The iPhone's Amazon Alexa App Finally Adds Voice Control

Amazon's Alexa app for iOS has finally added the one thing bizarrely absent since it arrived on the App Store: the ability to actually interact with Alexa through it. The retailer introduced Alexa conversations to the Android app at the start of the year, but at the time only promised that it had iOS support for the same thing on the roadmap.

Now, the roadmap has finally caught up. In an update to the Amazon Alexa app for iPhone and iPad – version 2.2.216514.0 if you're keeping track – released today, there's now an Alexa button in the app. As you'd expect, though, using it is optional.

The first time you tap the button, in fact, you'll be prompted to grant the app permission to access both your phone's microphone and its location. That, Amazon explains, allows Alexa to not only hear your requests – fairly important in a voice-controlled assistant – but also to call and message friends and family, control smart home devices, and deliver up location-relevant results, such as traffic and weather reports.

Assuming you're okay with that, it's a matter of tapping the button an talking every time you want to check in with Alexa. Most of the functionality familiar from Echo smart speakers is present in the app, including the ability to search for music by voice, get sports and news updates, and control paired smart home devices. Some results have graphics, too.

What you can't do, of course, is summon Alexa in the same way you can Siri on the iPhone. Apple unsurprisingly isn't keen on its voice assistant being replaced by a third-party alternative. So, for the moment at least, if you want to speak to Alexa you'll need to open up the Alexa app first.

Google, which brought its Assistant to iOS back in May 2017, has a workaround of sorts. It has a widget that can be added to the iOS widget panel, with a shortcut button to trigger the functionality. It's obviously not as convenient as saying "Hey Siri," but it's definitely quicker than Amazon's system.

We wouldn't be surprised, then, to see Amazon follow suit and cook up a widget of its own. Increasing Alexa use on smartphones is likely to be a big ambition of Amazon's, not least because the assistant supports shopping and product reordering by voice. It's unclear if Amazon is giving Apple a cut of any purchases made by Alexa command, though we'd doubt that's something the retailer would concede to. Apple's demand for that with ebook purchases through the Kindle app, for instance, led Amazon to force would-be readers to buy ebooks separately through the browser instead.