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The Amazon Fire TV Ambient Experience
How to connect Alexa to Fire TV

Alexa can do it all for you

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You'll find all the features you need to watch your favorite Netflix and Prime Video movies on the best Amazon Fire TVs. You can easily control your Fire TV using the included remote. The microphone button lets you chat directly with the Alexa voice assistant to get your TV to do things like search for movies or control playback.

Amazon Alexa app icon on Android phone

As sensitive as the far-field microphone on your Amazon Echo speakers is, you can't always be close enough for Alexa to hear you. You can control your speakers, wireless cameras, and other smart devices remotely, keeping your home at your fingertips when you're miles away. With the Amazon Alexa app on iOS and Android devices, you can talk to the virtual assistant. You'll access intuitive buttons to add devices and manage them for other people in a central hub. Here's how to do it.

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Best Amazon Alexa-compatible smart home devices in 2024

These popular Alexa-compatible devices make smart home automation easy wherever they live in your home

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When it comes to smart home assistants, Alexa is a behemoth that dominates the market with its intuitive voice-activated smart home controls. Alexa's success is due to its teachability and user-friendly interface, including its convenient voice control.

alexa echo display device resting on wooden shelf
How to set up an Amazon Echo for multiple users

Share your Echo or Echo Show with your family member or friends

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Amazon Echo speakers are among the most popular smart speakers, offering plenty of features for your household. These include listening to music, asking questions, and controlling smart home devices. In addition, they can access personal data, such as calendar events. You don't need separate devices for each user. You can teach it to distinguish users to provide a personalized experience. This guide walks you through how to set up an Echo device for your household.

Hand adjusting the google nest smart thermostat
Best smart thermostats that support Amazon Alexa in 2024

The top thermostats that will work with your Alexa smart home

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When it comes to controlling the temperature of your home, an analog thermostat can only do so much. Many great smart thermostats have several advantages over traditional options. For example, they include remote control, zone temperature control, and the ability to learn the users' habits to schedule accordingly. Some can even remind you when to change your air filter or stream music.

Echo Hub on a table next to a plant and a lamp
Amazon Echo Hub review: A smart display for smart homes

The ultimate hub to control all your smart home devices

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Smart speakers are a great way to control smart home devices like lights, locks, and thermostats, allowing you to operate them hands-free and naturally. Smart displays build on that convenience, allowing you to view visual content, see information at a glance, and interact by touch — none of which is possible with speakers.

A side angle shot of the Amazon Echo Show 8 home screen
How to set up Alexa smart home automation

Alexa Routines are a free and powerful way to automate your smart home devices

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Smart home devices have become game-changers in our daily lives. They help us get around our day with added convenience. Such products include smart lights, thermostats, smart plugs, and more. An advantage of smart gadgets is using voice commands to control them, ideally via a smart speaker, such as an Amazon Echo or Google Nest Audio. Another perk of smart home devices is automation. This functionality allows you to automate your devices according to the conditions you define.

The Amazon Echo Show second generation

Smart displays are an excellent way to add convenience to your household, helping you control lights, thermostats, and other devices. They're also useful for streaming content and video calling friends and family. With its Echo Show lineup, Amazon produces a range of recommendable smart displays that achieve these tasks and offer options to make your life easier. Some of them are designed by Amazon and meant to be used as part of the Echo Show experience. Others are hacks we whipped together to help you do more with your smart display, such as watching YouTube videos.

Alexa app on a smartphone showing the devices tab
The new Alexa app takes a page from Google Home's playbook

The app's facelift puts smart home controls in the spotlight

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Last year, Google spruced up its Home app, claiming you'll suffer less click fatigue with its refreshed menus, a nifty Favorites page, a quick bookmark feature for your beloved smart home devices, and support for automation-triggering sensors. Customization took the spotlight, letting users tailor their view of devices and actions. Unsurprisingly, Amazon took note and followed suit with its fresh Alexa app redesign.

The Amazon Alexa logo against a blurred image.
Alexa routines guide: How to create and use them

Automate your devices with minimal effort

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Thanks to smart home devices, you can build a new level of automation into your house and integrate various gadgets into intelligent scenarios. These can include smart lights, thermostats, and more devices.

The Amazon logo on a purple background with a Cyber Monday logo below
Hurry! The best Amazon Device deals will be gone when Cyber Monday ends

There are tons of amazing deals on Amazon devices for Cyber Monday

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Just like that, Cyber Monday is almost over, which means all those great deals Amazon is known for offering on its devices will quickly jump back up to their regular prices. The good news is there is still time to jump on some of the best Cyber Monday deals on Echo speakers, smart displays, Ring video doorbells, Amazon Fire tablets, and more!

Echo Dot on table near lamp, incense, and bonsai tree

Diving into the confusing landscape of smart home devices can be challenging if you haven’t played around with automations and voice commands before. With Matter support steadily permeating through the industry, now’s a great time to get started with a simple setup comparing an Alexa-enabled Amazon Echo Dot smart speaker and a TP-Link Kasa Wi-Fi-controlled smart bulb.

An Amazon Echo Dot 4th gen sitting on a table with the bottom ring lit up
How to use Amazon Echo privacy features

Don't let Alexa get too smart

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Amazon Echo devices are some of the best smart speakers and displays available. They work seamlessly with most smart home devices and integrate with most music streaming services, allowing you to listen to your favorite tunes. In addition, they allow you to place audio and video calls using their built-in microphones and cameras, in the case of smart displays. Some Echo speakers come with built-in temperature and presence sensors.

An Amazon Echo 4th gen smark speaker sitting on a table between a lamp and a bonsai tree.
Amazon Echo: Our top Alexa tips and tricks to keep you organized and on task

You can do more than just check the weather

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Whether you've had an Amazon Echo for a long time or recently switched to the Amazon ecosystem, you've probably grasped the basic Amazon Echo features. But besides setting kitchen timers and asking for the daily weather forecast, Amazon's Alexa-powered speakers have some lesser-known features that make customizing your smart home even better. Below are the top Amazon Echo and Echo Show tips and tricks to streamline your Alexa ecosystem.

An Amazon Echo Dot sitting on a pile of books.
How to delete your Alexa voice recordings

Delete your Alexa history and voice recording to help restore some of your privacy

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Alexa is Amazon's personal digital assistant, which lets you use your voice to control some of the easiest smart home devices available. It powers Amazon's Echo line of smart speakers and is included in devices made by other manufacturers, such as Sonos. If you use an Alexa-powered device, you might know your voice interactions are recorded and saved by default.

A purple Amazon Echo Pop and smartphone sit on a metal table
Amazon Alexa: Common problems and how to fix them

Smart apps aren't immune to stupidity

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A smart home can make you more productive and complement your family's life, but it can be frustrating when it doesn't work correctly. An Alexa-compatible smart home system seems the logical choice for those beginning to build their smart home thanks to its ease of use and low cost. But Alexa devices sometimes run into trouble. Most of these issues are easy to fix. Here's how.

The Amazon Echo Show second generation
Celebrate Alexa’s birthday with huge discounts on TVs, smart speakers, and more

Top streaming and smart home devices starting at just $25

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Black Friday falls on November 24 this year, but if you don't want to wait weeks for big tech discounts, Amazon's got you. The company is celebrating the ninth birthday of Alexa by offering deals on many of its products that feature the digital assistant. The sale includes discounts of up to 56% on everything from Echo Show smart displays to Eero mesh Wi-Fi routers, and 4K Fire TVs. We've listed some of our favorite deals below, and be sure to act fast, there's no telling how long this birthday bash is going to last.

fire tv cube vs stick 4k max
Amazon Fire TV Stick 4K Max (2023) vs. Fire TV Cube: Which streaming device is right for you?

Which should you add to your entertainment system? The powerful Fire TV Cube or the workhorse that is the Fire TV Stick 4K Max?

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Amazon’s lineup of streaming devices has ballooned in recent years. From the early days of the Fire TV Stick device, we all knew that the Prime-shipping juggernaut was on to something special. Capabilities have blossomed since, and today, the Fire TV connections allow for some seriously heavy lifting when it comes to streaming content from all across the spectrum.

The Amazon Echo Dot sitting on a desk with a lamp and laptop in the background
How to set up Alexa for emergencies calls

Can Alexa contact emergency numbers for you? Here's how it all works and how to set it up

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Amazon Alexa, found commonly in Amazon Echos and a variety of other speakers (as well as apps on your Android phone), is a voice-command smorgasbord. The voice assistant comes with excellent compatibility for your smart home devices, easy links to popular music searches, and generally helpful information whether you're baking a cake or checking football scores.

Alexa logo over circular array of AP logos
Amazon’s inability to monetize Alexa is the biggest problem no one’s talking about

Alexa may lose $10 billion this year, revealing major monetization problems for smart assistants

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In many ways, the 2014 launch of Amazon Alexa smart assistant was like the launch of ChatGPT eight years later. Both were marvels of machine learning that fundamentally changed the way we framed our interactions with technology. Both had rendered fact from what had previously been science fiction and techno-fantasy, and both inspired millions of people to ask them meaningless questions to experience the novelty of "talking" to a machine. But whereas ChatGPT is on track to make its parent company, OpenAI, $1 billion this year, Alexa is reported to have cost Amazon upwards of $10 billion in the same time frame. To get an idea of why, we will have to get into the weeds a little.

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