Alexa In Your Life
What are Alexa Skills?
Plus, how do you find good ones, and how do you enable & use them?
So you’ve had your Alexa for a while now. Maybe got one as a gift over Christmas break. Do you find yourself asking, “Alexa, what else can I do with you?”
This usually happens after you’ve exhausted Alexa’s basic built-in features, weather, clock, alarm, reminder, shopping list, etc. If you haven’t, go read my post on that first!
But Alexa is awesome at all sorts of other things! There are 25 thousand skills in the Alexa Skill Store, made by third party developers. How can you harness their power for your purposes?
#1 — What are Skills?
First, it’s helpful to understand what Skills are.
“Skills” are to Alexa/Echo what “apps” are to smart phones, and they’re called skills because there’s an Alexa-as-a-person metaphor that extends through the whole process. To get new functions, you “enable a new skill for Alexa”, so she’ll know how to do it.
- Like apps, they’re made by all sorts of people, for all sorts of purposes, and they vary wildly in quality.
- Like apps, there are lots of great ones, but there are many times more that are — excuse my French — pretty trash, and it can be hard to tell the difference at first.
- Like apps, “what’s a good app?” is answered differently by different people, which is why I think it’s important to find apps that work for you.
- Like apps, there are diamonds in the rough, if you are willing to sort through some chaff.
Lastly, Skills are (generally) not made by Amazon’s Alexa team, which, means they get creative and wacky to help you do all sorts of odd things. [1]
#2 — How do I find good ones?
Skills are as diverse as apps. Out of the more than 25 thousand Skills in the store, there are probably only a handful that are the right ones for you. The voice-powered revolution is only just starting, but there’s already so much you can get from skills. I have 3 ways I tend to find skills.
Method 1: Ask your friends
Sometimes you don’t find skills, skills find you. I happen to work with people who think about Alexa all the time, so sometimes I catch Skill recommendations on the wing.
“Have you heard about that Gordon Ramsay Skill that just has him insult your food?”
“What? No, that’s awesome. I’m enabling that tonight.”
If you have the name of a skill, congratulations, that’s all you need to get it! Skip straight to #3 in this article, and I’ll tell you how to enable and disable Skills. (Also, if you’re excited about Gordon Ramsay insulting your food, go on ahead and play with it. I’ll wait. 🙂) [2]
If you don’t have the name of a Skill ringing in your head, though, you can find one!
Method 2: Digging through “best of” lists
If your first instinct for finding skills was to get recommendations from the internet, you’re not alone! Any search term like best alexa skills or most useful alexa skills will get you lots and lots of other people’s lists.
In a odd way, I love-hate these lists. On one hand, they have some good recommendations, but on the other, they include lots that aren’t for me, and by their nature, are not exhaustive. I suspect that a lot of this lists gravitate towards pairing with specific products that are exciting (and I don’t own, like expensive light bulbs, thermostats, or TVs) or are just way too generic. Or maybe I just don’t like what other people like. 😛 [3] All the same, here are two good ones!
- 50 most useful Alexa skills (CNET)
- Guidemaster: Everything Amazon’s Alexa can do, plus the best skills to enable (Arstechnica)
Method 3: Diving into the skill store
By far, this is how most people find skills they love.
Let me say that again:
People generally find good skills by finding them in the Alexa Skill store.
You can find the Skill store on your Alexa app and on the web, on the Amazon website. The app lets you browse, but it doesn’t show you anything but the name and image of the Skill, so it’s hard to know if you want it. Using the website is better! First, this is a screenshot of the Alexa Skills portal, and I’ve marked two entry points, Categories and Search. (The rest of the page is full of.. really random recommendations.)
The Categories, listed on the left, are a fun way to browse, but like apps, Skills can be hard to categorize. Some concepts don’t fit well into categories, so you’ll never find them at the top of the category lists.
If you have ideas of what you want your Alexa to do, try searching for it! For example, if you like listening to talk radio, typing in “Talk Radio” gets you a couple results (196, right now, to be exact). On the right, you’ll see some information about the skill, and its customer ratings.
That’s it! If you’ve found a skill that’s sounds like it might be fun, let’s enable it.
Pro Tip: Anytime you see a list of Skills on the Amazon website, switch to “Sort by Avg Customer Review” to get a slightly different list. “Featured” is default, and nobody but Amazon knows how Amazon decides what’s featured! 🤔 Average Customer Review will sometimes dig up some community-driven gems. 👯
#3 — How do you enable and use a new skill?
There are two ways to enable a skill, and I’ll start with the less common, but cooler one first!
Method 1: Enable by voice ✨🗣
This is as easy as it sounds. If you know the name of a skill, you can say “Alexa, enable {Conservative Talk Radio}.” For a lot of skills, you don’t have to explicitly enable it to get it to work. “Alexa, open {Progressive Talk Radio}” will work as well.
When this works, skills are easier to get than apps are! There’s no website to go to. No magical button you need to click. Nothing you need to install or download.
Alexa-wrangling tip: If voice-enabling doesn’t immediately work, try saying “Alexa, enable {Conservative Talk Radio} Skill.” It’s more of a mouthful, but we’ve found it more reliable.
Method 2: Enable from store 🛒
If you’re seeing a skill in the store, there’s a prominent Enable button on the right.
When I’m searching for skills in the store, sometimes I’ll enable it from within the store, and then talk to my Alexa, “Alexa, open Learn Something Radio.” as I do it. The nicest thing about doing this through the store is that you will then have the skill’s “Instruction Manual” right in front of you.
Disabling Skills
You might have guessed this. “Alexa, disable the {Gordon Ramsay} skill” will do the job.
If you’re in a cleaning up mood, you can also find them all listed under your skills in your Alexa app, and you can disable them in sequence. 🔥🔥🔥
Becoming a skill power user 💪
Most skills will teach you how to use them by talking to you, but if not, the Skill’s Description will usually list everything you can say.
Note, some skills have a steep learning curve, which, honestly, might mean they’re not fun to use. If a skill’s Description lists a bunch of long sentences you’re supposed to say out loud, it’s probably not a very good skill. 😟 My advice is that if you’re struggling to remember what you’re supposed to say to a Skill to get it to do something, it’ll probably never get better. Try another skill.
That’s it, have fun!
That’s all I have on this subject, thanks for reading to the end! How do you find Skills? Do you have any favorites that the Best Of lists have overlooked? Comment below or let me know at joy@subcast.com.
Summary
- Skills are as diverse as mobile apps.
- Find Skills by word-of-mouth, lists on the internet, and diving in the store
- Enable them verbally or from the store, and talk to them to see if they’re good!
I’m working at Subcast, where we’re building smart radio on Alexa, to bring the best radio talk shows and podcasts into your life. If you want to to listen to shows that go deeper than your Flash Briefings, check us out at subcast.com.
Footnotes
[1] For example, if you want to set a timer with built-in Alexa, you just say “Alexa, set a timer for…” However, if you want to set a timer with a third-party skill that has a feature you like — say it sings to you instead of playing an alarm — you’ll have to say “Alexa, ask Magical Mystery Timer to set a timer for…” (Sorry Beatles fans, I just made up Magical Mystery Timer, but you could definitely build it if you’re a developer!). What a mouthful.
[2] h/t Ground Control, we‘re fans.
[3] My lukewarm review of “Best Alexa Skills” lists is perhaps unsurprising. If you think about searching for “best iPhone apps” 10 years ago, you’d also get a hodgepodge of generic, unrelated things that are hit-or-miss. I suspect that as more skills get published, and Skills overall get better, people will be able to make better “best of” lists.
