Introduction

When it comes to technology, Alexa is now a household name. There are a lot of homes with Amazon’s smart speakers and displays. The virtual assistant known as Alexa can answer questions, play music or the news, control smart gadgets, and more with one in every room.

In this guide, you’ll learn how to set up and customize any Amazon Echo or Show device.

Using Alexa on an Echo or Dot

It doesn’t matter if you have an Amazon Echo or an Echo Dot, the setup process is the same. What you need to do is as follows:

1. Install the Alexa app on your mobile device. If you have an iPhone or iPad, install Alexa for iOS. If you have an Android device, use Alexa for Android instead.

2. Plug in your Echo device. After a few minutes, you’ll see a spinning orange light. You might also hear Alexa say out loud that it is ready for setup.

3. Open the Alexa app, and sign in to your Amazon account.

4. You might see a message asking if you want to set up the new Alexa device. If so, tap Continue and follow the instructions. If not, tap the More tab at the bottom-right of the screen and tap Add a Device.

5. In the list of All Devices, tap Amazon Echo.

6. On the next page, tap Echo, Echo Dot, Echo Plus, and more.

7. You should see a screen asking Is your Echo plugged in and in setup mode? If you see a spinning orange status light, tap Yes.

8. Follow the instructions to choose your new Echo device and connect it to WiFi. Tap Continue.

9. Choose a language and tap Continue.

10. Choose which room the device is located in and tap Continue.

11. Alexa will ask you to enter your home address. Enter it and tap Continue.

Press and hold the Microphone and Volume Down buttons on your Echo for around 20 seconds, until you see the light change to yellow and then blue. A few minutes after the device has restarted should be enough time for you to proceed with the installation process.

How to set up Alexa on Echo Show

To get started with an Echo Show, you don’t need to download the Alexa app to your phone or tablet because the Show has its built-in screen. Simply connect the Echo Show to the power source and wait for it to boot up for the very first time. After that, simply follow the on-screen instructions to enter your Amazon login information and a WiFi network name and password. The Echo Show’s settings (for example, to modify the WiFi settings) can be accessed by swiping from the top of the screen after the initial setup.

How to customize Alexa settings

After you’ve set up Alexa, there is a slew of options for customizing your virtual assistant. To get the most out of your Amazon gadget, you should examine these settings and alter the ones you find interesting.

Set up voice commands

It’s not uncommon for people to communicate with their Echos solely using voice commands, although most Echo models feature control buttons on top (such as mute, volume, and an action button to deliver commands).

To begin a command, use the wake word “Alexa,” which is by default. “Alexa, what time is it?” is an example of a command.

It’s common to need to say “wake up” before each order, however, there are times when Alexa will stay up and not require the wake word to be said again. After saying “Alexa,” you can then say something like “Tell me the news,” without saying Alexa again. With blue light, Alexa lets you know that it’s still up and running.

Choose from “Echo,” “Amazon,” “Computer,” or “Ziggy” when setting up your Echo to respond instead to a different wake word.

Set Echo’s location

The position of each Echo device can be specified. To get accurate information about things like the current time in your area, the weather, and local news, Alexa typically uses your home location. When you first set up your Echo device, Alexa provides you the opportunity to enter this address, but if you forget or need to modify it, you may do so via the Alexa app. It’s easy to move an Echo device to a new place by selecting Echo & Alexa from the Devices section of the app. The Device Location option can be found by tapping the Settings icon on the device in question, then selecting it.

Add Alexa skills

Immediately after setting up your Echo, you may ask Alexa to start a timer, read you the news, tell you a joke, and control smart devices in your house. However, Alexa has more than 100,000 additional skills, many of which were created by third-party developers and businesses. You can ask Alexa to perform these tasks if you enable the corresponding abilities. If you want to hear Melissa McCarthy’s voice instead of Alexa’s, you can allow the ability to play NPR. You can also enable the ability to make white noise sound like rain. The possibilities are virtually endless. It is possible to activate talents on your Echo device in a variety of ways. For example, “Alexa, enable the seven-minute workout skill,” is a simple command that Alexa may do. It’s also possible to enable skills through the Alexa app by tapping the More button and selecting Skills & Games.

Link to Spotify

First and foremost, Echo devices are speakers, so you can use them to listen to music. The default music player for Alexa is Amazon Music. That’s not all you can do, though. When you ask Alexa to play music, you can specify Spotify or Pandora as your preferred services. Setting up Spotify to be your default music player is as simple as setting up Pandora on your Echo. Open the Alexa app and tap the More tab at the bottom of the page to configure your music services. Find the Music & Podcasts options in the Settings menu.

Set news alerts

Echo offers several ways to get news – here are some of the most common:

• Say “Alexa, play the news.” Alexa plays a long-form news report from your preferred news source.
• Say “Alexa, play my flash briefing.” Alexa plays a news summary curated from a playlist of news sources you can specify.
• Say “Alexa, play news from [news source].” You can ask for news from Insider, CNN, ESPN, and many others.
• You can enable news notifications. When turned on, Alexa delivers news alerts from sources you can specify like Insider, Fox News, and NPR. These alerts will play as they happen, so you don’t have to ask to hear them.

 You can control all of these news options from the Alexa app:

1. Start the Alexa app and tap the More tab at the bottom of the screen.

2. Tap Settings.

3. In the Alexa Preferences section, tap News.

4. On the News page, you can enable and disable various news experiences and choose which news sources you want to hear from.

Conclusion

Hope you got a clear idea about how to set up Alexa devices through this article. Read the instructions carefully mentioned above and follow the guide to set up the Alexa devices.