Alexa’s latest update brings reminders, email screening

Alexa gets a plethora of new features designed to make your life even easier. Image: Amazon via AFP Relaxnews

More of the Alexa features and skills that Amazon announced back in September concerning schedules and reminders are arriving on Echo devices.

Though Alexa won’t be able to conduct phone conversations for you, the voice assistant is now able to place calls on your behalf thanks to one of a series of new features arriving on Echo devices this week.

In fact, this Echo update is going to automate a lot of those mundane daily activities that you don’t even realize take energy. Instead of relying on yourself to remember to take the trash out when you get home, Alexa can remind you. All you have to do to enable these reminders is to tell Alexa to remind you of something at a certain time, like taking the chicken out of the fridge before you leave home. When you come back home, Alexa will vocally remind you of the task and also send a notification to your phone in case you’re not close enough to hear. Specific locations can be programmed into the Alexa app, giving you more possibilities for scheduling reminders.

Additionally, Alexa will be able to understand how to schedule time between tasks before executing each. You could ask Alexa to turn the lights on 10 minutes after you wake up which is possible thanks to Alexa’s ability to detect motion. Also, if you schedule something like dinner, Alexa can send out alerts to everyone who is involved in the activity.

Apart from the new reminder and routine functionalities, Alexa will be updated to help you find the nearest location of a particular place you’re looking for, like a Starbucks, and screen your emails to let you know if you have anything new in your inbox in general or from a certain sender. These features are rolling out now for the United States market, but elsewhere over the next couple weeks.

The other features in the release that have yet to come out are still on their way; it appears that new features will be coming out in waves as the Alexa whispering function that is also on this list came out in October. Ensure to keep your Echo devices up-to-date so you can get the most out of them. JB

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