Alexa For Dummies

Paul McFedries has worked with, programmed, and, yes, talked to computers large and small since 1975. Although he's now primarily a writer, Paul has worked as a programmer, consultant, database developer, and website developer. He has written more than 95 books that have sold more than four million copies worldwide.

Introduction 1


About This Book 1


Foolish Assumptions 2


Icons Used in This Book 2


Beyond the Book 3


Where to Go from Here 3


Part 1: Getting Started with Alexa 5


Chapter 1: Getting to Know Alexa 7


What Is This Alexa That Everyone’s Talking About (Or, Really, To)? 7


Meet your new assistant 8


Alexa’s components 9


How Alexa works 11


Where Do You Get Alexa? 12


Figuring Out Which Alexa Device You Need 12


Checking out Amazon’s Echo devices 13


Choosing an Alexa device 16


Learning What Alexa Can Do 17


Playing media 17


Communicating 18


Shopping 18


Getting help around the home 18


Getting news and information 18


Answering your questions 18


Accessing skills 19


Automating your home 19


Having fun 19


Chapter 2: Setting Up Alexa and Your Devices 21


Installing the Alexa App 21


Signing in to your Amazon account 22


Taking a tour of the Alexa app 25


Giving Alexa access to your device microphone 26


Alexa Feng Shui: Positioning Your Alexa Device 27


Adding Your Alexa Device 27


Adding your Echo device 28


Adding a third-party Alexa device 32


Personalizing Your Alexa Device 33


Creating a voice profile 33


Giving the device a fun name 34


Setting the device location 34


Setting the device time zone 35


Changing the device language 36


Changing the measurement units 36


Changing the background image if your device has a screen 37


Connecting External Speakers to Your Alexa Device 37


Connecting speakers or headphones using a cable 38


Connecting speakers or headphones via Bluetooth 39


Disconnecting paired Bluetooth speakers or headphones 40


Chapter 3: Learning Alexa Basics 43


Getting to Know Your Echo 43


Taking a closeup look at the far-field microphone 44


Pushing the Echo’s buttons 45


Getting feedback from Alexa 46


Operating the Echo touchscreen 47


Getting to Know Alexa 48


Getting Alexa’s attention 48


Keeping Alexa’s attention 49


Ending the conversation 50


Enabling Brief mode 50


Some Useful Alexa Commands 51


Everyday-info commands 51


Information requests 52


Audio commands 52


Video commands 53


Alarm and timer commands 53


Calendar, reminder, and list commands 54


Communication commands 54


Shopping commands 55


Smart-home commands 55


Part 2: Having Fun with Alexa 57


Chapter 4: Playing Media 59


Listening to Music on Alexa 60


Playing music through Alexa 60


Linking to a music provider 60


Setting up a default music provider 61


Voice commands for controlling music 63


Accessing Alexa via the Amazon Music app 68


Playing third-party music through Alexa 69


Adjusting music quality 70


Listening to Other Audio Sources on Alexa 71


Tuning in to a radio station 71


Listening to a podcast 74


Hearing an audiobook 75


Having a Kindle book read out loud 77


Streaming Mobile Device Audio through Alexa 78


Watching Video on Alexa 79


Watching a movie trailer 80


Locating and playing web videos 80


Watching Amazon’s Prime Video 81


Taking Photos with Alexa 81


Chapter 5: Communicating with Alexa 83


Managing Your Alexa Contacts List 84


Giving Alexa access to your contacts 84


Giving a contact a nickname 85


Editing contacts 86


Blocking a contact 86


Managing your profile and settings 86


Exchanging Text Messages 87


Sending a text using voice commands 87


Sending a text using the Alexa app 88


Receiving a text message 88


Making Voice or Video Calls 89


Making voice calls with voice commands 90


Making voice calls using the Alexa app 92


Making video calls with voice commands 93


Making video calls using the Alexa app 93


Connecting Alexa to your landline with an Echo Connect 94


Answering an incoming Alexa-to-Alexa call 94


Ending a call 95


Dropping In on Other Alexa Users 96


Letting folks drop in on you 96


Dropping in on someone using voice commands 97


Dropping in on someone using the Alexa app 98


Configuring global Drop In settings for your Alexa device 98


Using Your Alexa Device as an Intercom 100


Chapter 6: Using Alexa at Home 101


A Quick Word about Household Profiles 101


Shopping with Alexa 102


Enabling voice purchases 102


Getting product recommendations 103


Placing an order 103


Reordering an item 104


Ordering multiple items 104


Setting up a Voice Code for purchases 104


Check your delivery status 105


Getting delivery notifications 106


Making a donation 107


Creating Lists 107


Creating and managing lists 109


Adding and managing list items 111


Getting the Information You Need 112


Getting the weather forecast 113


Checking traffic 113


Hearing the latest news with the Flash Briefing 114


Configuring Alexa’s sports update 116


Letting Alexa Manage Your Calendar 117


Linking your calendar to Alexa 118


Setting the default calendar 119


Unlinking a calendar 119


Managing calendar events 119


Setting Alexa Alerts 121


Getting Alexa to remind you of something 121


Setting an alarm 124


Running a timer 125


Customizing your alarm sounds 127


Putting Alexa in Do Not Disturb Mode 128


Part 3: Getting More out of Your Relationship with Alexa 131


Chapter 7: Asking Alexa Questions 133


Searching for Nearby Places 134


Asking for Financial Info 134


Getting Symptoms and Other Medical Facts 135


Asking Alexa to Do the Math 135


Converting Units 136


Getting Science Answers 137


Quizzing Alexa about the Culture 138


Bugging Alexa about Books 138


Asking Linguistic Questions 139


Asking Questions about Companies 140


Asking about Dates and Times 140


For Everything Else: Querying Wikipedia 141


Chapter 8: Adding Skills to Alexa 143


Understanding What a Skill Is 143


Checking Out Amazon’s Alexa Skills Department 144


Enabling a Skill 147


Enabling a skill with a voice command 147


Enabling a skill using the Alexa app 148


Working with Skills 149


Invoking a skill 149


Viewing your enabled skills 150


Changing skill settings 151


Disabling a skill 152


Thirty Cool Alexa Skills to Try 153


Building Your Own Skill 155


Chapter 9: Making Alexa Accessible 159


Controlling Alexa If You Have a Speech Impairment 159


Making Alexa more speech accessible 160


Installing a text-to-speech app 160


Using Tap to Alexa 160


Texting without speech 162


Checking Out Alexa’s Features for the Hearing Impaired 163


Making Alexa more hearing accessible 163


Enabling Closed Captioning 165


Enabling Alexa Captioning 165


Enabling Alexa’s Features for the Vision Impaired 166


Making Alexa more vision accessible 166


Navigating with VoiceView 168


Zooming in with Screen Magnifier 170


Part 4: Controlling Your Smart Home 173


Chapter 10: Setting Up Your Smart Home 175


What’s So Smart about a Smart Home? 176


Working with smart-home devices 177


Understanding smart-home connections 178


How does Alexa fit in? 179


Do you need a smart-home hub? 179


Setting Up Your Smart-Home Devices 180


Installing a Wi-Fi smart-home device 180


Understanding Wi-Fi Simple Setup 182


Discovering smart-home devices using an Alexa skill 182


Discovering Zigbee smart-home devices 184


Managing Smart-Home Devices 185


Viewing your smart-home devices 185


Renaming a smart-home device 187


Changing the device type 188


Disabling or deleting a smart-home device 189


Working with Smart-Home Devices 189


Controlling a smart-home device 189


Working with device scenes 190


Turning smart plugs on and off 192


Working with smart lights 192


Controlling smart thermostats 193


Keeping an eye on things with smart cameras 194


Other types of smart-home gear 195


Chapter 11: Uncovering Some Smarter Smart-Home Techniques 197


Creating Device Groups 198


Creating a smart-home group 198


Controlling a smart-home group 200


Managing a smart-home group 201


Alexa in Stereo: Working with Speaker Sets 202


Creating a speaker set 203


Playing music through a speaker set 205


Streaming Music to Multiple Rooms 207


Setting up multi-room music 208


Playing multi-room music 209


Fixing multi-room music sync problems 210


Automating Alexa with Routines 211


Understanding routine actions 212


Creating a routine 212


Running a routine 214


Working with IFTTT Applets 215


Connecting your IFTTT and Amazon accounts 216


Enabling an IFTTT applet 216


Checking out some Alexa applets 218


Part 5: The Part of Tens 219


Chapter 12: Ten (Times Ten) Ridiculously Fun Alexa Tricks 221


Ten Ways to Ask Alexa to Tell a Joke 222


Ten Alexa Wordplay Tricks 222


Ten Ways to Get Alexa to Sing 223


Ten Oddball Things to Ask Alexa to Do 224


Ten Funny Questions to Ask Alexa 224


Ten Ways to Get Alexa to Tell a Story 225


Ten Ways to Get Personal with Alexa 226


Ten Movie Easter Eggs 226


Ten TV Easter Eggs 227


Ten Music Easter Eggs 228


Chapter 13: Ten Things That Can Go Wrong with Alexa (And How to Fix Them) 229


Troubleshooting 101 230


Restarting your Echo 230


Updating your Echo 230


Resetting your Echo 231


Alexa or Your Echo Device is Unresponsive 232


Your Echo Device Isn’t Using the Latest Software 233


You Can’t Connect to Your Wi-Fi Network 234


You’re Having Trouble Streaming Media 236


You’re Having Trouble Connecting a Bluetooth Device 237


You don’t see a Bluetooth device 237


You can’t pair with a Bluetooth device 238


You Ordered Something Accidentally 238


Alexa Doesn’t Understand Your Commands 240


You’re Having Trouble Making Calls 241


You Changed Your Wi-Fi Network Password 242


A Smart-Home Device Doesn’t Work Properly 243


Chapter 14: Ten Ways to Beef Up Alexa Security and Privacy 245


Make Sure Your Wi-Fi Network Is Locked Up Tight 246


Change Alexa’s Wake Word 248


Stop Alexa from Listening (And Watching) 250


Trash Sensitive Alexa Recordings 250


Configure Alexa Not to Use Your Personal Data 252


Shut Down Alexa’s Communications 254


Turn communications off 254


Revoke access to your contacts 255


Secure Your Amazon Account 255


Give your Amazon account a bulletproof password 256


Turn on Amazon’s Two-Step Verification 257


Delete Your Saved Wi-Fi Passwords 258


Revoke a Skill’s Permissions 260


Deregister Your Alexa Device 260


Index 263