This chapter is from the book
This chapter is from the book
This chapter is from the book
Working with Alexa’s Skills
Alexa can get a lot smarter and a lot more useful when you add new skills to her repertoire. A skill for Alexa is like an app on your smartphone; an application that enables Alexa to perform a specific task based on a given voice command. You install skills when you want Alexa to be able to do more than she does out of the box.
Amazon offers more than 10,000 skills you can add to your Alexa. There are skills for playing soothing nature sounds (Ambient Noise), reading children’s stories (Short Bedtime Story), and playing trivia games (Test My Trivia). There are skills that tell you how to prepare various cocktails (The Bartender), concoct a recipe from whatever you currently have in the fridge (Best Recipes), and order pizza from Domino’s (Domino’s Pizza) or Pizza Hut (Pizza Hut). There’s even a skill that lets Alexa serve as a personal alert system if you’re in trouble (Ask My Buddy).
Even more useful are those skills that let Alexa connect to other applications and devices. For example, the Fitbit skill connects your Fitbit personal activity tracker to Alexa and lets you query Alexa on various statistics gathered by your Fitbit device. And, not surprisingly, there are a ton of skills available when you connect your smart home devices to Alexa.
Find a Skill
Finding a new skill is as easy as browsing or searching for it from within the Alexa app.
From within the Alexa app on your smartphone, tap the Menu button to display the left navigation panel.
Tap Skills to display the All Skills screen.
New and recommended skills are displayed first. Scroll down to view more skills, and scroll left and right through any section to view all the skills of that type.
To search for a skill, enter a short description (or the skill’s name, if you know it) into the search box at the top of the screen, and then tap the Search (magnifying glass) button.
To browse through skills by category, tap Categories.
Tap the category you want to view.
Skills within that category are now listed, newest first. Scroll down to view more.
To change how skills are displayed, tap the Sort By list.
Tap to sort by Relevance, Avg. Customer Rating, or Release Date (the default).
Add a Skill to Alexa
Adding a skill to Alexa is as easy as tapping a button and then following any additional onscreen instructions. You can add an unlimited number of skills to Alexa—and if you end up not using a skill, it’s no big deal.
- Use any of the methods discussed in the previous task to find the skill you want to add.
- Tap the Enable button.
- The skill is now enabled. Scroll down to read more about this skill, including suggested voice commands.
