If you want to adjust the volume on your Google Home, you can just swipe along the touch-sensitive top of the device to turn the volume up or down. However, alarms use a different volume level. To adjust that, you’ll need to open up the Google Home app on your phone.
How to Change the Alarm Volume On Your Google Home
If you want to adjust the volume on your Google Home, you can just swipe along the touch-sensitive top of the device to turn the volume up or down. However, alarms use a different volume level. To adjust that, you’ll need to open up the Google Home app on your phone.
The Nest Thermostat is one of the most-loved smart thermostats on the market, but are you getting the most out of all its great features? Here are some things you might be missing out on.
While you can invite other users to share access to your home’s Abode security system during the initial setup process, here’s how to access that screen if you ever want to invite someone else.
If you pay for professional monitoring with your Abode home security system, you can set up emergency contacts that are notified whenever an intrusion is detected, adding in a bit more peace of mind.
The Echo Show is the only Amazon Echo product with a home screen. When you’re not using it, the Show will suggest voice commands, display your events, and even bring you current events. If you don’t like what you see, you can customize the background photo and what cards the Echo Show displays when it’s not doing something else.
Amazon’s popular Echo speaker system (and the personal assistant Alexa that comes with it) seem completely enmeshed with Amazon ecosystem, but does that mean you need a Prime account to take advantage of the Echo?
Now that Amazon Echos can receive calls and messages, it’s only a matter of time before you get sick of all the notifications. The Echo Show can be the most invasive, allowing impromptu video calls or Drop Ins, and showing you events or news. Here’s how to enable Do Not Disturb mode on the Echo Show so you can get some peace and quiet at night.
By default, the motion camera that comes with your Abode home security system is set at a lower resolution, but here’s how to up the resolution if you want a better-quality image out of the motion camera.
The Amazon Dash Wand is a $20 dongle-like device that’s marketed as the definitive kitchen assistant. It can shop for groceries for you and has Alexa built in, making it the cheapest Alexa device that Amazon sells (especially if you consider the fact that it’s basically free after the $20 credit you get when buying it). However, there are a lot of things it can’t do. Here’s a little rundown of that the Wand is and isn’t capable of.
Your Echo Show is a device for the whole family to share, which means you’ll want to make sure everyone can both see and hear it. Here’s how to adjust the brightness settings, disable adaptive brightness, and change the volume of your alarms.
If you only have one or two Echos, it may not matter if they’re called boring and repetitive names like “John’s Echo” and “John’s Second Echo” in the Alexa app. But the more Echos you have, the more it can matter—especially if you use features like Amazon’s “drop in” intercom system and other calling features.
When you arm and disarm your Abode home security system, it delays it for 60 seconds by default, presumably to give you enough time to leave the house before the whole system is armed. Here’s how to change the delay time or disable it completely.
With a tap of a button, you can change the color of your Philips Hue lights. While the Hue app comes with a few color presets built-in, you can also create your own custom scenes from your own photos.
Tablet sales are slumping at the moment, probably as a result of big smartphones and convertible laptops chip away at a tablet’s usefulness. But if you have one or more tablets at home gathering dust while you happily poke away at your giant smartphone, there are probably some good ways to put them to use rather than selling them or recycling them. Here are a few ideas.
By default, when you say “Alexa” near the Echo Show, it displays a blue line on a screen. If you’d prefer something a bit more obvious, you can make your Echo Show play a sound every time you invoke it.
The Amazon Echo always seemed like a perfect device to use as an intercom within your house. This is now a reality, as Amazon has released its “Drop In” feature on all Echo devices. Here’s how to set it up.
The Echo Show‘s handy 7″ screen makes it stand apart from all the other Amazon Echo products. While Alexa was designed to do things without any touch input at all, sometimes it’s handy to just tap a screen, rather than listen to a long, drawn-out verbal prompt. The Show gives you a touch screen fall back when you need it, plus it lets you play video in the background. Here are the biggest ways the Echo Show distinguishes itself from other Echo products.
Not everyone is excited about Amazon’s “Drop In” intercom-like feature. But Amazon enables it by default—even if you choose “Later” at the splash screen. So here’s how to turn it off entirely.
More than likely, you have multiple people living in your household. If you have Arlo cameras set up around your house, it would be beneficial to share that access with other family members. Here’s how to set it up.
The Echo Show lets anyone start playing YouTube videos on its small display. If you have little ones in the house, you might not want them watching everything you can find on YouTube. To fix this, the Echo Show comes with YouTube Restricted Mode enabled out of the box that filters adult content. Here’s how to turn it off.
If you want others in your household to see who’s at the door and when the doorbell was rung, you can share access through the SkyBell HD app on your phone. Here’s how to do it.
The Echo Show is Amazon’s newest voice assistant gadget. This time around, Alexa comes with a screen so she can play videos, show you your events, and let you see search results rather than having them read aloud to you. It seems a little contradictory for a voice assistant at first, but the Echo Show has a few advantages over its tubular counterpart. Here’s how to set yours up.
With the addition of calling and messaging other Alexa users using the Amazon Echo, there might come a time where you want to block a certain someone from contacting you. Here’s how to do it.
Stringify is a crazy powerful tool that lets you automate complex tasks with minimal effort, even if you don’t know any code. One of Stringify’s most powerful tools is called Connect: Flow. This “Thing” lets you use one Flow to activate another, or even create a Flow that loops itself.
It’s really easily to arm and disarm your Abode home security system manually, as it’s only a tap away. However, here’s how to have the system automatically do that for you whenever you come and go from your house.
