Amazon would wish to help you use your Echo Show without talk . The party is swan out an update this week that it hopes will “ make interact with Alexa more natural . ”
First up is a new gesture that rent you raise your hand to stop a timer . The feature film is an extra method to interact with the impudent display and can be used if you ca n’t straightaway blackguard “ stop ! ” or physically bug the Echo Show to dismiss an alarm . It ’s also a helpful availability feature of speech . But that ’s the extent of this gestures update for now .
If you need to try it and have a compatibleEcho Show 8orEcho Show 10 , head to options > equipment Options > Gestures in the Alexa app on iOS and Android to enable it . Amazon offeredgesturesas an accessibility feature before this passing , but this new ability uses the camera to tell if your decoration is open or closed .
Stop, Alexa!!! Alexa, NO MORE.Image: Amazon
A few other abilities are number through in this update . Tap to Alexa is a new feature that lets you call on Alexa without using your vox . Folks with speech disabilities or who are nonverbal and nonspeaking can habituate Text to Speech to essentially “ input ” a instruction to Alexa . It still reads it out loud , but you could also set up customs actions as needed . This sounds like to Google’sAction Blocks , an handiness app for folks to program quick action button that they can access straight from the Android home screen .
Amazon is also introducing Consolidated Captions , which lets you at the same time change by reversal on closed captioning on all compatible Echo Show machine . This include Call Captioning , which offers captions for Alexa call , and Alexa Captioning , which transcribes Alexa ’s response in real - time . To enable this , swipe down on your Echo machine , then select preferences > Accessibility > Captions to turn on the setting on your report .
The rumors ofAlexa ’s demisehave been greatly magnified , or at least that ’s what Amazon would have you imagine with these raw tools for its digital supporter . Talking computers are n’t as exciting as they were ab initio , but they ’re a part of the business for a company like Amazon , which is still competing with Google . Google Assistant might be unspoiled with diction but lacks capabilities compared to Amazon ’s massive library of Skills .
This is what the settings panel for Consolidated Captions looks like.Image: Amazon
There ’s also been a mini - race to see who can get the next batch of “ next - gen ” digital supporter feature . Google , for illustration , has had snoozing gestures useable on the secondly - genNest Hubsince its launch almost two years ago . It also lets you “ text ” the Assistant from a compatible Android or iOS machine , so you do n’t technically have to talk to it at all if you ’re available to typecast .
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