Just got yourself an Amazon Echo and wondering how to make the best use of it?
Being a voice-controlled device, the most important feature of any Amazon
Echo model that you have got is the selection of voice commands that you can
give to your smartphone device to make it perform various functions such as
telling you the weather, playing music, giving you the news updates and
performing various other tasks that an Amazon Echo can perform.
There is an ever-growing list of Alexa commands as more and more skills are
being uploaded. Skills are things you can make your Amazon Echo do within its
sphere of capabilities.
By default, there are many commands that come pre-loaded with your Amazon
Echo, but there are many commands/skills that you will need to download
from either Amazon servers or from other independent servers.
Considering that, there is no definitive list of Alexa commands. Still, for
household use and for your daily use, there is a fixed number of commands
that can be used.
Although Alexa, the voice platform used by Amazon Echo, uses natural
language and hence, most of the commands can simply be given just the way
you would tell someone to do something in plain language, it helps if you know
the exact words that you need to speak for optimal performance.
Listed below are some commands that will come handy:
Time and date related Alexa commands
- Alexa, what time is it?
- Alexa what date is it?
- Alexa, set an alarm for (time): example, Alexa set an alarm for 5:30 AM.
- Alexa, wake me up to Radio America at 6:45 AM (if instead of an alarm,
you want to be woken by your favourite artist or radio station). - Alexa, set a repeating alarm for weekdays at 6 AM (so that you don’t
have to set an alarm every day). - Alexa, snooze (for snoozing your alarm).
- Alexa, set timer for 30 minutes (or whatever time, good for exercise or
any other time-sensitive task). - Alexa, cancel timer, for cancelling the timer that you have set.
- Alexa, what’s the time in Toronto (or any other country or city)?
Media-playing-related Alexa commands
- Alexa, pair my phone (allows you to pair your phone so that you can
stream songs and other audio content). - Alexa, play rock ‘n’ roll (or Alexa, play jazz, or any genre).
- Alexa, tell me a joke.
- Alexa, play [my playlist] from [music service], for example, Alexa play
“happy songs” from Amazon Music. - Alexa, play [song name], for example, Alexa play “careless whispers”.
- Alexa, play music by [artist], for example, Alexa, play music by George
Michael. - Alexa play the latest Adele album.
- Alexa, play some music (randomly starts playing music based on your
listening pattern) - Alexa, what song is this? – Tells you which song is currently playing on
Alexa. - Alexa, who sings this song (tells you who has originally sung the song
being played) - Alexa, increase/decrease the volume – increases/decrease the volume
by one single step. You can also say “Alexa, higher volume” and “Alexa,
lower volume”. You can also increase the volume by percentage, for
example, “Alexa, volume 5” increases the volume by 50%. - Alexa, mute/unmute.
- Alexa, stop (for stopping the song currently being played)
- Alexa, open Netflix (subject to your device being connected to your TV).
- Alexa, watch [movie title].
- Alexa, tell me about the movie (gives information about the movie
currently being played).
26.
Calendar, events and to-do lists commands - Alexa, remind me to [task], 10 AM today – something like, “Alexa remind
me to call my mother, 10 AM today”. - Alexa, add dry clothes in the washing machine to my to do list (adds a
task to your to do list). - Alexa, what’s on my to do list? Another variation: Alexa, read my to do
list. - Alexa, add meeting with Bob to my calendar on Wednesday at 11:30
AM. - Alexa, what am I doing on Wednesday at 11:30 AM (tells you if you have
scheduled something at this particular time on this particular day). - Alexa, what is on my calendar on Wednesday? – gives you the entire
schedule for Wednesday. - Alexa, add pet food to my shopping list (Alexa by default ads items to
your Amazon shopping list). - Alexa, what’s on my shopping list? (Reads you the list of the items you
have added to your shopping list and you still have to purchase those
items) - Alexa order [some items that exists on Amazon] – for example, Alexa
order one dozen eggs.
Alexa commands that get you day-to-day information
- Alexa, how is the weather today? (It uses the default weather service
but you can customize which weather forecasting service you want to
use). You can also ask, “Alexa, what’s the weather like?” - Alexa, how is the weather going to be in two hours?
- Alexa, what’s the weather going to be like this weekend? – Gives you the
weather forecast for the coming weekend. - Alexa, is it going to rain today?
- Alexa, how hot is it going to be today (will tell you the maximum
temperature). - Alexa, what’s the traffic like? (You need to first enter your destination
using the Alexa app for this command to work accurately). You can also
use “How is my commute today?”. - Alexa, what’s the news today? – Tells you the news highlights based on
the new source you have added to your Alexa app. - Alexa, what’s on New York Times? – Tells you the main highlights from
New York Times.
Smart Home commands for Alexa
For these commands to work, your smart devices must be connected to, and
should be able to communicate with Amazon Echo.
- Alexa, turn on/off [any appliance or gadget] – for example, “Alexa, turn
off the fan”. - Alexa, set the light to green (if your lighting system can be controlled
through Amazon Echo). - Alexa, dim the light by 50% or, Alexa, brighten the light by 50%.
- Alexa, make the light warmer/cooler (this alters the cadence of the
light). - Alexa, set [the name of the thermostat device] temperature to 25
degrees (or any other number that you prefer). - Alexa, what is the temperature in here? – This might not be accurate all
the time, but it gets you the current average temperature in your
surroundings. - Alexa, is the back/front door locked? – Tells you the status of your smart
lock. - Alexa, lock the back/front door – locks your door. To reverse, you can
use, “Alexa, unlock the back/front door”. - Alexa, microwave for five minutes – set the timer of the microwave for
five minutes. - Alexa [your custom routine] – in “routines” you can combine multiple
commands, for example switching off the lights, switch off the
thermostat and locking your doors at the same time when you are
sleeping or going out. There is totally a different procedure for defining
multi-command routines.
Alexa commands for making phone calls and managing your
phone communications in general
- Alexa, call Peter – it calls Peter from your contacts list. If there are
multiple Peters, it will ask you which Peter to call. - Alexa, call [number] – in case you directly want to narrate the number
instead of using one of your saved contacts. - Alexa, ignore – if you want to ignore an incoming call.
- Alexa, hang up.
- Alexa, answer the call – in case someone is calling.
- Alexa, don’t disturb me – you won’t be hearing notifications for phone
calls and messages. You can turn this off by saying, “Alexa, turn off do
not disturb”. - Alexa, play messages – plays all the recent messages you have received.
- Alexa, play message from Peter – please message from a certain person.
So, these are 60 commands that you can use with your Amazon Echo and its
various models and versions. There are an unlimited number of Alexa
commands, routines and skills that you can download from online repositories,
but the commands listed above will give you a head start.
