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Amazon's AI voice assistant, Alexa, currently has over 15,000 skills. That's a lot. A lot more than you'd ever use, or need, or even imagine was possible. If you're somehow not familiar with Alexa Skills, these are basically automated responses to voice commands that you can give out to your Alexa-enabled device and have it launch an app, start a playlist, give you the weather forecast, tell you a funny or unfunny joke, or whatever else. The possibilities truly are endless. And with the recent launch of Blueprints, Alexa's horizons are about to broaden even further.

But in the vast sea of skills available, with the number going steadily up, not to mention the tons of pre-built ones that come with Alexa-enabled devices, how do you find the right ones for you? The most useful ones? Well, that's highly individual, but we're here to help by offering some suggestions.

First off, if you're not familiar with how to enable new Alexa skills, this can be done either through the Alexa app (by tapping "Menu" and selecting "Skills") or by visiting amazon.com/skills. When you find a skill that you like, tap on it for more info, and then tap "Enable" to add it to your Alexa. That's it. Now, let's have a look at some seriously handy tricks that Amazon's AI assistant is capable of!

Music & Video

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Play music simultaneously on multiple Alexa-enabled devices

If you've got multiple Alexa-enabled smart speakers in your house, you can make them all stream music in unison. In order to do this, you'll need multiple speakers (obviously) that are connected to the same Wi-Fi network, and you'll also need either an Amazon Prime or an Amazon Music Family Plan subscription. With more and more households in the US owning two or more smart speakers, this can be a very neat feature, although it may become even more popular in the coming years, as smart speaker adoption continues to hike. In order to enable simultaneous music playback across multiple Alexa-enabled devices, fire up the Alexa app, go to Settings > Multi-Room Music, and follow the setup instructions.

Find the hottest music

If you have your Amazon smart speaker stationed on a dusty, old record cabinet, you're either going to love or hate this feature. If you're wondering what the kids are listening to these days, just enable the Top Music Chart skill and ask Alexa to give you a rundown on the current hottest tunes. You'll either fall in love with this skill or never use it again, depending on your music preferences.

Make Spotify your default music streaming service

If you don't fancy using Amazon Prime Music for your music streaming needs, you can change it to Spotify. In order to do that, you need to link your Spotify account to your Alexa-enabled speaker by firing up the Alexa app, and going to Settings > Music & Media > Spotify. Then you can head over to "Choose default music services" and select "Spotify." If you don't want to change the default service, but would still like to use Spotify in certain situations, you can simply say, "Alexa, play Spotify," or "Alexa, play [song name] on Spotify."

Find the right movie for the right occassion

Find the right movie is a tough task at times. Whether you're alone and in the mood for an old cult flick, or have a bunch of friends over with wildly different preferences, the Cinmate Alexa skill has got your back. With so many streaming services, it's only normal if you didn't know what movie you can find where, and going through all of them is a Pain (with a capital P). So, what you can do instead, is ask Cinemate, which currently supports Amazon Prime Video, Netflix, Hulu, and HBO. But aside from telling you where to watch your movie of choice, it can also help you choose it to begin with. Cinemate can provide information about plot, cast, run time, release date, director, and much, much more. Just try asking "Who's in it," or "Where can I watch it," or "What's it about?"

Control your TV

If you have an Amazon Fire TV connected to your TV set, you can naturally use Alexa to start streaming from a specific app, or search content by actor and genre. But even if you don't maybe your TV has Alexa support built-in! Many Sony TVs have been recently getting out-of-the-box support for Alexa, meaning you can use the assistant turn the TV on and off, control volume, and change channel.

Discover new releases on Netflix

The Alexa Netflix skill is one of the many so-called "flash briefing" skills available for the assistant. By asking "What's new on Netflix," you can get a list of the latest releases on the popular streaming service.

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