amazondash12Amazon wants to let you restock items like laundry detergent, baby food, paper towels and more with a simple press of a button.

amazondash12The Seattle company today unveiled the Dash Button, a small plastic Wi-Fi-enabled physical button available to Prime members that can be stuck or hung anywhere in your home and instantly orders products to be delivered in two days.

Once pressing the Dash Button, which are individually labeled for specific brands, Amazon places the order and sends an alert to your smartphone. For example, if you have the Gillette button, pressing it will order more Gillette product that you’ve pre-selected on Amazon.

Amazon already knows your payment and shipping information, making the process rather seamless for those that simply want to restock an item without driving to the local grocery store. If you accidentally order an item that is already in transit, Amazon won’t reorder until your initial product is delivered and sends a notification to your smartphone.

There are about 254 eligible Dash Button products on Amazon right now, including everything from trash bags to sunscreen to coffee. There are 17 branded buttons available at launch.

And no, this does not appear to be an April Fools joke — though some are suspicious.

Amazon unveiled the Amazon Dash last year.
Amazon unveiled the Amazon Dash last year.

This is a follow-up to Amazon’s Dash hardware it showed off almost a year ago. Amazon Dash is a six-inch skinny stick that gave Amazon Fresh customers the ability to add items to an online grocery list with both a built-in barcode scanner or microphone.

The Dash Button, meanwhile, does away with any microphone or scanner and simply lets people press a button to order. It’s also available to all Prime members, rather than just Amazon Fresh users. This is yet another effort from Amazon in its quest to simplify the online ordering experience, and another benefit for Prime members that pay a $99/year fee.

Amazon also today introduced the Dash Replenishment Service, which brings together connected devices around the house that can detect when supply is running low with Amazon’s ordering platform. Companies like Whirpool (is your detergent running low?), Brita (time to replace that filter?), and Brother (need more ink for the printer?) are already using DRS in a limited participation beta.

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