# Amazon Echo Tips & Tricks. Post them here!



## barryem

I uploaded some Louis Lamour dramatized stories to my library and put them into a playlist called Drama and I kept asking Alexa to play the Drama playlist and it kept saying it couldn't find it. I tried all sorts of things and nothing seemed to make it work until I asked it how to spell Drama.  It gave me the spelling and after that it was able to find the playlist.

I'm not sure why that worked.  Prior to that I had checked the app to make sure it understood the word Drama correctly and it had.  But now it finds it just fine.  I wonder if that's a solution to something or just a coincidence.  Anyway it's worth trying when it can't understand a playlist.

Barry


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## Betsy the Quilter

OK, we're starting to get some good suggestions for how to get your Amazon Echo to work with you.  Let's call them undocumented features!  Post them here (and I'm going to move some here as I find them in other threads).

Betsy


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## Betsy the Quilter

From what we've discovered, if you're asking the Echo to play music, it will search in your library first--and if it find music that meets the criteria there, it won't look outside the library. To force it to look in Prime, just add that criteria: *Play Fats Domino* made it play the one Fats Domino song I happened to have in the library (_111 Rock'n'Roll Superhits_); *Play Fats Domino in Prime* made it find and play a bunch of Fats Domino songs in Prime.

Betsy


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## The Hooded Claw

Most may have found this, but after listening to a Flash Briefing, you can go to the Echo app and you will see links to written news stories with more detail on the bullet items you heard in the briefing.


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## Betsy the Quilter

Cool, I hadn't done that.....


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## D/W

The Hooded Claw said:


> Most may have found this, but after listening to a Flash Briefing, you can go to the Echo app and you will see links to written news stories with more detail on the bullet items you heard in the briefing.


That's a nifty feature!


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## Betsy the Quilter

The app adds a lot of functionality.  If you ask for it to play music on Prime, you can go to the app and tap on "Now Playing and see the current song and the playlist queue.  Tapping on an item in the queue jumps to that song (plus you can add things to your library from the queue).

Betsy


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## NogDog

I just found out that you can access the Echo app via your PC's web browser at echo.amazon.com, which should be handy for printing out that shopping list.


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## Betsy the Quilter

That's how you access it on an iPad, too!  Amazon suggests you save the URL to an icon on your iPad's home page, which I did.  Works great, except I tend to pick up the Fire anyway. 

Betsy


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## Andra

So if you happen to open the Echo app and your tablet and it freaks out and doesn't know that you have an Echo, you can just delete the app and download it again and it will sync everything up.  Ask me how I know...


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## intinst

Andra said:


> So if you happen to open the Echo app and your tablet and it freaks out and doesn't know that you have an Echo, you can just delete the app and download it again and it will sync everything up. Ask me how I know...


Noticed that my Fire wouldn't connect with the Echo last night and waited till today to try and fix it. Glad I did, because I might not have thought of this simple fix. Thank You! All is well in Echo land again!


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## Andra

intinst said:


> Noticed that my Fire wouldn't connect with the Echo last night and waited till today to try and fix it. Glad I did, because I might not have thought of this simple fix. Thank You! All is well in Echo land again!


Glad it helped someone else.
Guess who called Amazon last night?? I knew the Echo was fine since it took voice commands, but the Fire was being weird. I blamed it on the OS update, but that may have been a coincidence.


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## mlewis78

My bluetooth connection with my laptop was great for several weeks, but tonight it is not paired.  It is connected.  Asked Alexa to pair and it said ready to pair, but it won't pair.  I sent Amazon an email message through the app on my laptop.  

I love to use it for watching certain TV shows I can't get through my cable or fire tv box.  Sounds so much better than my tinny laptop speakers.  Earlier this week I watched Paddington movie with the sound from my Echo speaker.

I only realized before I called Amazon that connected is the same as paired, at least in the case of my Echo and laptop.  The Amazon rep said sometimes that is true.


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## joangolfing

mslewis, Does your laptop have a built in blue tooth connection or do you use a USB bluetooth connection. If you are using the USB connection try taking out the USB device and reinserting it in the laptop.  That worked for me when I had difficulty making the connection to Echo.


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## Sandpiper

mlewis78 said:


> I love to use it for watching certain TV shows I can't get through my cable or fire tv box. Sounds so much better than my tinny laptop speakers. Earlier this week I watched Paddington movie with the sound from my Echo speaker.


Search on Amazon for *Kinivo*. Check out their Mini Portable and Portable Laptop speakers. Look at reviews and comments. Good sound from them at a very reasonable price. And if you need tech help with their products, it's excellent. I called for a little help with their HDMI switch box.


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## mlewis78

joangolfing said:


> mslewis, Does your laptop have a built in blue tooth connection or do you use a USB bluetooth connection. If you are using the USB connection try taking out the USB device and reinserting it in the laptop. That worked for me when I had difficulty making the connection to Echo.


My laptop has bluetooth connection. Still not paired since last night. Amazon sent me an email and suggested I call them and we'd try to fix it over the phone. Will have to do that at an earlier hour (by 10pm Pacific Time). When I turn on laptop, Echo says "connected with bluetooth" but it's not paired and when I play anything it comes through the laptop speakers. I look at the bluetooth settings and it shows Echo is connected, but that's all I see, nothing more.


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## mlewis78

Sandpiper said:


> Search on Amazon for *Kinivo*. Check out their Mini Portable and Portable Laptop speakers. Look at reviews and comments. Good sound from them at a very reasonable price. And if you need tech help with their products, it's excellent. I called for a little help with their HDMI switch box.


I put that speaker on my Amazon wish list after you first posted about it. The Echo speaker has been so good that I didn't see the need to buy anything else. Will see if I can get the Echo paired again and if not, I would see about something else. I think my problem is with the laptop bluetooth, which might be problem with other bluetooth speakers. I could connect my Klipsch ipod speaker to the laptop (I put this aside after I bought the Echo because of space considerations), but it's not as convenient as bluetooth.


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## Ann in Arlington

mlewis78 said:


> My laptop has bluetooth connection. Still not paired since last night. Amazon sent me an email and suggested I call them and we'd try to fix it over the phone. Will have to do that at an earlier hour (by 10pm Pacific Time). When I turn on laptop, Echo says "connected with bluetooth" but it's not paired and when I play anything it comes through the laptop speakers. I look at the bluetooth settings and it shows Echo is connected, but that's all I see, nothing more.


Did you try disconnecting both devices from power (unplug/turn completely off) and then re-connecting and powering up?


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## Betsy the Quilter

I've occasionally had that happen with bluetooth connections.  Sometimes I need to have go to settings to have it forget the connection for that device and recreate it from scratch.

Betsy


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## mlewis78

i called Amazon this afternoon and resolved it.  They had me disconnect and connect, but it still wasn't playing laptop content through my Echo.  I just wasn't up to speed with how to control speakers on my laptop.  Had to go to the speaker icon and bring up a box that had both the Echo and the laptop speakers listed but the laptop speaker (don't recall what they called it) was checked off.  While Amazon help did not advise me to disable the laptop speaker, I did that while we were on the phone and it worked.  Then the Echo was checkmarked and voila.


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## Betsy the Quilter

Yay, Marti!  Glad you were able to get it resolved!

Betsy


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## Sandpiper

mlewis78 said:


> i called Amazon this afternoon and resolved it. They had me disconnect and connect, but it still wasn't playing laptop content through my Echo. I just wasn't up to speed with how to control speakers on my laptop. Had to go to the speaker icon and bring up a box that had both the Echo and the laptop speakers listed but the laptop speaker (don't recall what they called it) was checked off. While Amazon help did not advise me to disable the laptop speaker, I did that while we were on the phone and it worked. Then the Echo was checkmarked and voila.


Have to do that too on my MacBook Pro when I play music / sound through Kinivo laptop speaker which plugs into USB port.


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## Betsy the Quilter

In the main Amazon Echo thread, Andra let us know that you can now access your Google calendar with your Echo. I tried it out and wanted to share.

Go to your Settings, and then Calendar Services:









Link your Google account (you need to already have a Google account). 









If you have more than one Google account, like I do, you'll be asked to pick the one you want to connect and then see this screen:










Click "accept."

It works well. I tested it by adding and event and it read off items on my calendar for a specific day I asked about and for my events over the next week. You can ask:

*Alexa, when is my next event.

Alexa, what's on my calendar?

Alexa, what's on my calendar tomorrow at 9PM?

Alexa, what's on my calendar on Saturday?*

Betsy


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## Ann in Arlington

Bufo Calvin shared a trick to send messages using this feature . . . . agree on a specific time and the person at home can ask what's happening then. If the person away from home, with the app, has created an event at that time, it'll read it off. So Betsy could create an event for 5:43 that says, "Fred, start the spaghetti water boiling at 5 p.m."  Fred asks what's on at 5:43 and gets the message about starting the water boiling.


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## Betsy the Quilter

That's kinda cool...though I had to read it twice to figure out what the tip was.   (Not your writing, just wrapping my mind around it.)

Trying to decide if it would work with Fred....probably voice mail is better.  

Betsy


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## Ann in Arlington

Betsy the Quilter said:


> That's kinda cool...though I had to read it twice to figure out what the tip was.  (Not your writing, just wrapping my mind around it.)
> 
> Trying to decide if it would work with Fred....probably voice mail is better.
> 
> Betsy


Yeah . . . I had to read it from him a couple of times . . . . . I guess the key is to pick an easily remembered time and the person at home just has to remember to ask about it. Probably more than once a day because the person NOT at home may not have made an event by 19 a.m. but may have done so by 3 p.m. Might be good if one person was away from home for several days . . . .

BUT . . . you apparently can't MAKE the appointment by voice with your phone. . . . so it might be just as easy to call and say, "Fred, put on the spaghetti water" when you want him to do it.


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## Betsy the Quilter

Ann in Arlington said:


> Yeah . . . I had to read it from him a couple of times . . . . . I guess the key is to pick an easily remembered time and the person at home just has to remember to ask about it. Probably more than once a day because the person NOT at home may not have made an event by 19 a.m. but may have done so by 3 p.m. Might be good if one person was away from home for several days . . . .
> 
> BUT . . . you apparently can't MAKE the appointment by voice with your phone. . . . so it might be just as easy to call and say, "Fred, put on the spaghetti water" when you want him to do it.


Well, if it's just reading an appointment from your Google calendar, there's no reason why you couldn't do that by voice on your phone; that's a capability outside the Echo. And once it's on your Google calendar, the Echo should be able to find it. Off to test...

Betsy


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## Ann in Arlington

Betsy the Quilter said:


> Well, if it's just reading an appointment from your Google calendar, there's no reason why you couldn't do that by voice on your phone; that's a capability outside the Echo. And once it's on your Google calendar, the Echo should be able to find it. Off to test...
> 
> Betsy


I'm just repeating what Bufo said . . . here's the blog post: https://ilmk.wordpress.com/2015/05/29/echo-now-connects-to-google-calendar/ I might have misunderstood . . . I think he was talking about telling the echo to add something to the calendar and having it do it.


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## Betsy the Quilter

Ann in Arlington said:


> I'm just repeating what Bufo said . . . here's the blog post: https://ilmk.wordpress.com/2015/05/29/echo-now-connects-to-google-calendar/ I might have misunderstood . . . I think he was talking about telling the echo to add something to the calendar and having it do it.


Yeah, that makes sense... Thanks for the link!

Betsy


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## RChamltn

Hi -
Since everyone here seems interested in sources for Echo tips, tricks, news and how-tos, I wanted to share my Love My Echo site. I won't spam the thread with a link, but if you Google for the site name you will find it.

Just so I'm not promoting without giving something back, I'll share some of those 'Easter Egg' things you can ask your Echo to get a funny or unexpected reply. Stupid Alexa Tricks: Literary Edition

*Alexa Knows Her Shakespeare!*

"Alexa: Romeo, Romeo, wherefore art thou, Romeo?"

"Alexa: To be, or not to be?"

"Alexa: What's in a name?"

*&#8230;And Her Fairytales & Kid Lit*

"Alexa: Mirror, mirror on the wall, who's the fairest one of all?"

"Alexa: How is a raven like a writing desk?"

"Alexa: Do you know the Muffin Man?"

"Alexa: Who is the Pumpkin King?"


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