What you need to know
- Alexa Routines now work with Fire TV commands.
- You'll be able to weave in content focused commands such as pausing movies with typical smart home controls like dimming lights.
- Amazon is rolling this change out globally starting today.
Whether it's Samsung, Google, or Amazon, big tech companies have been working on 'routines' via their digital assistant in the past couple of years. These are simple shortcuts that aggregate and combine multiple actions into one command to save time and give users more countrol. Today, Amazon is rolling out an improvement to Alexa's Routines, adding support for the Fire TV's voice commands.
Writing in a blog post, Amazon's Fire TV team explained:
[Y]ou can now create an Alexa Routine so that when someone in your house says "Alexa, I'm getting a snack," Alexa will pause your Fire TV content and turn on your smart lights. You can also create a Routine so that when someone says "Alexa, I'm back," Alexa can say "OK — now back to your show," turn off your smart lights, and resume playing content. According to a new Morning Consult survey commissioned by Amazon, 75 percent of U.S. respondents said that they or someone in their household pause their show or movie at least once per night to get a snack or drink, so we hope they find these Routines helpful! These are just two examples you can now create.
You can build your own Alexa Routines if you're not a fan of Amazon's default presets, and the feature is rolling out globally across all Fire TV devices.
Amazon Fire TV Stick Lite
Amazon's newest HDMI dongle is its cheapest Fire TV stick ever. At $30, the Fire TV Stick Lite dispenses with the additional TV controls of its mainline counterpart, but it still gets the job done.
