Bought Your First Amazon Alexa? Here’s How to Set it Up

By An Amazon Echo device with Alexa is designed to make your life easy. But before you begin, here are the all-important steps to get started .
The era of intelligent dwelling assistants is well and sincerely hera. Do you want to switch your lights on and off with a voice command ? Do you want a detail song played when the mood hits you ? Or do you precisely like showing off illusion technical school to your friends ? then you will credibly enjoy buying an Alexa from Amazon.

I have ferociously resisted buying an Alexa for a long time because of privacy and security concerns. But part of me still wanted to try one out. When my boss here at GroovyPost offered to pay half if I wrote some Alexa articles for him, my resistance ultimately crumbled. Yes, my self-control is that solid .

Set Up Your Amazon Alexa For The First Time With a Few Easy Clicks

I was identical pleasantly surprised by how elementary it was to set up Alexa. I imagined it to be hours reading a manual, hunting through the Amazon web site, having back-and-forth exchanges with customer subscribe, and sol on. In the end, it amounted to going to one page, clicking what I wanted, then talking to it for the first time. flush idiots can use it ! I was a bit taken aback by the fact that it is not battery-operated like a smartphone or pad. You must always keep the plug in the socket for it to work. If you take the plug out, then it ’ sulfur dead. Although this is not a big thing for me, it might annoy some people that it has to be continually charged. You besides need to find a desirable location for it near a spare ballyhoo socket.

Delving Into The Alexa Settings

Let ’ s take a search at the settings, and you will see how absurdly simple it is to set up Alexa for the first clock .

Put In The Plug & Watch Alexa Go Orange

Take the Alexa out of the box, put in the cable, then plug it in. The Alexa will immediately start flashing blue. Wait till the bluing unaccented disappears and is replaced by an orange flash clean. orange means it ’ s ready to go .

Go To The Alexa Settings Page On Amazon

now go to alexa.amazon.com, which is the mise en scene page. If you have an Amazon account outside the US, going to that page will mechanically redirect you to the page version for your own nation. On the page, you will see your registered devices ( for exercise, if you have a Firestick ). My Echo is already registered, but I will deregister it so I can show you how to set it up. first gear, snap on set up a new device .

Choose Your Device

Amazon presently has three Alexa models and a portable radio speaker. Choose which model you want to register to your Amazon account. I have the Echo Dot so I clicked on that one. If you haven ’ metric ton switched Alexa on even, do that, then click Continue .

Find The Alexa Wifi Network

The following dance step is to connect your Alexa to its network. Go to your wireless local area network settings on your calculator and look for “ Amazon-ATE. ” then choose it. This naturally will disconnect you from your regular wireless local area network network, but things will calm keep work. When you have connected to the network, and Amazon says the apparatus is now dispatch, you can reconnect to your even wireless local area network network .

Set Up The Various Features

now that you have Alexa all set up and ready to go, let ’ s see some of the best features you can now set up .

Have The News Read To You

I am a moment of a newsworthiness addict, so this one is specially good for me. You can choose news sources and then say to Alexa, “ Alexa, tell me the news. ” It will then give you the sound recording of either a radio place ( I have the BBC World Service ) or a television station ( if you choose something like CNN ). Don ’ deoxythymidine monophosphate choose excessively many news sources, though, because you can ’ thyroxine ask for the newsworthiness from one place only. You can ’ t say, for example, “ tell me the news from CNN. ” It will start with CNN, but then it will keep going with the other news sources you chose. In that site, you would have to say : “ Alexa, stop the newsworthiness, ” to get it to shut up .

Get Woken Up With The Alarm Clock

To set an alarm clock, you can either specify a especial time – “ Alexa, wake me at 8:00 am ”. Or you can say something like, “ wake me in three hours. ” It will give you confirmation. In the Alexa settings, you can choose what dismay tone you want. There are some very courteous ones there .

Be Given Important Reminders

If you have a swiss cheese memory like I do, you may need person to prod you with reminders. sol say you need to make a telephone call late, you could say, “ Alexa, remind me at 3 phase modulation to call my mother. ”

Specify a “Do Not Disturb” Period

If you don ’ t say the wake word ( “ Alexa ” ), you will not likely activate the device. however, you are able to specify a “ Do not Disturb ” period where Alexa is muzzled. just click “ edit ” in the bottom left to change the times.

Tell Alexa To Play Your Music

This one is credibly the best feature of all, but what sucks is that you need to have a premium subscription to use most of the music services. so I went ahead and upgraded to a Spotify Premium subscription. If you have a choose music service, you can specify it as the default serve. I can immediately lie in seam, ask Alexa the time, tell it to set an dismay, then finally tell it to play relaxing music. “ Alexa, play relaxing music ” for anything general, or you can obviously tell it to play something specific. On Spotify, if you have a agio subscription, you can transfer your music play between devices. This includes Alexa. thus if you are listening on your laptop or tablet, you can transfer it over to Alexa .

Ask Alexa For Your Daily Schedule

If you have your Google Calendar, iCloud Calendar, or Outlook Calendar attached to Alexa, you can ask for your agenda. You can besides tell it to add a raw event to your calendar. It doesn ’ t do a very estimable job pronouncing alien words and names, though .

Add Your Location & Language

Since Amazon already has your address for sending your orders, you may a well add it to Alexa. then you can ask it for traffic updates when you need to travel somewhere. then add your timezone. This is all-important for alarms and reminders. If you want to change your “ wake word ” ( to activate Alexa ), then you can do it here angstrom well. But I am inclined to leave it the room it is. finally, change the language to the one you want. Since I have a german bill, it put it in german, but I want Alexa to be in English. here ’ sulfur where things get a morsel eldritch. It told me that if I changed the linguistic process on a german account to English, I would have problems ordering things on Amazon if I spoke the order to Alexa. Best news my wife has ever heard .

Control Your Amazon Fire Stick

If you have an Amazon Fire Stick remote master for Prime ( as we do ), you can now use Alexa to play the programs and movies you want to watch. I have yet to test this, but it is obviously just a case of saying, “ Alexa, watch ‘ name of the program here. ‘ ” We are improbable to use it because our Fire Stick is already voice-activated .

Ask It Questions

just like Siri and Google search on your smartphone, you can ask Alexa questions that will look up for you. I asked it the start go steady of the World Cup, the get down meter of Prince Harry ’ randomness marry, who the current US Secretary of State is, and then on. 100 % accuracy .

Have An Audible Audiobook Or Kindle Book Read To You

If you buy a distribute of audible audiobooks or Kindle eBooks, you can now have Alexa read them to you. precisely tell it the title of the reserve, and it will start reading from where you left off before, using its Whispersync engineering. pronunciation is truly good .

Ask It For The Weather

finally, do you want to know if you need to take an umbrella with you when you go out ? then provided you have given Alexa your location, you can ask it for the weather today. Make sure you switch on the settings whether you want fahrenheit temperatures or Celsius.

Conclusion

I am impress with Alexa, and I will write more Alexa-themed articles during June. If you don ’ metric ton already have an Alexa, I strongly recommend you buy an Echo Dot. 4th-gen Echo Dots are only $ 50. There ’ mho evening a Kid ’ south Edition.