Each of us has our own morning routine, even if you don’t need to leave home first thing in the morning because you work remotely to perform a series of common actions. Among them is listening to the news to keep informed of what is happening in the world. That’s why we want to help you improve this by using an Amazon Echo or any other Alexa-compatible device and its daily news roundup .
What is the news summary in Alexa
As its name suggests and as you may already be guessing, the news summary in Alexa is nothing more than that, a summary with the most prominent current issues that different media cover daily. But it is not a simple compilation of headlines, but you have fragments that help you to know a little more what has happened, is happening or will happen. So if you are one of those who always wants to be well informed, but you don’t have much time to sit quietly and watch the headlines of the main newspapers, it is a great option.
Also, one of the great attractions of this Alexa news summary is that you decide which sources you want to use. So just choose from all the available ones. But the thing is not there, you could also add other useful information in your summary such as the weather forecast.
It is, without a doubt, a very useful feature that once you start using it, you use it every morning in the same way that you use your coffee maker to prepare that first coffee of the day that wakes you up.
How to create and configure your news digest on Amazon
Now that you know what all this news summary is about in Alexa, why not create your own. Doing so is as simple as any of the other possibilities offered by Amazon’s voice assistant and its smart speakers as well as other compatible devices.
To start, the first step is to take your mobile phone and open the Alexa application. Then you just have to do the following:
- Open the Alexa app
- Go to the More section
- Now tap on the settings section to access all the available options
- There, locate the one that indicates News Summary, just inside the Alexa Preferences section
- In the new screen that appears you will only have to add the content of the medium that you want to listen to. For example, Onda Cero news or any of those that you will have available in the application itself. Regardless of the topic or the country where they are generated
- Ready, you have it
As you can see, it is very fast to configure everything, although there is still something else you can do: order the order of the added media. To do this, if you have exited the Alexa application, you will have to re-enter.
Now go to the configuration section again and again to News summary. When you are inside you will see that an edit button appears in the upper right corner. Touch on it and you will be able to modify each of the media that you have previously added so that they are played in the order you want.
From now on, you will only have to ask your device with Alexa to give you the news of the day . You can specify a date in case you want to hear those of a specific day or simply say “Alexa, the news” and it will tell you those that correspond to the last available day.
Integrating the news summary into routines
As you can also imagine, asking Alexa for a summary of the news is fine, but you can go one step further and integrate everything into a routine that you can shoot in multiple ways. For example, the routine always starts at a specific time and days that you define, depending on an action you can take, when you are in a specific location or when you are in your car on the way to work and use Echo Auto.
To do this, the process is also quite simple, because it is like creating any other routine:
- Open the Alexa app on your mobile phone
- Go to the More section and once you are there click on the Routines option
- Now do the usual process, tap on the + icon and start by defining the name of the routine
- Then set when it will run (when you ask, at a specific time, day, etc.)
- Finally, add each of the actions you want to execute, including the one that interests you, which is the news summary.
Ready, now when this routine is executed among the rest of the possible actions that you have been able to create, the one of the news summary will also be executed. Of course, you will have to have previously configured your summary with the sources you want to use. If you don’t, you won’t get any response.
Always up to date with Alexa
As you can see, being always up to date with everything that happens around you is very simple with Alexa devices. You just have to know all your options and take advantage of them in the way that gives you the most benefits.
What’s more, you could play with the rest of the options to get that in the morning it gives you only the information related to more generic topics that affect society as such. And already in the afternoon or by the time you get home, the news from those media that also interest you and talk about topics related to your hobbies.
