5 cool new features coming to Alexa

There are so many things you can do with Alexa.

Every day, Alexa helps customers stay connected with loved ones, get important information, optimise their daily routines and schedules, and enjoy entertainment. In fact, customers interact with Alexa tens of millions of times every hour.

This feature is our first foray in supporting customers with mobility or speech disabilities to use Alexa with their eyes. Instead of using voice or touch, eye gaze on Alexa will allow customers to gaze at their tablet to perform pre-set Alexa actions, like playing music and shows, control their home environment, and even call loved ones—entirely hands, and voice free.

It’s always Day 1 at Amazon and we’re excited about the potential for eye gaze mode as we continue to evolve the experience based on customer feedback, as well as feedback from our partners United Ability and United Spinal. Eye gaze on Alexa will start rolling out to customers at no additional cost later this year on Fire Max 11 tablets in the U.S., UK, Germany, and Japan.

Today’s families are more dispersed and multi-cultural than ever before. With Call Translation, your Alexa audio and video calls can be translated in real time, allowing call participants to break down language barriers and communicate more effectively. This feature also allows deaf and hard of hearing customers to communicate remotely more easily.

This feature will come to Echo Show and Alexa mobile app customers in the U.S., Canada, Mexico, UK, Germany, France, Italy, and Spain later this year in over 10 languages including English, Spanish, French, German, and Portuguese.

We know calling friends and dropping in on household members is a well-loved Alexa feature for staying in touch and helping coordinate your day to day at home. We’re making it even easier for you to connect with those that matter most. Later this year, you will be able to add the Top Connections widget to your Echo Show devices to easily see your favourite contacts and most frequently used devices within the household. You can quickly initiate a call or drop-in with a single-tap.

Later this year, you’ll be able to initiate a single Routine in multiple ways. For example, you can initiate a Bedtime Routine that turns off all the lights, closes the blinds and begins playing sleep sounds when you say “Alexa, goodnight” or at the time of your choosing.

Later this year, customers will be able to add quick access icons to the top of the device home screen to make it even easier to access content. Rather than swiping to the side to access the widget or top to pull down a panel, this new icon on the home screen will open the respective widget. Widget Quick Actions will be available on Echo Show 8 and 10 devices, and, with this update, widgets will also be available on Echo Show 5.