102 PCWorld FEBRUARY 2019HERE’S HOW USE ALEX A ROUTINES TO MAKE AN AMAZON ECHO SMARTER
disable the routine, so you can temporarily
stop it from running without deleting the
whole thing.THINGS TO TRY
One of the best ways to start using Alexa
Routines is with wake-up and bedtime actions.
For bedtime, try creating a Goodnight
routine that plays relaxing sounds for a
certain amount of time. If you have any smart
light bulbs in the bedroom, you can have
those turn off as part of the Routine as well.
For weekday mornings, try creating a
scheduled routine that turns on your smart
light bulbs, announces the forecast, your
agenda, and your commute, and then
begins playing music. You might even create
two separate morning routines, with the first
one turning the lights on dimly and playing
meditative music to wake you slowly, and the
second one cranking the lights to full blast
with some more upbeat tunes.
If you have an Echo Button, you can even
give yourself a snooze button to slap. Just set
the Echo Button as the trigger, and then
create three actions: Stop playback, wait 10
minutes (or however long you prefer to
snooze), and then start playing music again.
You can also prevent yourself from hitting
snooze a second time by selecting Change
next to Anytime in the Edit Routines menu,
and then setting the Suppress For option to
an hour or so.
Echo Buttons can also be used to createall kinds of fun Routines. Try using one to
give yourself a random affirmation, start
playing some funky music, turn on all the
house lights, or broadcast a “Dinner’s
ready!” message to every speaker around
the house. Users of multiple voice assistants
can even make an Echo Button work with
other companies’ smart speakers (go.
pcworld.com/alga) by having Alexa utter a
“Hey, Google” or “Hey, Siri” wake word.
Alexa’s location triggers can enable
some powerful automations as well. Try
having them turn off any music and lighting
when you leave, or start playing some
relaxing music when you get home.LIMITATIONS (WITH SOME
WORKAROUNDS)
Although Alexa’s Routines are easy to set up
and use, they do have some limitations,
especially compared to Google Assistant
Routines (go.pcworld.com/ghrt) on a
Google Home speaker.
Most notably, there’s no way to have
Alexa carry out custom voice commands.
You’re instead limited to whatever’s available
through the Actions menu, which means you
can’t use routines to automate video
playback on Fire TV devices, interact with
third-party skills, or play your personal music
collection (go.pcworld.com/msic) from a
media server such as Plex. Alexa Routines
also don’t support multi-room audio, so any
Routines involving music are confined to a