Amazon has recently made it possible to make an Alexa request that doesn’t actually execute immediately. As discovered by Reddit user versaveaux, you can now add “…in X minutes” to the end of an Alexa request to easily schedule the request in the near future. For example, saying “turn off the lights in 10 minutes” will now work as expected. Judging by the comments from some people on Reddit, this new capability may not be available to everyone yet.
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I’ve been using this command to turn things off only (for a few years). I wanted to be able to tell Alexa to play my radio station “for 15 minutes”, but saw that this didn’t work, so I tell it to play and then to stop in 15 minutes. The only hassle is its insistence in acknowledging the command, so I have to listen to it babble twice.
Not really the same thing though – you couldn’t control devices in that way, just audio streams
Finally
Finally! I’ve been able to do this on Google Nest Home (Assistant) for years! So glad I can finally do this on my Echo as well.
I have always wondered why you can tell Alexa to play something, then say “Alexa, set a sleep timer for __ minutes” and the audio will stop after that time, but we haven’t been able to turn something on or off after a period of time. It seems ridiculous that we could have one delayed action, but not another.
Amazon has some ‘splaining to do.
Actually identified two weeks earlier than that post but people on Reddit get very annoyed when you refer them to an earlier post. Actually, people on Reddit just get very annoyed, period…
Hahahaha
This has always worked for Routines in the Alexa app. And a few times I DID have it working by voice for lights.
Now if only they will fix the Alexa app so it’s not the slowest app on my phone other than the next slowest, Amazon Shopping.
If you mean using a wait command, then it’s not the same by any measure, nor do I believe you had it working by voice other than the cumbersome sleep timer for lights command…
is there a limit on this
for example can I say turn the light off is 24 hours or 48 hours?
can I only use minutes can I say something like tomorrow a 5 o clock etc. ?
Try it and see? However in the situations you provide , I’d suggest a scheduled routine would better serve your needs