Best Alexa Skills to Add to Your Amazon Echo

You can add many features to your Amazon Echo with little apps that Amazon calls “Alexa Skills”. Most of them are trash. We’ve carefully analyzed this mess to find the most useful ones.

If you’ve never added a skill to your echo, this is pretty straightforward. Open the Alexa app on your phone, click the menu button on the left and select Skills from the list. Here you can find the names of the skills and activate them on your phone. Alternatively, you can view Alexa’s Skills on the Amazon site here . Log in with the same account you connected to your Echo and you will be able to remotely enable the Skills we referenced below.

Control your entire home with your voice with these smart home skills

The Echo is useful on its own , but it’s really effective if you have other smart home devices like plugged in lights, an internet-connected home theater, or even just a Chromecast. Depending on your home, you can control your light, TV, thermostat, or even get information about your car. Here are some of the most useful smart home skills that Alexa has to offer:

• Philips Hue : This skill allows you to turn Philips Hue lamps on and off, dim and group multiple lights into Scenes that you can control with a single command. He can be a little picky about the names of the lights, so be sure to give them unique labels that aren’t easy to confuse.
• WeMo : Belkin’s Wemo product line includes smart gadgets like CCTV cameras , but most of their devices are switches. Alexa’s skill can only control the last group, but it’s still very handy. If you have a WeMo plug , Insight switch , or light switch , you can turn them on and off with a voice command.

• Nest : If you have a Nest thermostat , you can adjust the temperature from the comfort of your couch. Ask Alexa to increase or decrease the temperature, or set a specific temperature.

• Logitech Harmony : Logitech’s versatile smart remotes are popular for a reason . Thanks to Alexa Skill, you don’t even need a remote. Just tell Alexa to turn on your TV, launch the Netflix app, change channels, or turn off your entire entertainment system.

• Automatic : The automatic car adapter allows you to track a ton of useful information about your vehicle . Alexa Skill lets you ask where you left your car, how long you drove in the last week, and, perhaps most useful, if you need to refuel. At the very least, it’s helpful to know if you need to make a stopover on your way to work.

Alexa’s smart home skills are some of the best it has to offer, but of course you need to buy other gadgets to get the most out of them. If you’ve bought an Echo but are still unsure about smart home gadgets, this is a great way to get started.

Ride with Uber and Lyft

Ride-sharing services Uber and Lyft are convenient ways of getting around , you already know that. Both companies offer the Alexa skill, so you can order a taxi without touching your phone. While they both work pretty well, there are a few key differences between the two.

Uber Alexa Skill allows you to request your preferred ride type on Uber (UberX, UberBlack, UberSUV, UberXL, or UberSelect) and send the driver to your default pickup location. However, it does not allow you to enter a destination. This may affect the willingness of the Uber driver to pick you up, but if you are in a densely populated area, you can probably easily delay someone.

On the other hand, Lyft’s Alexa Skill is slightly more reliable. You can specify your home and work so that Lyft can at least tell the driver where you are headed on your way to work. Unfortunately, it cannot travel in other directions, but you can still call taxis that are ready to go wherever you need to. You can also rate drivers, ask where you are driving, or ask how long it will take to get to work.

Find your lost phone with TrackR

Losing your phone is stressful enough to trigger a panic attack. Apple and Google have their own ways to help you find your phone if you lost it when you were away , but if you just lost it between the couch cushions, TrackR is much easier. First, you need to install the TrackR app on your phone . After configuring the application, you can ask Alexa to execute two useful commands:

• Alexa, ask TrackR to find my phone. Alexa will respond with your phone address if it can determine your location.
• Alexa, ask TrackR to call me on the phone. This will make your phone play a loud ringtone even if it is silent.

The last command is very useful if you are at home and have forgotten where you put your phone. It would be nice if Apple or Google created Alexa Skills for their own phone finder services, but until they do, TrackR is the most user-friendly.

7 Minute Workout Gives You A Guided Fitness Program

While most of the health and fitness skills Alex has to offer are gimmicks at best, 7-Minute Workout managed to surprise me. Just say “Alexa, start your 7 minute workout,” and the Skill will guide you through a short routine that you can do at home. It guides you through workouts such as push-ups, squats or ski jumping. Between each exercise, Alexa will pause and wait for you to tell her you’re ready.

If you are unsure of how to do a particular exercise, you can ask for help. The Skill will then give you a verbal description of the moves. If you still don’t know what to do, you can open the Alexa app on your phone, where you will find images and descriptions to help you know what to do. For beginners, this is a convenient way to learn the exercises and get motivated to train every day. If you have a more advanced workout program, you can also tap into skills like Fitbit to ask Alexa like how many steps you took or how you slept last night.

Cook with my chef and all the recipes

Alexa is great at helping out in the kitchen by setting timers, but skills like My Chef and All Recipes make her that much more useful while you cook. My Chef works with the Chefling mobile app to manage the contents of your pantry, add items to your shopping list, and find recipes based on what you have. You can ask My Chef questions such as “Is the expiration date?” or “What kind of meat do I have?” to understand what you should cook tonight. He can also read out step-by-step recipes while you cook.

Of course, My Chef takes a lot of effort to be useful. If you don’t feel like tracking down every item in your pantry carefully, you can use All Recipes instead. With this Skill, you can ask questions such as “What can I make with chicken and Parmesan cheese?” to get suitable recipes. You can also ask Alexa to read reviews of the recipes found. If you find something that you like, you can add it to your favorites.

Build your own powerful teams with IFTTT

These are some of the most useful skills Alexa has to offer, but we also found that a lot of big names were missing. In our quest for skills, we noticed that some of our favorite to-do list apps, recipe managers, and productivity apps are missing entirely. Fortunately, IFTTT is looking to fill many of these gaps.

IFTTT is not technically an Alexa skill, but IFTTT has an Alexa channel that you can use to create your own custom commands. You can use it to add things to your Google Calendar , submit your to-do items to Todoist, or export your shopping list to Evernote . The IFTTT Alexa channel offers a lot of flexibility if you’re willing to spend some time customizing your own applets. If you can’t find what you’re looking for with official Alexa skills, IFTTT should be your next stop.

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