The new Amazon Echo Plus, which doubles as a smart home hub

Amazon just announced a new feature called Alexa Announcements that lets you broadcast an announcement to every Amazon Echo in your house.



Users will be able to announce that "Dinner's ready!" for example, and every Echo in a home will repeat the message, alerting everyone who might be out of voice reach.

To use the feature, available in the U.S. and Canada, start by saying one of the phrases below:

Alexa, announce ...

Alexa, tell everyone...

Alexa, broadcast...

Amazon has already allowed users to call each Echo individually, but this lets the system act more like an intercom.