The app Alexa becomes big, and it does so with a rather drastic update, both from the point of view of the interface but above all of the functionality, losing his soul all-rounder (perhaps even confusing?) in favor of a more defined intended use: the smart home (read also: how to change Alexa’s voice).
The update is rolling out this week, but it’s only the final act in a series of improvements intended to put the controls for the smart home (do you know what Super Alexa is?).
In fact, for some time they had appeared new cards in the Home to manage your favorite devices and commands, and only recently have the new icons appeared in the bottom bar, which make navigation more intuitive and, again, place the emphasis on smart home. Below you can see the evolution of the app’s main screen since 2020 (left), a few days ago (center) to move on to Today (To the right).
Alexa in 2020 (left), a few days ago (center), and today (right).
Now the Home offers better organization, but above all we have gone from a layout defined by the app, based on what it “thought” you would like to see, to an interface which you can decide, with the buttons for i devices, the Activity hey Favorites, customizable as desired.
At the top you will find a scrolling line with i connections to all set home devices and tools such as Music o Shopping lists, which you can choose from 17 different shortcuts.
Each button is also associated with lo state (at least for the lights and the temperature, and in any case for the moment for those who have less than 20 devices, but they should increase in the future), and by touching it you will arrive at a list of connected devices or functions, with the related buttons and controls. Unfortunately Alexa it still doesn’t allow you to see the feeds of Blink and Ring cameras, for example (the update for the latter should arrive soon).
At the bottom, you will have the card Activity, which shows cards with information like notifications, timers, smart home alerts, and other reminders. On the right there is a drop-down menu, with the possibility to see all unread activities (Show all and the number of notifications), while if you have read them all, it will come tablet.
Continuing downwards, there are the Favorites, which previously belonged to the section Devices of the app, and where you can add and control your favorite devices directly from Home.
By touching it one (if compatible, as we said the cameras are not), will bring up a window from below and allow you to manage the device directly.
You can have up to 200 devices in the Favorites, but after about ten it becomes difficult to manage, and speaking of cameras, in 2024 the possibility of seeing snapshots up to a maximum of six cameras Ring, but only with a plan Ring Protect.
If you scroll down, under the favorites you will find a series of Amazon recommendations for Alexa skills and also some adscio, but you won’t see them immediately from Home, so they’re not too intrusive.
But this is just the Home. As we have said now the cards of navigation bar below have been simplified and now I’m just Three. If you touch Devices, you will be able to access not so much the controls, as to their settings.
You can filter and sort them as you like, and if you tap Device Type a window appears from the bottom that allows you to see only the ones you’re interested in (for example lights, Echo or other) without having to scroll through the entire list. Above you will find i Groups, that is, devices in the same room that can be controlled with a single command.
Here, at least for US users with iPhone 12 Pro or iPad Pro 4 and later, you can also find the possibility of seeing the devices in a map (we talked about it here), but we don’t know when it will arrive to us.
Finally, at the bottom right is the last tab, Other, which allows you to manage timers, reminders and other functions related to the “assistant” part of Alexa and the app settings.
As we said, the update is already rolling out and should be available for iOS and Android.
