Alexa works as a smart-home controller, so it can recognize and work with multiple devices from multiple manufacturers. An Alexa device such as an Echo or Echo Spot is an example of such a controller. Devices Alexa can control (like thermostats, speakers, TVs, and so on) just have to be compatible. You must make sure you get smart-home devices that are compatible with your controller, so be sure to buy items that are Alexa compatible.

The Amazon Alexa equivalent of apps are called skills. Like a mobile device, Alexa can do a few things out of the box, such as playing music or audiobooks, telling you the time or the weather, and making voice or video calls. But if you want to know how to use Alexa to perform more specialized tasks, then you need to add the appropriate skills from the Amazon Alexa skills list.

With Amazon Alexa in the house, you now can issue a voice command to order up whatever music you feel like hearing, all without moving an inch from where you are. Playing music is one of most popular Alexa skills. How to play music through Alexa The first thing you have to decide is how you want to play your music through Alexa.

Amazon Alexa isn’t the surveillance nightmare that some privacy advocates say it is, but neither should you take your privacy for granted. After all, you’ve invited a dedicated listening device into your home, a device that, moreover, sends recordings of your voice to some cloud and stores them there. Is Alexa always listening?

If your hearing has deteriorated over the years, or if you have a hearing impairment in one or both ears, hearing Amazon Alexa’s responses and enjoying music and videos can be a challenge. Fortunately, help is at hand. Alexa has a few tools that you can configure to help or work around your hearing issues.Alexa and the Alexa app come with a few features that you can customize or turn on to work around hearing impairments: The Light Ring provides a visual indicator of the status of your Echo device.

Both your Amazon Alexa device and the Alexa app come with a few features that you can tweak or activate to work around vision problems: Alexa devices have either physical buttons you can press to adjust the volume or a volume ring. You can use the Alexa app to adjust the volume for alarms, timers, and notifications.

Amazon Alexa is billed as a voice-activated personal assistant, but that “voice-activated” part is problematic if you can’t speak at all or have speech challenges. To fix that, you can take advantage of the many features offered by Alexa and the Alexa app to make Alexa devices accessible to those with speech problems.

Amazon Alexa is a voice service, a cloud-based software program that acts as a voice-controlled virtual personal assistant. In a nutshell, you use your voice to ask Alexa a question or give Alexa a command, and it dutifully answers you (assuming an answer exists) or carries out your request (assuming your request is possible).