There are many ways that Amazon Alexa can make your life easy, active, and more fun, it keeps track from the start of your day till your brunch time even winding down to the evening.
Today we will be sharing with you a fully comprehensive guide taken from the official Amazon Alexa guideline on how to use Alexas’ features in your house, as well as what it can do for your family and the top reasons to get yours today!
Alexa Features
Music and Entertainment
From music play to Audiobooks, radio, and podcasts, Alexa has got your music and entertainment needs covered well. You can listen to music across all compatible Echo devices with Multi-room music features, watch movies, and also play games, to explain Alexa features even more:
- Play Music:
With Alexa, you can play music and control them with your settings, on your Device that has enabled Alexa on it, just try asking.
- Listen with Amazon Music Services:
If you have a prime membership subscription or an Amazon music unlimited subscription, you have access to a variety of special music requests, prime music is a benefit of Prime membership, where you get to select between 2 million ad-free songs depending on your mood and taste.
- Play Music in Every Room with Multi-Room Music:
You get to enjoy whole-home audio with the same song across with compatible Echo devices. Ask Alexa to play your favorites now by following our steps:
- Tap the devices icon.
- Then tap the + icon in the upper right corner.
- Select Add Multi-Room Music Speakers and create a new Multi-Room Music Group.
- You can listen to other music services as well.
Alexa can play music from a wide range of streaming services, like Apple Music, Spotify, SiriusXM, Audible, iHeart Radio, Pandora, and more.
Productivity and Organization
Nothing is more desired than a virtual assistant that actually boosts your productivity, from sleep timers to day-saving reminders and calendar managements and emails. Alexa Amazon will help take care of all of that for you so you can focus on your job more, You can do the following with Alexa:
- Set alarms with Alexa, like cooking timers and daily reminders.
- Manage your calendar and emails, you can read, reply, or send an email using Alexa, you can also ask her to help you with manning your calendar. (Alexa is compatible with Google, G Suite, iCloud, Outlook.com, or office365)
Get started by opening the Amazon Alexa App, then:
- Select settings and scroll to the Alexa preferences section, then select calendar and Email.
- Choose your calendar from the list provided.
- Follow the instructions shown on-screen to allow Alexa access to your calendar.
- Using Alexa, you can teach her to receive personalized productivity help, as Alexa can recognize your voice and provide you a personal schedule, deliver reminders and emails as well as remember your notes, she an even learn more than just voice, to get her started all you have to do is say “Alexa, Learn my voice”
- Set reminders with Alexa, as she can even send a reminder to your phone even if you were away from your device.
- Manage and create lists with Alexa like shopping lists or to-do lists, you can even use her voice to manage the list using your voice, and you can access her using different apps.
- Having trouble with cooking? Well, Alexa is here to help you find new recipes and set timers.
- You can look up word definitions or get the correct spelling of words even makes calculations with Alexa.
Do your shopping
Alexa is always ready to help you get your shopping done—from reminders to ordering dog food to track your package all the way to your doorstep. And if you’re a Prime Member in a city with a participating Whole Foods Market store, you can now get even more fresh, organic groceries through Prime Now with ultra-fast delivery in select zip codes.
- When buying items, if you want to reorder, you can just ask and Alexa will offer you an item from your order history, then confirm the price and ask if you want to buy it. If you are looking for an item that you might have bought before from Amazon, you can search by product name or ask for top-rate items in the category.
- Product questions answered, Alexa can check prices, product ratings, share deals.
- Save your time, and grocery line with new prime member savings and ultra-fast delivery through prime now, you can get fresh organic groceries depending on the food market available to you.
Alexa Skills
Well more than just productivity and music, you can use Alexa to play games with you, even read the news, and play your favorite music or podcasts while you are chilling in a calm afternoon after work, here is a list of things you can do with Alexa:
- Create your special skillset
Yes, Artificial intelligence and virtual reality is all about being customized and special to you! with skill blueprints, you can customize all Alexa responses, as well as personalize any set of skills any time you would like, a lot of people are under the misconception that this requires you to have a high amount of coding skills, but you can choose from over 30 templates and fill in the blanks to build your skills. Here are a few examples:
- Storytelling like fairytales, sci-fiction, and more.
- Prepare for houseguests, babysitters, and more
- Learn more through quizzes and facts with Alexa.
Blueprints for your skills can be customized by you, and they will not appear to anyone or any device but those devices using your Amazon account, you can also share them with other Echo or Alexa enabled devices outside of your house.
Have a smart home
If you have lights and plugs to thermostats and cameras, Alexa can help you own a smart home through the following routines:
- Monitor your house using smart cameras
Instead of a regular camera, why not use a smart camera? as it allows you monitor the inside of your home just by using your voice and connecting everything to Alexa, you can be in the office and check on your baby sleeping in your house, even your door, to keep you secure and safe at all times even if you weren’t inside your house.
- Lights
The option smart lighting makes you control your connected lights remotely or by voice when paired with Alexa, those smart bulbs have the ability to dim or change color so it could be adjusted to the mood of any room and in a wide array of sizes, smart switches are very cost-effective and they are a good option to control multiple lights with normal bulbs, yet they require an installation process, you can check Alexas’ smart home setup page to help you install smart lightning.
- Heating and cooling systems
Using Alexa you can save energy and adjust the home temperature even if you are away, control the thermostat from any room using Alexa, as the system for heating and cooling seriously contributes to the large consumption of energy and raises the amounts of your electricity bills.
- Electricity smart plugs
Smart plugs can turn your everyday appliances into part of your smart home, such as lamps, floor fans, Christmas tree lights, and even more. You can keep track of all of the electricity consumption with energy monitoring smart plugs. Check out the smart home setup page to help connect your smart plug.
Using Multiple Devices with Alexa
Have more fun. Get more done. See how life is better together when you connect multiple Echo and Alexa-enabled devices.
- Multi-Room Music:
Multi-room music features allow you to play music in a lot of different rooms in your house, playing the song across all your compatible Echo devices, Ask her to play your favorite beats through the entire house.
Steps to do that:
- Open Alexa app, then select devices and press + in the upper right corner, after that add a group for Multi-room music.
- set up Multi-room music and follow instructions on the screen, then choose a name everywhere and upstairs for your group as a part of these steps.
- If you say Alexa play music, or Alexa read my audiobook on the group upstairs, then music will start playing everywhere, you can set up stereo pairs and home theater systems, some home theaters would need fire TV for the feature to work.
Keep Your Home In-Sync using Drop-in
If you wonder what drop-in is, then drop in is an optional feature, that can make you connect anything everywhere instantly, it functions as a two-way intercom on the supported devices, for example, you can ask other family members if food is ready or whatever you want to help you and your family communicate in the house.
Drop-in can be used to talk to close friends outside of your house as well if you grant them the needed permission through the following steps:
- Select the communication icon in the app
- Tap my profile&settings from my profile icon, then choose permissions and allow drop-in the feature.
- Re-select the Communication icon then select the Drop-In icon. add the name of the device you want to drop in on.
Announcement
Do you have a big family? and you are really tired of calling them one by one for dinner or lunch? well Alexa can do the job for you through your Echo or Alexa-enabled devices, just shout out “Dinner ready” or “lunch ready” and all your devices in other rooms will play that message, even if you were not home at all!
Smart home devices using Announcement
You can actually control all of your devices such as smart lights, smart plugs, thermostats, and door locks by voice control, you can say ” Alexa, lock the door” or “Alexa, turn on the heat” and it will respond.
Communication
Communicate and call others using your Alexa-enabled device, you can even call people for free in countries like the Us, Canada, and Mexico, but any emergency number is not supported, if you want to call someone follow those steps:
- Tap the menu bar in the upper left corner.
- Pick Settings.
- Choose Your Profile then add your phone number.
- Use Alexa like an Intercom with Drop-In
Drop-In enables you to use Alexa like a two-way intercom:
- Select the Communicate icon.
- Tap the Drop-In icon.
- Choose the name of the contact you want to Drop-In on.
- Then make your announcements.
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