How to Get Alexa to Read Your Emails and Tell You If “this” Message Has Arrived
On Monday, Amazon introduced its virtual assistant a new email reading feature that allows him to read a summary of your new and important messages from the past 24 hours. When this happens, you can choose to read, reply, delete, or archive these messages, all without turning on your computer.
This feature currently works exclusively with Gmail and Microsoft Outlook, Hotmail and Live. If you are using something else, then you are out of luck right now.
And if you are someone who receives many messages, like me, you can also use this function to just let you know if this email has arrived, you know, the one that you were waiting for before. Here’s how to set it up.
Connect your account
To use the email function, you must have the latest version of the Alexa app installed on your device. Once you’ve done that, hit the menu button in the top left corner of your screen (three lines stacked on top of each other) and then select Settings, followed by Email and Calendar. Click the + button to add an account, then follow the onscreen instructions to link your email account to your Echo.
Note that the feature is rolling out slowly, so if you see Calendar here and not Email and Calendar, make sure you have the latest version of the app installed and wait a few days.
How to use it
Once you have connected your email account, you can use this feature in several ways. Read My Email will launch a summary of the emails you’ve received in the last 24 hours.
If you are waiting for a letter from a specific person, you can ask, “Alexa, did I receive an email from [contact]?” If that email hasn’t arrived yet, Alexa will offer to set up a one-time notification for you so she can let you know when that precious email actually arrives.
As someone who receives literally hundreds of emails a day, having Alexa read all of my emails to me is pretty much not a start. For someone like my dad, who gets three or four emails a day and rarely opens his computer, this feature makes a lot more sense. This feature also makes sense for those who might have trouble viewing emails or typing replies.
If you live with others, everyone in the family connects their own email accounts and controls access with a personalized voice PIN. And you obviously want to make sure you don’t plug this into an Echo where someone else might be spying on your messages (or eavesdropping on them being read to you).
However, “Alexa, did I receive an email from [contact]?” peculiarity? I’m going to use this Each one. Lonely. Day.