Tired of yelling down the hall or up the stairs for everyone to come down and eat dinner? Looking to give your voice a well-deserved rest? If so, Amazon’s latest feature for Alexa is for you. This week, Amazon rolled out a feature that it’s calling Alexa Announcements, which allows users to broadcast voice messages throughout their home using every Echo device connected to the network. In other words, it turns your Echos into intercoms.
In order to use the feature, just say something like “Alexa, announce that it’s lunch time,” and every Echo in the house will repeat the message. You can also start the message with “Alexa, tell everyone…” or “Alexa, broadcast…” for the same result. Any of these phrases will broadcast the message throughout your home.
While this feature alone may not be enough to convince someone to buy a few extra Echo devices, it’s certainly a clever use of the hardware and gives families one more reason to fill their home with smart speakers. The feature will work with any compatible Echo device, including the Echo, Echo Plus, Echo Dot, Echo Show and the Echo Spot. No matter which Echo you have or where it is in your home, Announcements will be available (except for the Look).
Alexa Announcements began rolling out in the US and Canada this Thursday, so if you can’t get the feature to work quite yet, just be patient. It should be functional on all Echo devices in those regions in the coming days.
