Zift Advisory
The Amazon Alexa app serves as a mobile control center for Amazon Echo users. The Amazon Alexa app is free to download and use, and does not feature advertisements or in-app purchases. This app is safe for kids but it is more of a hub for Echo devices and is more suitable for adults.
What is Amazon Alexa?
The Amazon Alexa app serves as a mobile control center for Amazon Echo users, easily accessing their accounts and account information from mobile devices. The Amazon Alexa app is free to download and use, and does not feature advertisements or in-app purchases, apart from purchasing Amazon products through Alexa.
Those using the Amazon Echo as a hub for their smart home, can use the Amazon Alexa app to control the settings and view the status of all synced smart devices.
The Amazon Alexa app’s home feed shows all of the Echo’s actions, not just orders placed through voice command, including questions asked, music played, recipes requested, etc.
For items such as recipe requests, the Amazon Alexa app can come in handy, providing a text version of the recipe that was provided via audio through Echo.
By simply connecting and syncing accounts, Amazon Alexa app users can control, access and purchase music to add to their library, send reminders for important appointments and events (as well as alarms), listen to audiobooks, manage the smart devices in their home, and a myriad of other functions.
The Amazon Alexa app is also perfect in serving as an introduction to all of the things the Amazon Echo can do.
Once open, users will see the home feed, containing all of the Echo’s recent actions, and a drop-down menu option in the upper left hand corner of the screen.
The menu serves as users’ quick jump to conveniently access Alexa’s functions. Users can review, add and access media via the Music, Video and Books option, create or access Lists, set or review Reminders and Alarms, manage Smart Home devices, discover how to use Alexa to its fullest with Things to Try, and adjust an Echo’s Settings.
Is Amazon Alexa safe for my kids?
Parents should know that the Amazon Alexa app is the hub and dashboard, for their Amazon Echo and associated smart devices, and is required for device set up.
Free to use and download, the Amazon Alexa app is a great way to monitor children’s activity while away, as the home screen provides a running feed of all a user’s Amazon Echo’s actions.
Many a news story has covered cases of small children ordering expensive items from Amazon, with the help of Alexa (the Echo’s personal assistant) and Echo.
Parents can now monitor Echo activity, and potentially catch inadvertent, accidental or unapproved ordering activity before an order can be processed.
Parents will want to pay particular attention to the Settings menu as this is the area where they can protect from unwanted purchases. Under Settings, users scroll to the Voice Purchasing sub-menu option, which allows them to toggle the option to purchase by voice (through an Alexa-enabled device) on or off.
Purchases may also be protected by requiring a four-digit voice code, which users may enter under the Voice Code selection. Unfortunately, Alexa does not feature any content filters, so parents are unable to set a filter for the music or other media that is purchased or streamed through their Alexa-enabled device.
The Amazon Alexa app is great for helping users navigate their Alexa-enabled devices and serving as a dashboard or hub for accessing everything to which their account is connected.
There’s the ability to protect from unwanted purchases by turning voice commands off or setting a voice code, and the ability to review an Echo’s history, to monitor what children are asking or instructing Alexa to do while parents are out of the room.
This app is safe for kids but it is more of a hub for Echo devices and is more suitable for adults. That being said, Amazon does now offer a kid-friendly version of the Echo, the Echo Dot Kids.
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