The smart Echo loudspeaker series from Amazon is designed to make your everyday life easier. We’ll give you the best tips to help you get the most out of the features.
Set up all Amazon Echo speakers via the Alexa app on your phone and connect them to your local wireless network. The control then takes place via voice command. You can also make many adjustments in the Alexa app on your mobile device. How to get the most out of your Amazon Echo.
Deleting voice command history
All of your voice commands addressed to Alexa are automatically stored by the echo speakers. In this way, Amazon wants to analyse your personal user behaviour and continue to improve voice control. If you do not want to do this, you can delete individual voice commands as well as the complete history.
To remove individual voice commands, open the Alexa app on your phone and tap the gear icon at the bottom right to open the settings. You will then find the entry “History” under the heading “Alexa Account”. All stored voice commands are listed here. Touch the desired command, and then touch the “Delete Voice Recording” option. You can also listen to the voice recording again and answer “Did Alexa do what you wanted” with “Yes” or “No”.
If you want to delete not only individual commands but the complete history, it is best to do this on your PC. Open the Amazon website in your browser, log in with your access data and go to “My content and devices” under “My account”. Switch to the “My Devices” tab, select your Amazon Echo speaker, and select “Manage Voice Records” in the “Device Actions” option. Confirm the process with the “Delete” button.
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Combining Several Commands in a Routine
In the Alexa app, you can perform multiple actions at once with just one command. You must create a “routine” for this. You will find the corresponding option in the settings under the heading “Alexa account”. Tap the blue plus sign to create a new routine. Then define the voice command with which you want to start the routine – for example, “Alexa, good morning”. To do this, touch the plus symbol next to the option “If the following happens” and then enter the desired command. Then define the actions Alexa should perform. Here you can select several actions from the categories “Alexa says”, “Volume”, “Music”, “News”, “Smart Home”, “Traffic” and “Weather” and add them to the routine. In the morning you can read the weather report, the latest news and Alexa’s traffic jam reports. With the appropriate compatible Smart Home devices, Alexa also turns on your light, starts the coffee machine or sends off the vacuum cleaner robot.
The Amazon voice control Alexa used in Echo recognizes your voice commands when you use the keyword “Alexa” and transmits your commands to the Amazon servers. There they are processed and the response is sent back to Echo. You can also give the voice control a different name, for example, if a real Alexa or Alex lives in your household. To do this, open the Alexa app on your smartphone and then the settings. Under the device name of your echo, you will find the option “Activation word”. Here you can select from the variants “Alexa”, “Amazon”, “Echo” and “Computer”.
Prevent unwanted language purchases
Also, Amazon offers the possibility that you can conveniently add products to your Amazon shopping cart by voice command and buy them immediately.
To avoid unwanted purchases by family members and others, you can set a four-digit PIN in the Alexa app. With this you must then confirm all language purchases additionally. To do this, open the settings in the Alexa app and go to “Language Shopping”. Then enter a four-digit code and then press “Save Changes”.
If you still find the speech purchase too risky, you can completely deactivate the function using the corresponding slider in the Alexa app under “Settings -> Speech purchase”. But be careful: You, or anyone else in the listening area of your Amazon Echo speaker, can still add goods to your Amazon shopping cart by voice command, even if speech shopping is turned off. So if you later want to buy something from Amazon and complete the order without first checking the complete shopping basket, it can happen that you accidentally buy a product that you do not want to have. So before every Amazon purchase, check what’s in your Amazon shopping cart.
If you also want to retrieve or enter appointments by voice command to your echo loudspeaker, the Alexa app offers the possibility to create a link to your Outlook, iCloud or Google calendar. To do this, open the Alexa app on your smartphone and then the settings. Scroll to “Calendar” and then select either “Google”, “Microsoft” or “Apple”. Afterwards, you have to log in with your respective access data and grant the Alexa-App the requested access rights.