How to add non-Amazon web links to wish list?

I used the Amazon Assistant browser extension exclusively to add stuff from the web to my wish list for later. It was like a handy shopping bookmarks tool for me, though the rest of the extension's features sucked and were annoying. Unfortunately, Amazon Assistant was discontinued at the end of March and I can't use this function anymore.

So I go to my Amazon wish list on the web to manually add instead, but I can't find any sort of "Add" button for non-Amazon links. Am I blind or did they take it away? You can still add Amazon products to wish list from the Amazon product page, but I can't find a way to add links from elsewhere on the web.

I don't want to do any of this crap from mobile, so a web/desktop solution would be preferred. Any ideas?

in amazonprimeby coldjesusbeer

125

100%

1.2y

CaptainDonKeys

1.1y

I did find a way to add an idea/external link to a normal Amazon wishlist - but it's pretty roundabout. If you have an Echo device/app, you can say something like "Alexa add pie to my wishlist". It'll add that idea to a basic list named "wish list", THEN you can edit the idea to replace "pie" with your external link or other text. I wish there was a less convoluted way but I hope that helps anyone else wondering.

Edit: Since this has helped a few people who've replied to this comment, I'd like to request whoever this helps to give this a few upvotes so it's at the top of the comment thread (unless it is already lol)

dcybulsk

10mo

Thank you for posting this workaround.

brixalot10

1.0y

Haha! Nice, thanks for sharing.

kb5won

1.0y

this worked for me as well. I did have to change a permission setting to allow Alexa access to my wishlist. Sad that Amazon broke this functionality-- it has been a well-liked feature for a long time!

Creative_Sail_1290

1.1y

Just had the same issue. I tried talking to customer service and they basically just said you can only put amazon things on the list now with no explanation. RIP to nearly 20 years of my use of amazon wish lists lol

MWT4L

1.1y

I just got bounced around the chat on Amazon until someone put me with a person onshore who shared that Amazon is working on an alternative to Amazon Assistant, and they intend to put the function add things off site to the wishlists back. Just a heads up!

_CoachMcGuirk

1.0y

I love it that they told you what you wanted to hear to get off the chat.

I'll love it even more if this comment comes true, but I'm thinking lip service.

D3PyroGS

1mo

liiiiiip service

alue42

11mo

I just spoke with Amazon customer service about this (after googling the question and coming across this post). They said they have had a decent number of complaints, and depending on the number of complaints they get, they may reverse their decision, and urged me to have everyone I know call in from their own accounts to have them complain.

I described the Miracle of 34th Street aspect to him (he hasn't seen it) that parents were bringing their kids in to see Santa and were so happy to be told everywhere they could get the best deals on all of the things their kids wanted (even if it wasn't from that department store) that parents were flocking to that specific Santa (and buying things there also).(ie, creating lists with deals from other places, but shopping at Amazon mostly). The bosses were so mad that Santa was telling them to get the items elsewhere that they tried to get him to stop (ie, get rid of putting items on Amazon lists from other sites), but then they realized they could use that info he was giving the parents to better stock their store with the items they wanted (ie, Amazon could look at data of what people are putting on their lists from other sites and stock or price their items to get them to shop accordingly)

Therefore, I made the issue not just about my own desire to have all of my items in one location for the ease of my family's collective Christmas/birthday/housewarming/baby shower/etc gift giving, but provided a sensible economic reason why they should keep it.

So - everyone call to get the numbers of complaints up, and hopefully they'll bring it back.

jallenclark

1.1y

I ran into the same issue. I am testing wishlist.com and it appears to do what I want. Might give it a go, Karma seemed like overkill. This was more basic.

coldjesusbeer

1.1y

I gave Karma a trial run and quickly noped out.

The issue is that you can only save links from Chrome on your PC if Karma already recognizes them. Like you go to an Amazon.com product page and the little Quick Save button appears on the right because Amazon is a major retailer and Karma set up the browser extension to work with it. Easy enough. But if it's from a retailer that's not already recognized by Karma, then the Quick Save button never appears. You have to manually add the domain as like a recognized site to get the applet to appear for saving the link.

I have a lot of one-off artists or jewelers where I don't want to go through the hassle of "adding" the site into Karma so I can use Quick Save. I also hate that the Quick Save button is like an actual page overlay instead of me just clicking the extension icon in my browser bar. I don't want extra crap on the webpage I'm looking at.

Anyway, I'm still researching solutions on my end. I'll look into wishlist.com as well. Thanks!

coldjesusbeer

1.1y

Thanks, been using wishlist.com a few days and it's exactly what I wanted. Think I'm sticking with this one.

NobHillBilly

10mo

This is pretty good, have you found a way to collaborate with someone on a list. Largely used Amazon lists so my partner and I can give relatives a useful list for kid gifts.

MKebi

8mo

I used WishList.com until I learned about Amazon Assistant. Now that it's done, going back. Not hopeful about Amazon considering how old this thread is.

SheriffBartholomew

6mo

Can people view the list without creating an account, or do they have to sign up to see what you've shared? I checked their FAQ and searched the web for an answer and can't find one.

AdeptnessForsaken606

6mo

Isn't it funny how the bigger businesses get the dumber they get? Its like when there are too many voices they all just turn into mindless static that heads in random directions.

People put stuff on an Amazon wish list because you can add things from other sources. Now they will lose a good chunk of people using Amazon wish list. After this, I doubt I personally will put Amazon items on a third-party wish list if they can be bought elsewhere. In the end Amazon will now give up business to other vendors.

Thanks for the big FU from Amazon for Christmas. This is once again an Anti-Customer policy change that attacks everyone and benefits no one (not even Amazon). I only used this feature to add items that weren't available on Amazon so its not like they are losing business here.

Have it your way Amazon..I will use another list service and buy my Christmas gifts elsewhere.

Non-Athlete-Your-Mom

2mo

To reinforce your statement, I give you Motorola. IBM. Sears. K-Mart. I could probably fill an entire book in 9pt font with nothing but proper names of companies who got big enough to not know who was breaking things while simultaneously being too shy to take any more risks.

TheImaginariumGuy

1.0y

I hate that they removed that feature to add external links, or manually add an 'idea.' I hope they bring it back. Luckily, I still have 2 'added as idea' items that I can keep editing, but links don't work in it, just text. I will never delete those because I see no way to bring them back if I do.

PenguinSpyy

7mo

I've started using this for a wishlist instead: https://www.thingstogetme.com

Udalrich

6mo

Is there a way to do this without Alexa? I don't really want to buy an Alexa just to add an item to my wish list.

Negative-Intention6

1.2y

I'm in the same boat- I loved this feature on amazon assistant! The best alternative I've come up with is to just copy and paste a link and add it to the list as an "idea". Alternatively, I'm trying out an extension called Karma that lets you save products to lists. I don't know that it's as convenient as amazon assistant once was, but we'll see!

coldjesusbeer

1.2y

Yeah, I'm thinking I'll have to find a good bookmark manager again. I used to use the delicio.us extension back in the day, which was fabulous, but the service was discontinued long ago and that's about when I switched to Amazon for shopping bookmarks.

Guess it's back to the drawing board. I'll keep Karma in mind, thanks!

InsaniD69

1.1y

Ok, so maybe I'm blind now, too, but what happened to "Add Idea"? on our wishlists?
It was there. I have some Doc Marten's I added in Dec, from the official site, and that was in Dec.
I've looked in 3 different browsers, since some things do sometimes go missing between browsers. Nothing.
Any clues?

Gullible_Cicada_557

1.1y

I have always done this too….but that option is gone now! What?!

SnarfinUSA

1.1y

I'm looking at maybe switching over to Dreamlist for a new universal wishlist now that Amazon has killed off interoperability.

With the little experimentation I've done (I've made a list and added an item to it), Dreamlist looks like it has several things working in its favor:

Reasonably intuitive to use
Layout looks decent/is simple to read
Has most of the functions I used most on Amazon's wishlists, like multiple lists with editable names/descriptions, list item reordering, editable item descriptions, quantity, etc
Did a good job automatically image-scraping for a picture on the item I added to my list

DreamList also appears to have an "import Amazon wishlist" feature, but you apparently have to email the company to get started with that. We'll see where that goes I guess. Hoping they'll read a wishlist for import without pretending they need full access credentials to my Amazon account. You can share Amazon wishlists, so they shouldn't.

Anyone already have opinions about DreamList or have any pitfalls to warn about?

kseulgisbaby

1.1y

`DreamList also appears to have an "import Amazon wishlist" feature,`

based on your comment + this part above, I've decided to try out Dreamlist too

will be back one day to share my thoughts if i remember to do so

dougc84

1.1y

I just found this. DreamList looks like it was built in 2010, and, despite being intuitive to use, I see no option anywhere for importing a Amazon wishlist into this.

g33kp0w3r

1.1y

This is just going to hurt Amazon, because people like me will move their wishlist away from Amazon and no longer reference Amazon products from their wish list. I’m going to move mine to a shared spreadsheet. That way I can add all the custom fields I want, like alternate purchase options.

BeautifulRespect1008

1.0y

I finally got around to finding out why the assistant app wasn't working and found this page. Not cool of Amazon to cut such vital part of list making. The only reason I can see for them to drop it is greed. :(

aree036

1.0y

Same issue! 😡 and I've had to wade through a lot of very poor alternatives to find something to fill the gap this left in my life.
Thank you Moonsift.com 🙏 - their universal wishlist extension and app is actually way better than Amazon's ever was. So in the end, I'm actually very happy this happened.

Good luck to all on this.

coffee8sugar

11mo

this is just annoying ... why why why Amazon... i know "why" but removing this feature from wish lists is just sad

Ok-the

10mo

If you have an idea from an old unused list, you can move it to your new list and edit it to your new item/idea.

SquareMealDaily

10mo

What I did for my wishlist that goes to friends/family is find a similar item on Amazon.
Put it on my list.
Then add a comment that says: DO NOT BUY THIS!! Cut and paste this link to the item I'm wishing for.
Then I put the link.
It's a pain in the ass, but it works.

sdwarcher

10mo

Yes, Amazon should be hurting from this profit-driven removal of function, but sadly probably won't hurt enough to notice it.

The one thing that was great was that all of your wishlists and those of your friends/family could be in one place and you could share it for birthdays and Christmas present ideas. That it could include items that aren't available on Amazon was great (and if Amazon carried it, the app would show you the Amazon listing instead, which was OK). So it shouldn't have been eating into the Amazon profits that much -- and it might have been used to make decisions on expanding their universe of products.

AlteredStatesOf

9mo

How disappointing. This is how we created our Christmas and Birthday lists. I really hope this backfires on them and they lose money due to their greed

desdemica

8mo

Another workaround and easy if you already have "ideas" saved--just edit the ones you have. And don't ever delete them!! I had saved ideas in my "Your Gift Ideas for [friends] lists" and was able to edit and move them.

Available_Degree814

8mo

Weak, yeah i have a bookmarklet that adds them,.. can confirm it no longer works.

Gonna have to switch to something else... RIP

PSUNTlion

7mo

Man, they killed Smile and Assistant in the same year? Bad times for Amazon. Too bad they've built a near-monopoly for online shopping.

Good info in this thread - maybe I'll give one of the alternate wishlists a shot.

marquesstewart

7mo

So another workaround idea I had was create a non-Amazon list using Moonsift and then go to Amazon and make a list called 'non-Amazon items'. In the description for that list, put the URL to your moonsift list. That way you kind of get the ok of both worlds - you can still refer people to your amazon list but you can easily direct them to your moonsift list.

SheriffBartholomew

6mo

What a bunch of bastards. In addition to getting rid of cool features like this that actually benefited people and still made Amazon money, they now also show me "promoted lists" when I try to view my list and I have to hunt around for my actual list. I swear man, corporations have gone off the deep end. If I'm viewing a list then I'm already looking to buy something. Is it really that terrible for them to just let me buy the thing I want instead of trying to push other things on me?

DrPoopyPantsJr

6mo

This is bullshit wtf amazon?? I have been doing this for years why would you take away the ability to add ideas or mark bought elsewhere?! So dumb

StarryPenny

6mo

If you have an idea on your list you no longer want you can edit it to a new item.

Terbatron

6mo

This is really short sighted of amazon. Way to motivate me and all of my family to not use their website for gift ideas anymore.

djkyle65

6mo

This sucks and right before the holidays. Guess im going to find something else.

serahartman

6mo

I selected a blank book on Amazon, placed it on my wish list, then noted it as my default non-Amazon item storage and added URLs of "outside" items.

AncientMorgoth

6mo

I just tried several solutions, intending to mainly use them from a desktop PC :

moonsift.com : items must be added using the Chrome extension. Caveat : it's not possible to have a custom image (not present in the original web page). It's not possible to add a custom image afterwards. So I won't use it.
dreamlist.com : it does not support accented letters (like "à é è") in the names of items and in comments, they are replaced by spaces. Also there is no priority level associated to an item. These two things were pre-requisites for me.
thingstogetme.com : supports custom images and item priorities. So far seems perfect, I'm going to use this one.

lordzeel

6mo

What typical nonsense. If I have to start using something other than Amazon for wish lists, I'm going to make a point of linking to the things I want on other sites. I might have one thing I need to add from another website because Amazon doesn't carry it, but if I can't use an Amazon wish list why would I have any of my links be to Amazon? What fools they are.

Mountain_Mike4563

6mo

This worked for me as well. You can also just download the free Alexa app and configure it to your Amazon account if you don't own an Alexa device.

laurenswuyts

6mo

Use a website like https://happygiftlist.com, it's super easy.

Appropriate-Bet-4639

5mo

I'm experiencing the same problem. I loved Amazon Assistant for making a wish list so easy.

sunny_meg

5mo

I just used this, and it worked perfectly! Thank you!

Flimsy_Scallion_5807

5mo

Commenting for all the people still coming to this post. Instead of fighting to try to get a work around, I've been using thingstogetme.com for 3 years and I love it! You can add images, pricing, notes, separate into categories, etc. Definitely recommend!

helpful-info

5mo

Easiest way:

Add the cheapest thing you can find on Amazon.
Add a comment that includes a link to whatever you want from the external website.

bag-o-farts

5mo

using Amazon Shopping app, enable alexa, press the microphone, "alex add boardgames to wish list", go to your Wish List and generic "boardgames" item will be at the top of the list, edi the comments from there

needs no alexa devices. and thanks to android system, you can choose if alexa listens all the time or just when the app is open.

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