The new Alexa app on iPhone.
Amazon
Amazon said Monday that it is starting to launch a completely redesigned Alexa app for Apple’s iPhone, phones and tablets using Google’s Android platform and its own Fire tablets.
While Alexa is more commonly associated with Amazon’s living room devices like Echo and Fire TV, the digital assistant is also available on other platforms, offering many of the same features as Apple’s Siri and Google Assistant.
But the current Alexa app is often difficult to use, as it offers irrelevant random messages from the home screen and forces users to search menus to find different settings.
That should be corrected in the update, which Amazon says will put its most-used features front and center. In the new app, you can see your reminders, a Spotify playlist you’ve been listening to, your shopping list, an upcoming alarm, and an Audible book that’s started, for example. That means the Alexa home screen will look different than someone else’s.
Amazon is also moving the Alexa button from the bottom of the app to the top, where it says it’s easier to find. Reminders, routines, skills, settings and other options are being moved from the menu, where they were hardest to find, to a new “More” button at the bottom of the screen.
The changes could lead Amazon loyalists to stick with the app on all devices.
Amazon said it expects it to be available to all existing users in late August.
.
