's settings. Choosing "Don't save" deletes what's already stored and stops future saving, but Amazon's documentation says "inactive chat transcripts and typed requests may remain for up to 30 days," per Total Defense's reporting on Amazon's settings.

Google lets users adjust the Home History auto-delete window to 3, 18, or 36 months, or turn auto-delete off entirely, through the same Gemini for Home activity settings. Separately, Google has an opt-in toggle — off by default — that lets it use raw voice, audio, and Gemini Live recordings "to improve and develop its services, including training generative AI models," according to Google's Gemini for Home help page, so leaving that toggle off keeps more of what's stored to text rather than audio.

Apple doesn't offer an equivalent user-facing auto-delete schedule; instead, its privacy documentation describes a company-set retention window of up to two years for opted-in Siri data, with reviewed transcript samples kept longer.

Why might I want to delete voice assistant recordings?

Beyond general discomfort with a household device holding onto audio, there's a concrete enforcement case behind this. In 2023, the Federal Trade Commission and the Department of Justice charged that Amazon "prevented parents from exercising their deletion rights under the COPPA Rule, kept sensitive voice and geolocation data for years, and used it for its own purposes," according to the FTC's press release on the Alexa children's-privacy settlement. The agencies said Amazon "retained children's recordings indefinitely" unless a parent specifically requested deletion, and that even then, Amazon "failed to delete transcripts of what kids said from all its databases." The proposed order required Amazon to pay $25 million and delete children's data, geolocation data, and other voice recordings, and barred the company from training algorithms on data it had unlawfully kept. Amazon had told users its service was "designed to protect your privacy" and that recordings could be deleted — claims the FTC said it didn't fully honor.

That history is a useful reminder that company privacy pages describe intended behavior, not always what happens in practice, and that human reviewers at Amazon and Google can listen to samples of what you say to these devices as part of improving speech recognition.

A checklist for reviewing and deleting your voice recordings

1. Open the Alexa app and go to More, Settings, Alexa Privacy, Review Voice History to see and delete stored clips by date or device.
2. In the same Alexa Privacy menu, go to Manage Your Alexa Data and choose a retention window — 18 months, 3 months, or "Don't save recordings" — and remember changes can take up to 36 hours.
3. Visit myactivity.google.com/product/home to review and delete Gemini for Home (smart speaker) queries by day, custom range, or individually.
4. In the same Google Home activity settings, set Auto-delete to 3 or 36 months, or leave the 18-month default, depending on how long you want history kept.
5. On iPhone or Mac, go to Settings (or System Settings) > Siri, then Siri & Dictation History, and tap Delete Siri & Dictation History to clear the on-device transcript log.
6. If you opted into Improve Siri and Dictation, know that deleting on-device history doesn't change that setting — you have to adjust it separately to stop future audio from being stored by Apple.
7. Check for device- or skill-specific data your main deletion tool won't touch, such as Alexa messages, which Amazon says aren't removed by deleting voice recordings.
8. If kids use any of these devices, treat deletion requests as something to double-check rather than assume worked, given the FTC's findings about incomplete deletions across Amazon's databases.

Smart-speaker privacy settings are one piece of a bigger pattern of passive home data collection — smart TVs track what you watch the same way, as covered in Privacy Unpacked's guide to turning off smart TV ACR tracking.