Amazon Alexa has got a new Auto Mode feature that makes Alexa in the vehicle even better with Echo Auto and supported Alexa auto accessories. Auto mode in the Alexa app lets you turn your phone into a smart, driver-friendly display that enhances Alexa’s in-vehicle voice experience.
This will help you stay focused on the road with easy to read visuals, large touch targets and intuitive features and shortcuts for the most common Alexa interactions used in the vehicle like navigating to saved locations, placing calls to contacts and Alexa devices, and playing recent media.
Auto Mode consists of four screens — Home, Navigation, Communication, and Play — and a persistent menu bar allows users to quickly switch between them.
- Home Screen: It is designed to provide one-touch access to your frequent actions, with shortcuts to play and pause your current music source, navigate to home or work, and to make a call. You can simply tap on the shortcut to initiate the action or ask Alexa, for example “Alexa, continue playing my music.”
- Navigate: Provides one click access to your favorite locations stored in the Alexa app. Choosing a destination will open your preferred navigation app and begin guidance. You can switch back to the Alexa app using only your voice by simply asking, “Alexa, go back to the Alexa app.”
- Communicate: It allows you to easily place a call, Drop In, or make an announcement to your Alexa devices. You can ask Alexa to initiate the action or touch your selection, and Auto Mode will provide an easy-to-read list of recently placed calls and devices.
- Play: Shows the most recent media played using any Alexa device and a convenient button to play or pause, along with a list of most recently played media. Selecting any of the items in the list starts playing the media and brings up the Now Playing screen, which provides additional controls specific to the type of media being played and the service used.
Auto Mode will roll out to Android and iOS in the coming weeks in the U.S., Canada, Germany, France, India, Italy, Spain, UK, Australia and New Zealand.