26 Best Alexa Skills for 2022
Alexa can do much more than turn off your lights or play your favorite music. You can use mini programs called Alexa Skills, which can boost how your Amazon Echo devices work every day.
Amazon often publishes Alexa Skills they love. We also have a few suggestions of our own. These 26 Alexa Skills can help you with meal planning, teach you a new fact for the day, or give you a mental boost when you've hit the afternoon lull. Each one is highly rated, and free to enable on your Amazon Echo device.
Drink
Ever think about doing a wine tasting with Alexa? Or maybe learn more about bourbon and whiskey from Alexa? it all can be done thanks to these top Alexa Skills for Drink.
Wente Vineyards, the first family of chardonnay, has created an Alexa wine tasting skill which helps you learn about the vineyard, its history dating back to 1853 and the basics of wine. Alexa and Wente will lead you through a wine tasting of three of their wines.
How about a bourbon tasting with help from the Russell family and Matthew McConaughey? Yes, Matthew McConaughey, the actor and Wild Turkey's creative director and the Russel family, the first family of bourbon lead you through a unique whiskey tasting. Hear from the master distillers and McConaughey on how they make bourbon, the Wild Turkey heritage and what to look for in each Wild Turkey bottle you taste. The Alexa Skill is a guided interactive tour which you can ask questions and hear answers from the group. (Learn more from GearBrain's review of this skill: Review: Wild Turkey Tasting courtesy of Amazon Alexa and Google Assistant,)
Food
From food prep to shopping reminders, these Alexa Skills will make it easier to face the refrigerator when you come home from work. Once you've mastered these abilities, there are many other Alexa Skills that can help you in the kitchen.
Ever a fan favorite, this Alexa Skill lets you add items to a grocery list in your OurGroceries app, which can be used to shop from multiple retailers including Target.
Improve your mind
These quick bites talk about subjects from household debt to major events in history, something you can learn while you're brewing coffee in the morning, or snacking on your lunch.
This Alexa Skill lets you play a selection of the famous TED Talks, which you can search for by topic, or speaker or even one that will make you laugh. Alexa can also find and play the latest TED talk available.
With the app you can listen to short playbacks on different subjects from 5G to household debt. Run by Marketplace hosts Kal Ryssdal and Molly Wood.
A&E TV built this Alexa Skill which tell you a bit about some major events that happened on the same day in history. You can ask Alexa to also tell you details about other days as well.
Break Time
Alexa has quite a number of ways, in particular, to help people start a meditation practice. But these Alexa Skills below are also great for when you need to push back from the computer, walk away from the children or just tune out for a few.
Look, we could all use a meditative moment these days, and hearing waves crashing on a beach can put most of us in a fairly calm state. A pro version of this Skill keeps the loop going for four hours, while the free version works for one. (Which, honestly, is a lot of chill time for free.)
Who doesn't need a complement once in awhile? Flatter Me isn't going to get up close and personal, but offer a few comments to make you boost your mood during the day. Sure, what Alexa says with this Skill may start to sound repetitive, but let's hope you're not tapping this more than once a day.
This Alexa Skill offers meditation guides that you can play through Amazon's digital assistant. You can try the Skill for free, but will need to eventually pay if you want to continue to use the routines.
A Skill that also gives its mission away in the name, these are simple messages that play to help bring a more upbeat spin to your day.
Fitness goals
Can't always build a full workout into your day? Alexa has a number of quick exercise routines that can be finished in less than your coffee break. We have our favorites below, and you can tap into more Alexa Skills for Fitness once you're ready to expand your workouts, as well as those that just focus specifically on your health.
For the 28 million people who use the Fitbit wearable, this Skill is excellent, letting people check in on their goals from workouts to sleep.
You get three different levels from low-impact to standard and advanced with this free Alexa Skill. If you pair it with the Alexa Show you can actually see the workouts on the screen.
This Skill is exactly what it says, six minutes of guided stretching that you can do at home with stretches for your legs, arms and shoulders. And it's completely free.
Again, we've got a Skill here that describes itself perfectly. For anyone looking to add some planks into their exercise routine, this free Skill helps you build to five minutes by breaking the plank poses into short bites. And you can have Alexa play music at the same time.
Smart home
Alexa Skills for the smart home are mostly designed for a specific brand or product. There are thousands of them as well, and many specifically for the smart home, including smart locks. Here are just a few that work with some of the more popular products we've tested at GearBrain.
This Alexa Skill connects to Roomba's iRobot line of smart vacuums and the Braava jet robot mop. You can use Alexa to get Roomba to start vacuuming or even go back to its charger.
This highly-rated Skill gives Alexa the ability to control TP-Link lights, switches and the Kasa camera. All you have to do is ask Alexa to control the specific scene or group you've set up in the app.
Ask Alexa, and with this Skill the digital assistant will call your phone number, helping you locate your missing phone. Set up is simple, but while you get the first five uses for free, you have to pay — just something to keep in mind.
This skill defines DIY in terms of home security. Guard Dog does nothing more than start playing a barking and growling dog — from little pups to the bigger canines.
Games
Designed for downtime, these Alexa Skills help you unwind a bit with some gaming and fun just for the asking.
With this Alexa Skill, your device will play short bites of songs — Top 40 and even classic tunes — and you then have to guess the title.
Alexa has a lot of interactive games available as Skills, and a favorite is The Magic Door which lets you go on an adventure, while you collect magic objects and explore different realms from an ancient temple to a dark forest.
For entrepreneurs
When launching a business, any bit of advice can come in handy and these Alexa Skills can help schedule you day, keep invoices paid and be more focused during your day.
This Alexa Skill tunnels into your Google Calendar — a quirky touch — letting you add events and dates just by asking.
Now just ask Alexa to send money, ask for funds or even check your PayPal balance. You do need to create a four-digit pin to get the PayPal Skill working.
This Alexa Skill is actually a Flash Briefing, something that can be scheduled to play every morning. Jen Lehner records different pieces on areas from social media to how to be more productive during your day — skill every business owners want to sharpen.
Weather
Who doesn't want to know if the day is bringing sunshine of rain? These Alexa Skills can help you clue in on whether you need an umbrella or you can leave your jacket at home. And if you're facing some bad storms, check out our roundup of Alexa Skills to help you build an emergency plan.
This Alexa Skill needs your address, but then it can give you hourly forecasts of your area. Pay for a premium account and you can get radar imagery and also custom weather alerts on rain, wind, cold and more.
This Alexa Skill comes from one of the experts in all things weather-related. You do need to give the country and zip code to get the Skill working, but from there you can ask Alexa for details on pollen count, the UV index and if it might snow or not.
This Alexa Skill is designed for the Echo Show, pulling up radar maps on the screen based on your country and zip code.
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