Alexa routines can now be triggered using multiple custom phrases making it easier for everyone in a household to initiate smart home automations without having to remember the exact wording (via AFTVnews).
For example, instead of having to remember to say “Alexa, good night” to kick off a nighttime routine that locks the doors and shuts off the lights, you can now assign additional phrases like “Alexa, bedtime” or “Alexa, night night.” You can even add “Alexa, bonne nuit” to the same routine thanks to Amazon’s support for multilingual households. Up to seven custom phrases can be assigned to the same routine.
It’s a small but welcome change for smart homes built around Alexa. It follows a big week for Alexa, where we saw it get a masculine voice option and a huge developer push to drive Alexa’s expansion beyond the more than 140,000 smart home devices that the ambient assistant currently controls.
