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Alexa is the name of Amazon’s virtual assistant. You’ll find Alexa in the company’s Echo smart speakers, its Fire TV media streaming sticks and Fire tablets, plus its Echo Buds headphones.

But you can also use Alexa simply by installing Amazon’s free Alexa app on your phone: you don’t need to buy a device. Alexa can also be found in many other devices from other manufacturers, including dash cams, TV sound bars and Bluetooth speakers.

At a very basic level, you can ask Alexa simple questions such as “what time is it?” but she can also control smart home devices, allowing you to turn lights on and off – or even open the garage door – with your voice.

With Routines, you can speak a single command and make several things happen at once, which can save a lot of time.

However, whether you just want a brief overview of what’s possible with Alexa or to discover more features, you’re in the right place.

Alexa can answer general questions, set timers, play music, read news headlines, give you a weather forecast, tell you sports scores and much more. She can remind you of birthdays, appointments, meetings and simply to put the bins out. She’ll manage your shopping lists and to-do list, but also lets you call and message friends and family, and even broadcast messages around your home such as “dinner’s ready”.

Keep reading or go straight to the section in which you’re interested:

Like any good assistant, you can speak to Alexa using natural language. In some countries including the US and UK, Alexa can recognise individual voices and provide information specific to that person (such as what’s on their calendar) but will respond to anyone’s voice for general requests, questions and commands.

When speaking, you don’t have to wait after you say “Alexa”. Just say Alexa and carry on speaking.

Alexa can do a lot out of the box, but for some things, you will need to enable a ‘Skill’. You can search or browser the available Skills in the Alexa app and simply tap ‘Enable’ to start using it.

Alexa can handle a lot of general requests such as these:

She can also handle general knowledge questions such as:

TIP: Try saying, Alexa, good morning as you’ll hear an interesting fact of the day.

Alexa is a convenient way to listen to music, but you’ll need to subscribe to Amazon Music or another supported streaming service if you want to ask for specific songs. You can listen to the radio for free, however.

If you want Alexa to play music from an Apple Music or Spotify Premium account you need to change the default music provider in the Alexa app under Settings > Music & Podcasts.

This is what to say:

TIP: Radio stations are played from a ‘Service’ such as BBC, Global Player, Planet Radio or TuneIn. Sometimes you need to know which service broadcasts the station you want to listen to. And you need to say “Alexa, play [name of station] from [name of service]”. For example, “Alexa, play Heart UK from TuneIn” or, “Alexa, ask TuneIn to play Heart UK”.

You can also add songs to playlists, create new playlists and more. You can even ask Alexa to play a song from a band you heard a few weeks ago, but can’t remember the track name.

There are also ways to play similar music to what you’re listening to:

You can also make playlists, and add to them using these commands while listening to Amazon Music:

Some audiobooks are recorded speech, but others are read out by Alexa. And although Alexa sounds quite human, it can be hard to listen to a book as the intonation and pronunciation isn’t always very good.

For podcasts, Alexa will use TuneIn by default. Admittedly, listening to podcasts can be a little frustrating as it can be hard to get the episode you want, and difficult to discover something you might actually want to listen to.

There are Skills including AnyPod and Stitcher that you can enable to improve things, but it can be simpler to use your favourite podcast app on your phone and simply use your Amazon Echo as a Bluetooth speaker to listen and just leave Alexa out of the equation.

If you have several Echo devices, you can create a Speaker Group in the Alexa app and play music in sync on all of them. This will work no matter whether you’ve chosen Amazon, Apple or Spotify as the music source.

To create a group, tap on the Devices icon at the bottom of the home screen in the Alexa app then tap the ‘+’ symbol top right and choose ‘Combine speakers’. Follow the on-screen prompts, and then you can ask Alexa to play music by saying, “Alexa, play Maroon 5 downstairs”, assuming you named the group ‘downstairs’. 

If you group all your Echo devices, you can say “Alexa, play music everywhere”.

Alternatively, you can ask Alexa to play music on a specific Echo device, so you could make calming lullabies play on your Echo Dot in the baby’s room, even if you’re talking to Alexa on your Echo in the kitchen, for example.

For more, see our step-by-step guide to creating groups with Alexa.

It’s worth noting that multi-room isn’t supported on some Alexa devices made by other companies. If you want know more, read about music on Alexa. 

Controlling smart home devices is one of Alexa’s best features.

Because Alexa is so popular, most smart gadgets support the assistant. This means you can control light bulbs, thermostats, plugs, switches and more.

Alexa works with Nest, Philips HUE, LIFX, Netatmo, Hive, LightwaveRF, Smart Things, Honeywell Total Connect Comfort, digitalSTROM, MyFox and tado. Plus, Yonomi lets you control some other devices not directly supports, such as Logitech Harmony controls and Sonos systems.

In the Alexa app, tap the three horizontal bars (labelled More), then tap on Skills & Games. Now you can search for your product or service and see if it is supported.

In general, once you enable the skill, you will need to log into the account for that smart device (such as Philips Hue) and authorise Alexa to use it.

For the best experience, you should create groups so that you can control all the lights and plugs, say, in one room by saying “Alexa, turn on lounge”, rather than asking for each device to be switched on individually. Also, if you have an Echo in each room, you can assign them to rooms. This means that you can go into the lounge and say “Alexa, turn on the lights” rather than saying the room name.

Another way to control multiple devices, and schedule lights to turn on and off when you want, is to use Alexa Routines.

Some examples, once this is all set up, include:

For a step-by-step guide, read how to control your lights with Alexa.

The Alexa app has a built-in to-do list and shopping list, and can sync with your Google calendar. You can then say:

Alexa can also schedule reminders. You can say, “Alexa , remind me to buy a birthday card on Thursday at 1pm”, and on that day at that time a blue light ring will appear on the Echo device and Alexa ’s voice will remind you to buy the card. The reminders also appear in the Alexa app on your phone.

You can give a specific name to a timer which is really handy when setting multiple timers at once. For example, you can ask Alexa to set a pasta timer and also to set a garlic bread timer, and when the timer goes off, Alexa will state which timer is up.

Since there’s no screen on some Echos, you can check the amount of time left on specific timers (or even cancel it). Just say, “Alexa , cancel the pasta timer” or “Alexa , how much time is left on my garlic bread timer?” Active timers can also be seen in the Alexa app, and on the screen if you have an Echo Show or Spot.

Everything above works on a Fire Tablet and most on the Fire TV. But with these devices you have extra options thanks to the screen. These also apply to the Echo Show and Spot, which have screens too.

Have both a Fire TV and an Echo in the same room? Then you can pair them and use your Echo’s hands-free Alexa control instead of the Fire TV’s remote. The process should be largely automatic if you have only one Fire TV on your Amazon account: simply ask Alexa on your Echo to pair with the Fire TV.

If you have more than one, follow these steps:

If you have a compatible Fire tablet, you can say “Alexa, enable show mode” and she will change the screen to one similar to the Echo Show. You can buy the Show Mode Charging Dock for the Fire HD 8 and HD 10 which makes them much more usable in this mode.

Some of the latest skills Alexa has learned include:

When you leave home say “Alexa, I’m leaving” and she can send you alerts if she hears certain sounds such as glass breaking, smoke alarms beeping or carbon monoxide detectors going off. If you have the necessary smart home kit, she can also turn lights on and off intelligently to make it seem like someone is home. There’s also integration with some alarm systems (including Ring and ADT). 

Alexa learns when you tend to switch your smart lights and switches on and off. So when you say “Alexa, Good Night” she can tell you “By the way, your outdoor light is on. Do you want me to turn it off?”. Hunches is enabled by default, but you can manage them in the Alexa app by tapping More > Settings > Hunches.

Would you like to make sure that Alexa isn’t saving your voice requests? Have a look at our guide here.

Jim has been testing and reviewing products for over 20 years. His main beats include VPN services and antivirus. He also covers smart home tech, mesh Wi-Fi and electric bikes.