The idea seemed simple: If you find yourself regularly ordering the same thing from Amazon — coffee, laundry detergent, whatever — why not replace the whole ordering process with a button you put somewhere in your house? Push a button, get a thing.
And from that, Amazon’s Dash button was born. Announced one day before April Fools’ 2015, people weren’t sure if it was actually real.
It was! But now it’s dead.
Amazon stopped selling the Dash button earlier this year; now they’re ending support for them altogether. In an email to Dash users, Amazon says that Dash button devices will cease to function as of August 31st, 2019.
Why? They’re not selling any more of them, and too few people are using the ones that still exist. An Amazon rep told CNET that usage of the buttons “had significantly slowed” over the last few months.
“Virtual” dash buttons (the same push-button concept, but digitized and tucked into Amazon’s app) will continue to work, as will devices that tie into Amazon’s “Dash Replenishment Service” — think washing machines that have a button to order detergent, or coffee makers that can order their own beans. Just the dedicated, physical, standalone buttons are going dark.
While the Dash button program may not have ever taken off, people found their own fun uses for the hardware since launch. After Amazon started selling re-purposable, hackable Dash buttons that could be used to fire off custom scripts on the internet, one modder built a button that automatically placed his favorite Starbucks order as he was walking out the door.
If you’ve still got a Dash button around the house and don’t know what to do with it after the end of the month, Amazon is encouraging people to send the buttons into its recycling program (which covers the costs of shipping/disposal.)
