Amazon has started informing customers that Alexa’s ability to manage emails will end on November 8th, 2021. The feature, which was added at the end of 2018, allowed customers to link Gmail, Hotmail, and Outlook email accounts in the Alexa app. Once linked, you could say “Alexa, read my email” to hear a list of your most recent emails. Then, you could ask for an email to be read, deleted, archived, and several other actions including replying to an email by voice. It’s unclear why Amazon is discontinuing the feature, but it did require Amazon to constantly check and store a copy of your emails on its servers, which could certainly be a burden if the feature was seldom used, not to mention the privacy and security concerns that doing so entails. As a byproduct, Alexa will also no longer be able to provide package tracking updates for non-Amazon deliveries, since that feature was only possible by linking your email account. Receiving Amazon delivery updates by saying “Alexa, where’s my stuff?” will continue to work, as will calendar access. Customers who have linked their email accounts with Alexa don’t need to do anything, as the email accounts will be unlinked automatically.

During today’s big Amazon event, where numerous new Alexa devices were revealed, an interesting new capability to existing devices was announced. Amazon announced that the 4th-generation Amazon Echo and the 3rd-generation Echo Show 10 will soon be able to process all voice requests locally on the device without needing to send any recordings to the cloud. This is a pretty feature and one that has not been achieved by any smart speaker. Read more ›

Alexa routines have gained a small but useful new feature. When creating an Alexa routine that is launched by a custom phrase, it is now possible to add additional phrases that can launch the same routine. Prior to this change, each routine could only be launched by a single phrase. Now you can add up to 7 different phrases to each Alexa routine. This allows you to add variations of the main phrase, in case you or someone in your household is prone to forget the exact wording needed. It also lets you add some fun alternative phrases without losing the ability to use simpler phrases for launching Alexa routines.