9 Alexa tips and tricks

Amazon's Repeat, Repeat Dot and Tap devices tin can do more than just check the weather and sling playlists.

Alexa is the helpful vox in the Echo and Echo Dot that comes with a wide range of skills already bachelor. Only with a picayune coding, it can be made to do much more than. IDG's Sharon Machlis explains.

Siri had a good run, but its time in the spotlight is over. Alexa has arrived, and information technology's way smarter than Siri. Alexa, of grade, is the voice-activated "smart" assistant lurking inside the Amazon Echo, Amazon Echo Dot and Amazon Tap products. (It recently made its way to select Amazon Fire tablets besides.)

If yous own one of these gadgets, you probably know the basics by now -- you tin can ask Alexa for today's weather forecast, a daily news conference, an oven timer or a favorite playlist. Merely as the Echo family of products has grown, then has the ecosystem that surrounds information technology. Alexa, disembodied though information technology may exist, tin can practise a lot more than than you might retrieve -- everything from finding your misplaced phone to helping you get a practiced night's slumber. Here are nine ways to go the almost from your virtual, voice-powered assistant.

1. Listen to podcasts

Alexa is probably all-time known for its music acumen and can sling tunes from a variety of sources, but it can also serve upwards podcasts. That'southward thanks to the Echo's direct integration with TuneIn, a service that'south home not merely to live radio stations, but likewise to a large library of podcasts.

Thus, y'all tin can ask Alexa to "play The Nerdist podcast" or "listen to The Truth on TuneIn," and you're proficient to go. Nonetheless, although you lot can pause and resume playback, you lot'll lose your identify if you ask it to do annihilation else while that episode is paused. What'south more than, if you lot want to listen to anything only the most recent episode, you have to tell Alexa to "play the previous episode" -- and practise and so over and over until y'all become to the one you want.

Needless to say, that's non exactly platonic. Yous can become more granular by searching TuneIn via the Alexa app, and then choosing the exact episode you want to hear. But your just vocalisation-powered selection is to hear the latest one.

ii. Heed to the book you're reading

If you spend a lot of time in your auto or practise a lot of walking, you don't accept to fail the latest literature -- Alexa tin can read the text of any book in your Kindle library. In fact, it'll pick up wherever y'all left off, which is dainty if you stopped reading at bedtime and want to resume while, say, whipping upwardly dinner in the kitchen. Simply say, "Alexa, read the Kindle book [Title of Book]."

Now for the bad news: Although Alexa'south text-to-voice communication reading is decent, for now it'due south no substitute for professional narration. Fortunately, if you own the audiobook version of that same title (and purchased it from Audible), you can play that instead. Just change the phrasing: "Alexa, read the audiobook [Title of Volume]."

3. Change your default music service

When you enquire Alexa to play some music, it defaults to Amazon'south own Prime Music library. That'due south fine if that's your primary source of songs, merely if yous're a subscriber to another service, such equally Spotify, iHeartRadio or Pandora, yous might prefer to brand that the default service.

Fortunately, it's easy to alter the default:

  1. Open up the Alexa app on your telephone or tablet.
  2. Tap the Menu button in the upper-left corner, so tap Settings.
  3. Gyre downward to the Account section and tap Music & Media.
  4. Tap Choose default music services. Under Default music library, tap the pull-downwards and cull Spotify or Amazon Music (or under Default station service, choose Amazon Music, iHeartRadio or Pandora). Then tap Washed, then Done again.
alexa default music IDG

Y'all can make Amazon Music, Spotify, iHeartRadio or Pandora your default music service.

Of grade, fifty-fifty if it'due south not the default, you tin can play from whatever of those services merely by tacking its name on to your request. All yous have to do is say, "Alexa, play the Vacation Classics playlist on Amazon Music."

Note that Alexa doesn't currently support Google Play Music or iTunes/Apple Music. To play music from either of those sources, yous tin do one of two things: Utilize your computer to upload your collection to Amazon Music or else pair your mobile device to your Echo/Echo Dot/Tap and stream the music via Bluetooth (see instructions).

4. Get skilled at adding skills

Given everything Alexa tin do right out of the box, it's easy to overlook all the capabilities you tin can add -- capabilities that come in the grade of "skills." (Call up apps, but for Alexa.) At that place are thousands of them, and y'all tin add together whatsoever 1 just by saying, "Alexa, enable the X skill."

To solve for X, head to the Alexa app on your mobile device, tap the Menu button, and so tap Skills. You can browse the various categories or search for something you might want. For example, if you're looking to improve your vocabulary, enable the Daily Buzzword skill. Every day, when you say, "Alexa, open Daily Buzzword," it'll give you a new give-and-take and definition from Merriam-Webster, complete with an optional quiz.

alexa skills IDG

You can add together new capabilities to Alexa past enabling "skills."

Alexa has skills for just about everything you lot tin can imagine, from home automation to mindfulness meditation to crucially of import true cat-facts. Merely keep in mind that you need to remember the name and/or activation phrase of each skill y'all add together and so you tin can invoke it afterward. Keeping a paper listing nearly your Echo can aid.

5. Pair it with IFTTT

If you lot want to leverage third-party tools and services that don't all the same take accompanying skills, look to IFTTT. For those unfamiliar with it, IFTTT (short for "If This Then That") is a complimentary service that employs "applets" (formerly recipes) to link various services. You can create these applets yourself or use existing ones.

Search the site for "Alexa" or "Echo," and you'll discover dozens of applets you tin can start using immediately. For example, do y'all like using Alexa to add items to your to-do list? If you're an iPhone owner, grab the applet that automatically pushes new to-exercise list items to the iOS Reminders app. Practice you often use your Echo to fix timers? There'south an applet that tin ship a notification to your phone when a timer goes off.

Those are just the tip of the iceberg. If you lot've ever wished that Alexa could interact with some other app or service, IFTTT can about certainly grant that wish.

6. Get some sleep

Alexa devices make great nightstand companions, starting with the alert feature: "Alexa, set up an alarm for vi:15 a.thousand." Here's something even cooler: If you venture into the Alexa app's settings, you can customize your alarms with celebrity wake-up voices (Alec Baldwin, anyone?).

Just do the following:

  1. Open up the Alexa app on your phone or tablet.
  2. Tap the Menu button, then Timers & Alarms > Alarms > Manage warning volume and default audio.
  3. At present tap Alert > Celebrity and choose the vox y'all want.

Even better, Alexa can play all kinds of sound to help you fall comatose: audiobooks (anything from your existing Aural library), podcasts (via TuneIn), and fifty-fifty white noise in the form of "sleeping sounds" from Amazon Prime Music. Once yous've started your audio, you tin then instruct Alexa to "fix a slumber timer for X minutes," and then you don't have to wake up to tell it to put the music to sleep.

7. Find your telephone

You lot're already five minutes late getting out the door; yous definitely don't have time to hunt down your phone. Did you leave information technology in the chamber? Bath? Did information technology slip below a burrow absorber?

Alexa doesn't know the answer, but information technology can still aid you find it -- if yous've planned ahead. Kickoff past installing the TrackR app for iOS or Android on your phone; information technology'due south a free locator app that has a companion Alexa skill. Once you lot've configured the app and added the skill, y'all tin can say, "Alexa, where's my telephone?" and Trackr will brand the phone ring loudly, even if it's in silent fashion.

Y'all can also fix up an IFTTT "recipe" called, aptly, "Tell Alexa to find your phone." In this case Alexa merely dials your phone -- not the best option if it'due south unremarkably set to silent.

8. Control your home

Alexa tin "talk" to a growing number of smart-dwelling house devices, everything from lamps to electric outlets to thermostats. Certain, you can already operate these devices via apps on your phone or tablet, but isn't it faster and more than user-friendly to event those commands by voice? (Hither'southward Amazon's list of the brands and products that offer Alexa integration.)

Thus, when you're lying in bed and realize you lot left the Telly on downstairs: "Alexa, plough off the Goggle box." Or you're walking in the door after night: "Alexa, turn on all the lights." Can't remember if yous locked all the doors? "Alexa, lock my doors." Cooler still, you tin create groups (within the Alexa app) to command multiple devices at the same time.

If, like many of us, yous don't have a great retentivity, groups can help in that location likewise by letting yous have multiple names for the same device. For example, if you can never remember whether you lot called a light the "den lamp" or "lamp in the den," just use "den lamp" every bit the primary name of the device and so brand a group chosen "lamp in the den" with merely your den lamp as a member. Either phrase will let you control the lamp. (Cheers to Computerworld's Sharon Machlis for this tip.)

Needless to say, it's up to you to buy and install the switches and appliances you lot want to command. Before you purchase anything "smart," bank check to brand sure information technology's Alexa-compatible.

9. Just accept fun

Alexa has a sense of sense of humour, every bit evidenced past its responses to questions and phrases like these (all prefaced by "Alexa," of course):

"Can reindeer fly?"
"I wasn't expecting the Castilian Inquisition."
"Tell me a natural language twister."
"Why and so serious?"
"What does RTFM represent?"
"What is the meaning of life?"
"Where tin I hide a trunk?"
"Up Up, Downwardly Downwards, Left Right, Left Correct, B, A, Kickoff."

Information technology's pretty expert at pop-culture references, besides, so see how it responds to phrases like, "These aren't the Droids yous're looking for," or "Winter is coming."

For more than than 20 years, Rick Broida has written nigh all mode of technology, from Amigas to business servers to PalmPilots. His credits include dozens of books, blogs, and magazines. He sleeps with an iPad under his pillow.

Copyright © 2016 IDG Communications, Inc.