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Published:
August 31, 2021

Alexa For Dummies

Overview

Make your every wish Alexa’s command with this in-depth guide to the wildly popular Amazon smart speaker 

You might be thinking, “All I have to do is plug in my Echo device and start using it!” And you’d be right. But if you really want to explore what that compact little device can do, then Alexa For Dummies is your go-to resource. This book shows you how to customize your device to respond to your requests and enhance your life. 

Alexa For Dummies takes you on a tour of all things Alexa: its capabilities, tools, settings, and skills. Go beyond the basics of playing music, calling friends, reading the news, and checking the weather. You’ll learn how to make Alexa private and secure, connect it to your smart home devices, and even make it sound like Samuel L. Jackson, if you feel like it. You can also extend its capabilities by adding new skills. 

  • Customize your device to respond to your voice 
  • Troubleshoot when a light is signaling something’s wrong 
  • Add skills to play music and audiobooks 
  • Create routines to turn on lights, adjust the thermostat, set your security alarm, and lock your doors 
  • Sync your smart devices throughout your home 
  • Use Alexa to connect to a Zoom meeting or phone call with your friends or family 

No matter which device you have—Echo, Echo Dot, Echo Show, Echo Studio, Echo Flex, Echo Loop, Echo Buds, or Echo Frames—Alexa For Dummies is the perfect companion. Ready to get started? Say “Hey, Alexa, order Alexa For Dummies!” 

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About The Author

Paul McFedries has been writing about computers and technology for nearly 30 years. He has authored more than 100 books that have sold more than four million copies worldwide.

Sample Chapters

alexa for dummies

CHEAT SHEET

Alexa isn’t difficult to set up. But after the initial startup chores are complete, perhaps the most common question people ask is, “What do I do now?” It’s a reasonable question, especially if you’re looking at an Echo, Echo Dot, or Echo Plus, which give you no hints about what your next step is supposed to be.

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Articles from
the book

Amazon Alexa isn’t the surveillance nightmare that some privacy advocates say it is, but neither should you take your privacy for granted. After all, you’ve invited a dedicated listening device into your home, a device that, moreover, sends recordings of your voice to some cloud and stores them there. Is Alexa always listening?
Alexa isn’t difficult to set up. But after the initial startup chores are complete, perhaps the most common question people ask is, “What do I do now?” It’s a reasonable question, especially if you’re looking at an Echo, Echo Dot, or Echo Plus, which give you no hints about what your next step is supposed to be.
Alexa has an extensive fun side that you can check out to lighten the mood, entertain your kids (not to mention the kid in you), or relax after a tough day. The fun things to do with Alexa and Amazon Echo are seemingly endless. This article presents ten categories of Alexa tricks, each with ten fun things to do with Amazon Alexa.
Alexa works as a smart-home controller, so it can recognize and work with multiple devices from multiple manufacturers. An Alexa device such as an Echo or Echo Spot is an example of such a controller. Devices Alexa can control (like thermostats, speakers, TVs, and so on) just have to be compatible. You must make sure you get smart-home devices that are compatible with your controller, so be sure to buy items that are Alexa compatible.
With Amazon Alexa in the house, you now can issue a voice command to order up whatever music you feel like hearing, all without moving an inch from where you are. Playing music is one of most popular Alexa skills. How to play music through Alexa The first thing you have to decide is how you want to play your music through Alexa.
If your hearing has deteriorated over the years, or if you have a hearing impairment in one or both ears, hearing Amazon Alexa’s responses and enjoying music and videos can be a challenge. Fortunately, help is at hand. Alexa has a few tools that you can configure to help or work around your hearing issues.Alexa and the Alexa app come with a few features that you can customize or turn on to work around hearing impairments: The Light Ring provides a visual indicator of the status of your Echo device.
Amazon Alexa is billed as a voice-activated personal assistant, but that “voice-activated” part is problematic if you can’t speak at all or have speech challenges. To fix that, you can take advantage of the many features offered by Alexa and the Alexa app to make Alexa devices accessible to those with speech problems.
Both your Amazon Alexa device and the Alexa app come with a few features that you can tweak or activate to work around vision problems: Alexa devices have either physical buttons you can press to adjust the volume or a volume ring. You can use the Alexa app to adjust the volume for alarms, timers, and notifications.
The Amazon Alexa equivalent of apps are called skills. Like a mobile device, Alexa can do a few things out of the box, such as playing music or audiobooks, telling you the time or the weather, and making voice or video calls. But if you want to know how to use Alexa to perform more specialized tasks, then you need to add the appropriate skills from the Amazon Alexa skills list.
Amazon Alexa is a voice service, a cloud-based software program that acts as a voice-controlled virtual personal assistant. In a nutshell, you use your voice to ask Alexa a question or give Alexa a command, and it dutifully answers you (assuming an answer exists) or carries out your request (assuming your request is possible).
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Frequently Asked Questions

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