Now Use Any Alexa Skill Without Enabling It First
You no longer have to manually enable Alexa skills before you use them. Just tell Alexa to open a new skill and it will find, enable and open it with a single command.
Skills have done to Alexa what third-party
applications did to mobile devices a few years ago. They are part of what give
Alexa-enabled speakers nearly endless possibilities and a very bright future.
Amazon realizes this and has been
making strides to make skills a priority, not only by making it easier for
developers to create their own skills, but by also making them more accessible
to users. For instance, Amazon has made its own skill to help users discover
new skills.
Amazon has now gone one step
further by removing some of the friction of finding and using new skills. You
no longer need to enable skills before you use them.
How To Use Any Skill With Alexa
Much like applications on your
phone, you have always had to enable skills manually. This is a stark contrast
to third-party services on the Google Home, which all work out of the box, no
setup or enabling required.
Originally, to enable a skill on an
Alexa-enabled speaker, you had to head over to alexa.amazon.com from a web
browser or open the Alexa app on an iOS or Android device, open the Skills menu
and dig through the catalog until you find a skill you wanted to try. Then
you'd need to open the skill page and tap the yellow button that said Enable.
For a device almost totally
controlled by voice, this process felt disjointed and jarring, until June 2016,
when Amazon made it possible to enable skills using your voice. You could say,
"Alexa, enable Domino's" or "Alexa, enable LIFX."
Last week, Amazon made it even
easier to use skills by effectively removing the enable process altogether. All
you need to do to use a skill now is say, "Alexa, open [skill name]."
That sounds like a subtle, maybe
even insubstantial difference. However, it removes an entire step from the
process -- or rather, it condenses two steps into one. Alexa will find the
skill, enable and open it, all with a single command.
You can't ask a skill something
complex the first time you want to use it. Chances are, Alexa won't find the
skill or it will ignore your additional request. For instance, you manually
disable the ‘The Bartender’ skill and then try to say, "Alexa, ask The
Bartender what's in an old-fashioned." It will find the skill and open it, but completely ignore the part about the old-fashioned.
After you've used a skill once,
however, it will be enabled on your account and you can use any of its
invocations.
If a skill requires you to log in
to connect your account, such as with the Fitbit or Starbucks skills, you still
need to make your way to the page for that skill in the Alexa app and log in.
Otherwise, you can use any available skills instantly.
Also, if there happen to be a few
skills with similar names, Alexa will let you choose which one you want to
open. For instance, if you say, "Alexa, open Ambient Noise," Alexa
will ask if you want Rain Sounds, Thunderstorm Sounds or Ocean Sounds.
Unfortunately, this doesn't address
one of the problems that came to light when Amazon added the ability to enable
skills by voice: you still need to know the name of a skill or what you're
looking for to be able to use it. So while this is a step in the right
direction for getting more people to use skills, it still means you'll probably
spend your time in the Alexa app looking for new skills rather than blurting
out random skills to try.
Post a Comment