Amazon / WIRED

Voice assistants such as Alexa, Google Assistant and Apple’s Siri are capable of performing more tasks than you might think, especially if you haven’t checked in with them for a while. Amazon calls these third-party apps ‘skills’, and there are now around 90,000 available in the Alexa Skills store. In 2018, developers were publishing an average of 85 skills per day.

Plenty of these skills are completely rubbish but there’s more to Alexa than just checking the weather, turning on the lights and ordering takeaway food. Whether you have an Echo speaker, or an Alexa-enabled device, we’ve picked some of the best skills you should try out. To find new features, open the skills store in the Alexa app or simply say the correct voice command to auto-enable them.

Get a hand in the kitchen

Not only can Alexa create shopping lists, search for recipes and set timers, it can convert units of measurements: you can ask it to convert two cups to milliliters, or how much a cup of flour weighs. If you’re counting calories, it can let you know much you’re taking in – at least for certain items. Try saying, “Alexa, how many calories are in a chicken breast?”, for example. Once you’re done cooking, you might want to know what wine to best pair your meal with. There are various apps that make it possible to log the food you eat and drinks you have. Just tell Alexa about your meals on the day.

Create a smart home routine

Amazon’s Routines feature allows you to program Alexa to perform certain actions by speaking a single command. “Alexa, goodnight”, for example, could turn off your lights, TV and downstairs heating system. You could create a separate routine for the morning if you want Alexa to turn on the lights, read you the day’s weather forecast and then start your favourite playlist. To set up a new routine, tap Routines in the Alexa app and choose the “When this happens” button to enter the phrase and associated actions.

Get a personal fitness trainer

Alexa can take you through a seven-minute workout or five-minute plank. If you’re not sure how to do the exercises, the app on your phone will show pictures. Connect Alexa with Fitbit and it will be able to read out the data from your tracker, including the number of steps taken, distance covered, last logged weight, and calories burned. There is a long list of phrases that Alexa will understand as long as they start with “Alexa, ask Fitbit…”. You can ask for stats from today, yesterday or any specific day of the week.

Hear a bedtime story

If you’d like Alexa to read you or your kids a story, there are endless integrations. Amazon Storytime, for instance, generates a random story for children aged 5-12. Story Teller lets you ask for a specific genre such as sci-fi, fantasy or ‘scary’. There are even interactive tales: Crazy Stories or Story Maker will ask a number of questions or request prompt words to build the story. There are various other features for kids to entertain them, including the Science Buddy quiz or spelling tests.

Find your phone

If you sign up for a TrackR account and download the app onto your iOS or Android smartphone, the feature can be connected to Amazon. Ask Alexa to ring your phone and the device will play at full volume, even if it is in silent mode. This feature also works for a missing wallet or keys – as long as they have a TrackR Bluetooth tag attached to them.

Keep your home secure

Alexa Guard listens for glass breaking or the sound of alarms coming from smoke detectors when you’re away from home. The voice assistant will send you an alert with an audio clip for review. The feature can also make it seem like you’re at home by turning on connected lights. Once you’ve enabled the feature in the app’s setting, say “Alexa, I’m leaving” to activate the guard. When it comes to the other type of security, McAfee has partnered with Amazon. People with a McAfee router can ask how many devices are on their home network, run scans on the network for vulnerabilities, or select time controls for children accessing the internet.

Let Alexa know your music taste

You can stream music from a variety of services with voice commands, including Spotify, Amazon Music, Apple Music, iHeartRadio, and Pandora, and within each, create and play playlists. Playlists can even be picked based on activities such as workouts. Amazon Music users can ask Alexa to follow an artist and get notified whenever they drop new music, either on the mobile app or with a yellow light ring on an Amazon Echo. If you like or dislike a song, just let Alexa know and it will remember for future requests.

Clean your flat

Alexa can clean your home. Well, kind of. A number of robot vacuums, from Samsung, iRobot, Neato and Shark, can be commanded to start and stop cleaning using Alexa. It is also possible to create a chore chart in family households that might help avoid any arguments. Alexa can be paired with Dyson’s Wi-Fi connected air purifier too and switched on and off by voice command.

Say thank you in Français

Amazon is currently working on real-time translation for Alexa, but in the meantime you can add the Translated skill and have it translate short sentences from English into one of 37 languages. If you want to listen to the translation again just ask the assistant to slow down or repeat. It’s not just languages, either. Have you ever wondered why your cat rubs her tail against your legs or why it demands attention while you’re working on the laptop? Cat Translator can explain the mysteries of weird cat behaviour.

Ask Alexa what it can do

If Alexa can’t do something out of the box, there is probably a skill for it. And Amazon has introduced a neat Alexa skill, called Skill Finder, that helps you look for those skills: You can ask, “Alexa, what are your new skills?” to find integrations that you might not know about. It is also possible to search for skills by category by asking, “Alexa, tell Skill Finder to list the top skills in the health category”. If you’re still out of luck, there is a workaround to connect Alexa to unsupported devices, apps and websites: IFTTT (If This Then That) publishes various free step-by-step guides, called recipes, to programming skills.

Have I been pwned?

It seems like hardly a month goes by without a new data breach being announced. ‘;–have I been pwned? is a website that allows you to check if your email address has been part of any major data breaches. Say, “Alexa, open have I been poned?” to add the skill and receive a verbal report. It is probably quicker and easier to type long email address on the website instead of using voice command.

What can Alexa do? The best Alexa skills and commands – Wired.co.uk