Hands-Free Entertainment: Getting The Most Out Of Amazon Fire TV Voice Search
Long, long ago, the only way you could control your TV was with the buttons and dials on the TV itself. Every time you wanted to change the channel, adjust the picture, or even turn the volume up, you'd have to get up from the couch, march over, and do it by hand.
Thankfully, we no longer live in the stone age. We live in a time where smart remote controls allow us to control our TVs from our comfy perches.
If you're using a Fire TV in particular, then you've got the added bonus of voice search functionality with the smart remote. Using the same voice recognition technology you'd find in a standalone Alexa device, you can call on Amazon's smart assistant to handle all kinds of functions.
All you need to know is the right commands, and you can control your Fire TV with a kind of finesse that viewers of the past could have only dreamed of.
Jump apps and channels
When you're in the midst of a media marathon, you might not always have the time or focus to manually scroll through streaming apps or live TV channels on your Fire TV. You're only got a minute until the commercials end, after all, so you need to get back to the action as quickly as possible.
In the days of numbered TV channels, this would be accomplished by manually entering channel numbers, but nowadays, Alexa has your back. Using the voice command button on your Fire TV remote, you can request any app loaded on your device's memory and, in the case of live TV services, a channel to watch.
For example, if the big game is on, you could press the voice command button and say "go to ESPN on Sling." Your Fire TV would immediately load up the Sling TV app, then switch to the ESPN channel. No numbers to memorize, just names.
Search for shows and genres
To say there is a veritable avalanche of content available for streaming on the many apps you can access on a Fire TV would be a bit of an understatement. There are so many shows and movies of every genre, language, and age available to watch, it can honestly be a bit difficult to find something that you actually want to see.
If you need some help finding a show to spend the afternoon binging, Alexa can pull some numbers for you. Your Fire TV's voice search allows you to search for shows and movies to watch by audibly requesting certain search terms.
For example, you could press the voice command button and say "find classic comedy shows" to get a list of streamable comedies from the older years of television like "The Andy Griffith Show" or "The Addams Family." Your Fire TV search will also differentiate between content available on your subscribed apps, content that's available for free somewhere, and content that requires a paid subscription.
As an added bonus, searching in this way is exponentially faster than manually typing into a search bar with your remote's arrow buttons.
Find an actor's filmography
Everyone's got a few favorite actors, those talented individuals that you absolutely have to see in whatever production you can track down. It can be a bit tricky and time-consuming to manually track down every movie and show your favorite actor was ever in, or at least the ones actually worth watching.
If you're looking for some more appearances by your acting hero, you can use your Fire TV's voice search to get some quick suggestions. Similarly to searching by genres or eras, your Fire TV voice remote can be used to search for shows and movies based on the actors present in them.
For instance, if you pressed the voice command button on your remote and said "Tim Curry movies," you'd get several suggestions of films in which Tim Curry starred or appeared in like "The Rocky Horror Picture Show" or "Muppet Treasure Island." Depending on the results you get, you may also get suggestions for similar films to the ones that actor appeared in, in case you want to branch out a bit.
Browse Prime Video
Since both Alexa and Fire TVs are Amazon-made, they are designed to be inherently compatible with Amazon's other video-related services, like Prime Video. If you have an Amazon Prime account and Prime Video access, then you can quickly and easily browse through the available content on the service using your Fire TV remote's voice command function.
To clarify, while you can launch apps with your remote's voice command, if the content you want is on Prime Video, you can launch it directly. If you want to watch a series that's on Prime Video, like "Invincible," you could press the voice command button on your remote and say "watch Invincible" to immediately begin playback.
Depending on the precise Fire TV model you're using, you can also use voice commands to add content to your Prime Video watchlist for later. For example, you could say "add 'Dungeons & Dragons' to my watchlist," and it'll immediately add the film to your list. If your TV model doesn't support this feature, Alexa will let you know.
Control playback
The only weakness of the Fire TV remote is that, if you lose the remote, it suddenly becomes much harder to control your TV. Even this, though, is not an unsalvageable situation.
If you have a standalone Alexa device in your home, you can use its voice command function to continue controlling your TV. A Fire TV, much like any Amazon-made device, can be synced up with existing Alexa devices in your home, allowing you to control it with voice commands even without your remote.
If you're within audible range of an Alexa speaker, you can get its attention by saying "Alexa," then following up with a command like "pause," "rewind five seconds," or "watch from beginning." As long as your Fire TV is synced up to your Alexa network, Alexa will automatically forward commands to the TV to control playback.
While it's a bit unwieldy, you can also command Alexa to navigate through apps with commands like "scroll up" and "select." Incidentally, all of these commands also work with your remote's voice command button.