Delete, Remove, or Hide Your Alexa Skills
The Alexa Developer Console provides 360 degree skill management features which allow you to edit, delete, hide, or remove your skills on the go. This blog serves as a guide for you to know when you can ‘delete’, ‘remove’ or ‘hide’ your Alexa skills.
If your skill is not yet published and you wish to delete the skill, you can simply click on the ‘delete’ tab from the drop-down as shown in the below screenshot. Please keep in mind that selecting ‘delete’ will trigger complete deletion of the skill from the portal and it cannot be called or reinstated afterward. Also, if there are multiple locales in a skill, all locales will get deleted if you select the ‘delete’ option.
If you’d like to remove a single locale, instead of selecting ‘delete’, we encourage you to select edit from the dropdown, under ‘build’ tab, select language settings from the list and lastly click on ‘delete’ to delete a specific locale for an unpublished skill.
If your wish to remove a skill which has been certified and published at least once, there are two options available in the dropdown: ‘Remove’ or ’Hide’ . Let’s go through them in detail here:
Hide – By choosing this option, your skill will not be visible for new users, however, it continues to remain active for users who have enabled it in the past and never disabled your skill. In other words, a skill remains active for current users but hidden from the the skill store.
Remove – By choosing this option, a skill will be removed from the skill store and no longer available for new or current users who had enabled it.
You can select the reason for removal of your skill and once you submit it, it may take a few days to process. Once the process is completed, the updated status is displayed for the skill in the list of skills.
After submitting the request to remove a skill you will see a confirmation message on the developer console and your skill will be removed in 5-7 business days.
1. Open the developer console.
2. Find the existing live skill in the list.
3. In the Actions column, click Hide or Remove from the drop-down.
4. When prompted, select appropriate reason for the skill, then click Hide or Remove.
We only recommend you remove a skill if it provides a broken experience to customers that you cannot correct. If you have questions about maintaining your skill or need advice on upkeep, please contact us.
Hiding or removing a skill applies to all locales. If a live skill is hidden or removed, you can still access it in the developer console alongside an in-development version, which you can work on. If you want a hidden or removed skill to be republished, you can submit any in-development version of the skill for certification.
Visit our documentation Manage and Control Your Skills through the Alexa Developer Console or SMAPI for more information on hiding or removing a skill on the developer console and SMAPI.
If you face any technical issue while deletion, removal or hiding your skill, feel free to contact us and include details such as the skill name and ID, whether you want to ‘delete’, ‘hide’ or ‘remove’ your skill and reasoning for it.
