Amazon’s hugely popular smart speaker and personal assistant is gracing millions of homes right now. While many of us appreciate its uses for playing music, controlling lights and telling bad jokes, it’s also one of the best organizational tools for your home. You can sync Alexa with all manner of Calendar apps, Tile devices and other productivity tools. Here we show you how to enable these Alexa skills and commands right here.
Sync Your Calendar and Email
Whether you manage your calendar through Outlook, Google or Apple, you can sync it with Alexa, letting you schedule events by talking to Alexa and getting Alexa to list all your upcoming events.
To do this:
1. Open “Alexa app -> More -> Settings -> Calendar & Email.”
2. Tap the account(s) for your calendar and email, allow access, and you’re good to go.
Once you’re set up, you can use Alexa commands to manage your calendar. Here are some of the main commands (though variants of these should also work).
- Alexa, add [event] to my calendar at [time and day]
- Alexa, move [event] to [time and day]
- Alexa, what’s on my calendar?
- Alexa, what is my next event?
- Alexa, what’s on my calendar tomorrow?
Create and Sync To-Do Lists
We’ve written plenty here about the best reminder apps and planner apps. To-do lists tend to fall somewhere between the two, letting you keep track of things you need to do, usually ordered in terms of priority and how urgently they need to be done. Alexa has a whole load of options on this front for you.
First of all, Alexa has its own basic to-do list function baked right into it. Just say: “Alexa, what’s on my to-do list” or “add [event/thing] to my to-do list.“
If you want to integrate to-do lists from your favorite apps like Any.do and Todoist, you can do this, too:
1. Open the “Alexa app -> More -> Settings -> Lists.”
2. Tap the accounts you want to sync.
If you have existing items in your Alexa to-do list, they’ll automatically get sent over to your selected account, and items from those accounts will get synced to your Alexa to-do list from now on, too.
Sync Your Tile
The Tile is an excellent little gizmo that you can attach to your keys and stick in your wallet to easily find them when you lose them. By default, Tile works by syncing with an app on your phone.
Provided you already have a Tile account and the mobile app, you can sync your Tile with your Alexa, too. Once you’ve done that, the commands are simple:
- Alexa, ask Tile to find my phone
- Alexa, ask Tile to find my wallet
- Alexa, ask Tile to find my keys
You get the idea.
These are just some of the ways in which Alexa can help you get organized. The smart little speaker can also take care of shopping lists, traffic information, and do a whole bunch of other things if you’re willing to experiment with IFTTT.
In the meantime, enjoy your newly organized life, thanks to these Alexa skills and commands! We have plenty more content to help your online productivity. We ask the question ‘What does it mean to be productive?’ and have also put together a list of the best office chairs in 2020.