Alexa Skills: The best free functions for Amazon Echo & Co.

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“Alexa, turn on the light in the bedroom!” – “Alexa, is my BMW locked?” – “Alexa, order my favorite pizza!”: With Amazon’s voice assistant, many users can navigate their everyday lives more easily. Alexa skills are often required for this to work. They are like mini apps for smart speakers that activate certain functions. Several thousand of the small programs are now available, for example from the areas of smart home, news, education, sports, music, film & television and connected cars. COMPUTER BILD shows the best Alexa skills in the photo gallery below and tells you how to get there. An overview of which smart speakers Amazon Alexa have on board and which can also be expanded with Alexa Skills can be found in the article Alexa and Amazon Echo: The best tips, tricks and commands.

Alexa Skills: Practical and Fun Services

Amazon Alexa Skills: Smart through everyday life

The core function of the speakers is called Alexa – the voice assistant is the voice of the Amazon servers. Depending on the device, several microphones are listening in all directions and waiting for the word “Alexa”. As soon as the owner says it, the ears are open to questions: for example about a soccer game, the current weather or traffic on the way to work. Alexa answers questions about the age of the Chancellor or the height of the Eiffel Tower without any errors. But that gets boring quickly. If you want to get more out of the clever assistant, install Alexa Skills. They can be roughly divided into two areas:

  • Smart home skills: This allows the owner to control compatible lamps, sockets, thermostats or blinds in the networked home without having to open an app on the mobile phone. In the Amazon shop you can find smart home skills for Philips Hue, IKEA Home smart or the FritzBox, for example. Also useful: Connected car functions, especially for owners of newer and smarter cars. With BMW Connected, Mercedes Me and Škoda Connect, for example, you can lock your car from the living room or inquire about the location and fuel level of your vehicle.
  • Service skills: There are also plenty of Alexa skills that make your smartphone apps “accessible” or bring other services on board. If you want to find out quickly whether the train is on time, you can download a skill from Deutsche Bahn. As a kitchen assistant, Alexa delivers new recipes from the head chef, KptnCook & Co. via voice commands. If you don’t want to cook yourself, you can order pizza, burgers, sushi and more from Lieferando on demand. Ask Alexa where the package is? That works with DPD. The latest news, for example from the Tagesschau, is also available with the right Alexa skills.

The best smart speakers

Beosound level


Bang & Olufsen

Roam


Sonos

BeoSound Balance (with Google Assistant)


Bang & Olufsen

Echo Show 8 2021


Amazon

Holist S.


Devil

Echo Show (3rd generation)


Amazon

Holist M


Devil

Echo (4th generation)


Amazon

Echo Studio


Amazon

Echo Show 5 2021


Amazon

Complete list: the best smart speakers

Alexa Skills: How to get it

How do you get the smart skills? The simplest thing is to click through the photo gallery above. Here we have collected some of the best skills for you, which you can call up and activate on your mobile phone or in the PC browser. Try it! You can also browse through the huge selection of Alexa Skills here:

  • Via Alexa app: Amazon offers the Alexa app, which you can download to your mobile phone to set up your echo boxes anyway. Install the Alexa app for Android or the Alexa app for iOS. In the top right, tap on the three lines and in the menu Skills and Games. In the Skills area, either tap Categories and browse through the individual categories for the app you want – or you can tap the magnifying glass symbol in the top right corner and enter the name of the skill you are looking for or a keyword. If you now tap on a search result, you will be taken to the overview of the respective app. Here you choose Activate for use. If a service requires this, follow the instructions to log into the user account.
  • Via browser: If there is a problem on the mobile phone display or if the setup is too inconvenient for you, you can easily install many apps using a browser on your PC or Mac. Call up the website alexa.amazon.de and log into your Amazon account one. In the main menu on the left, click Skills, search for keywords, names or useful skills in the categories and select the app you want. One click on Activate and, if necessary, a short one Log in to the user account is enough – the skill is already installed.

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