Amazon has officially killed one of its more perplexing products: the Dash button. Literally just a single button next to a brand’s logo on a rounded bit of plastic, the Dash button was for people who liked to reorder very specific products from Amazon in the moment, instead of minutes later after they opened the Amazon app.
On August 31, the buttons will no longer work, Amazon confirmed to CNN Business on Thursday. The end of the button was first reported by CNET.
After the device’s final day, pressing one will no longer bring you — for example — any more paper towels. Amazon stopped selling the buttons themselves earlier this year.
Launched in 2015, the idea behind the Dash was simple. You could, for example, put a button for Hunt’s canned tomatoes next wherever you stored your supply of Hunt’s canned tomatoes. When you were running low or out of said tomatoes, you would place a finger on the button and push. Using its built-in wifi, the button would trigger an order for more cans directly from Amazon.
Amazon offered buttons for products that people would logically need to reorder fairly regularly, such as laundry detergent, condoms and kitty litter. There were also more perplexing buttons for products including ping pong balls, Mucinex and Play-Doh.
The Dash buttons will live on computer screens as 2D versions of their former selves. You can create and organize these virtual Dash buttons on the Amazon app or webpage, an Echo Show or even a Samsung Family Hub smart refrigerator (a $2,100 to $4,000 refrigerator with a built in touchscreen). Amazon has automatically created virtual dash buttons for customers who had physical ones. Other products such as Subscribe & Save will also fill the void.
The company still offers the Amazon Dash Wand for sale. That $34 product is essentially a stick with a button, built-in microphone for speaking to the Alexa voice assistant, and barcode scanner for shopping.
