Amazon Bring Alexa Announcements to Sonos One, Beam, and Other Devices

Aug. 11, 2018

Amazon Echo devices have a great feature that allows users to makecustom announcements across all connected speakersunder one roof. This is useful when calling a family meeting, or announcing that dinner is ready. Although the feature was launched back in April forEcho devices,Amazon has now added support for some more third-party smart speakersand entertainment systems powered by Alexa.

The list of smart speakers getting this feature includes Sonos One and Beam. Creating an announcement is fairly easy and there is a bunch oftrigger phrases such as “Alexa, announce“, “Alexa, command“, “Alexa, broadcast“, or even just “Alexa, tell everyone“, which can be used to initiate the command. Alexa would not waste time trying to transcribe the announcement and broadcast in her own voice. Rather, the smart assistant would justplay the recording across every connected speakerin the house (or office depending on where you use them).

There is also an option to set a speaker to DND individually or turn off announcements for a specific speaker in from theAlexaapp. Interestingly, Google also has asimilar broadcast feature on Google Assistantbut it is limited toGoogle Home devices.

Besides the two Sonos devices, the announcements feature is also coming to ecobee’s smart thermostat, which is called ecobee4, and Switch+ smart light switch. While the smart thermostat can already be used to read the news, the feature will now let you use it as a PA system for the home.

All in all, the feature is very useful and while Amazon has not made clear indications, a slew ofother third-party smart speakers should get the feature soon, depending on how deep is Amazon’s relationship with the respective manufacturer. For now, there is no way by which other can acknowledge having heard the announcement but we hope Amazon gives it a thought too.