If checking the weather and playing your favorite music are the only things you ever do with your smart speaker, you are missing out. New apps and capabilities are coming out every day. Of course, sometimes it can feel like there are too many options to know what is even worth using.
To help narrow things down, we’ve put together a list of some of our favorites.
The 7 best smart speaker features
- Learn your history. There are a ton of knowledge apps for smart speakers out there. Whether you want to hear daily facts about cats or listen to educational podcasts, there will be plenty of options. Here’s one particularly fun feature: If you ask your speaker what happened today in history, it will tell you a major historical event that happened on today’s date.
- Manage your home. Along with your phone, your smart speaker can be one of the major hubs of your smart home. If you connect your speaker to smart devices using your home Wi-Fi, you can control them using your voice. Just be sure that you pick smart devices that will integrate with your particular brand of smart speaker.
- Order a ride. Sometimes you want to catch a rideshare to go out, but you don’t have your hands free. Maybe you are putting on your makeup. Maybe you are trying to finish dinner. The reason doesn’t matter, because now you can order a ride from one of the major ridesharing apps using your voice. All you have to do is download one of the major ridesharing apps and integrate it with your smart speaker app beforehand.
- Set a timer. Everyone needs a good timer. Whether you need a kitchen timer for cooking, a stopwatch for exercise or an hourglass for managing your kids’ screen time, all you have to do is ask.
- Play games. From bingo to trivia, your smart home speaker can help you fight boredom on a slow day. Many voice apps even refresh with great new content every single day, so you can make gaming part of your nightly routine.
- Set an alarm. Are you tired of the same ringtones you’ve been waking up to for years? Smart speakers can make great alarms, especially if you set them to music or mild ambient sounds.
- Check sports scores. Are you curious for how the latest game is going but too busy to watch it? All you have to do is ask your smart speaker about the score of any major sports league to get an update.
Hopefully this list will help you get more out of your smart speaker. Now it’s time to go try all of these great features for yourself.
This article is AT&T sponsored content written by Matt Johnsen, a TechBuzz contributor. The statements in this article are his own and don’t necessarily represent the positions, strategies, or opinions of AT&T.
