How do you clean your fabric-covered smart speaker? Carefully

At a staff meeting this afternoon here at The Verge, several people started complaining about the problem of keeping their fabric-covered tech clean. It turned out that this is definitely a problem in search of a solution.

For example, if you are keeping an Apple HomePod Mini, a Google Assistant speaker, or an Amazon Echo in your kitchen, the device is going to start accumulating crumbs and grease really quickly. Not to mention the pet hair that the fabric is going to attract or what it will look like after being carried from room to room by grubby little four-year-old hands.

So how do you keep them clean?

I looked it up in various sources, and most agreed: there are a few things you can do to try to keep the surface of your fabric-covered tech reasonably clean. However, your options are limited.

Here are some of the things you can do to try to get the crud off your fabric-covered tech.

If your speaker or other fabric-covered device has attracted pet hair, dust, or other annoying types of dirt, there are several things you can try.

A note of warning: it is not advisable to use a can of compressed air to force crumbs or other dirt off a speaker or other device — the pressure of that air can damage fragile parts.

And everyone is in agreement: if you want to keep your device in working condition, don’t use a cloth soaked in alcohol, spray it with window cleaner, or, in fact, use anything but water (or Amazon’s touch of alcohol) to dampen your cloth. And if that doesn’t get off the stain — well, maybe you’ll just have to turn that part of your HomePod, Echo, or Nest speaker to the wall where nobody else will see it.