Ecobee Flashing Green Light [Solved, 2023]

While it can be agitating, the Ecobee flashing green light is a normal part of its operation. In this article, you’ll learn what this light means, what to do when you see it, and how to disable it if it’s bothering you.

Why Is My Ecobee Flashing Green?

A flashing or blinking green light on your Ecobee thermostat means that you have a notification from Alexa, just like the yellow light on Echo smart speakers. The light will continue to flash until you listen to or dismiss the notification on your thermostat or another Alexa-enabled device.

While all Ecobee thermostats are compatible with Alexa, the Ecobee4 and Ecobee Smart Thermostat Premium now include Alexa built-in to the thermostats themselves. This new feature lets Ecobee take on many of the functions of an Echo smart hub, including displaying notifications.

These notifications can include a range of important updates from Amazon or your various Alexa skills. A few of the most common notifications are:

• Amazon deliveries
• Weather changes
• Breaking news
• Calendar events

What to Do About Ecobee Flashing Green Light

When you see a green light on your Ecobee, you can choose to either listen to or dismiss the notification.

To listen to your current Alexa notifications, just say, “Alexa, what are my notifications.” I’ve found that “Alexa, notifications” also works most of the time. Since the Ecobee4, it doesn’t matter whether you say this to your thermostat, your Echo smart speaker, or any other Alexa-enabled device connected to your account.

To dismiss your Alexa notifications without listening to them, all you need to say is “Alexa, clear my notifications” or “Alexa, delete my notifications.” This will cause the green light to go away and the notifications to be deleted without you hearing them.

How to Turn Off Ecobee Green Light

You can prevent notifications from showing on your Ecobee in one of two ways. Unfortunately, neither of these methods will simply disable Alexa notifications for a single Ecobee device.

Instead, your options are:

• Turn off some or all notification types for all your Alexa devices.
• Unlink your Ecobee thermostat from your Alexa account.

I’d generally recommend the first option, as the disconnecting from your Alexa account will interfere with some of the smart features of your thermostat. It’s up to you, though. If the notifications become too aggravating, you do have both options available.

Change Alexa notification settings

While you can’t just ask Alexa to stop showing notifications specifically on Ecobee, you can deactivate all or some of your Alexa notifications in the Alexa app. To do that, just follow these steps:

1. Open the Alexa app to the More tab.

1. Click Settings from the list of options.

1. Select Notifications from the settings menu.

1. Go through each item in the notifications menu and make sure every toggle is turned off.

With every notification turned off, you shouldn’t see the yellow light again. This will impact all of your Alexa devices, so only follow these steps if you don’t want to see these notifications at all.

Disable Alexa on Ecobee

There is one way to stop Alexa notifications from showing on Ecobee without deactivating them across your entire Alexa account. You’ll need to disconnect Ecobee from your Alexa account, though, which will also disable smart home integrations like Alexa routines.

1. Open the Ecobee app on your Android or iPhone.
2. Select your Ecobee thermostat from the list.
3. Click the microphone icon.
4. Press the Unlink Alexa option.
5. Click Unlink to finish the process.

Other Ecobee Lights

Along with the flashing green light, there are a couple of other Ecobee lights that you may experience from time to time. As with the green light, neither of these lights is meant to show a malfunction in your thermostat. Rather, they are just status or notification indicator lights.

Ecobee flashing yellow light

A flashing yellow light also indicates notifications. Unlike the green light, though, these notifications are from the Ecobee app rather than Alexa.

You can check these messages in the Ecobee smartphone app. Once you read the messages there, the flashing yellow light should go away immediately.

Ecobee red light

The red light means that your Ecobee’s microphone is off. Disabling your microphone can be useful when you want privacy or when your thermostat is responding to ambient noise. However, while the microphone is off, you’ll be unable to issue voice commands to Ecobee or its built-in Alexa hub.

What’s Next?

The built-in Alexa hub adds a ton of extra features to your Ecobee thermostat. And that’s not the only advance they’ve made in recent years. Switching from Ecobee room sensors to smart sensors, for example, has had a huge impact on these thermostats’ ability to detect and adjust to room occupancy.

Overall, smart thermostats have come a long way just in the past few years. Both Ecobee and Nest still require Wi-Fi for their advanced features to work, and smart thermostat troubleshooting still takes a bit of know-how. Once you get past those limitations, though, they offer great convenience and energy-saving opportunities, comparable to the power-reduction potential of smart plugs.