The unfortunate reality is that with each new capability that Alexa gains, it becomes more likely that Amazon’s voice assistant will execute a command in an unintended way. Now that Alexa can be used to remotely control the Amazon Fire TV, Fire TV Stick, and Fire TV Edition televisions, users are finding that many of the new Fire TV commands overlap with existing commands. If you were to say “Alexa, play Nightcrawler” there is no way to know if the Jake Gyllenhaal movie from 2014 will begin playing on your Fire TV or if any one of the dozens of songs of the same name will begin playing on the Alexa device. One solution to this problem is to always end your command with “…on Fire TV” but there is a more elegant solution, which is to use sight-based commands whenever possible.

To get an Alexa device to start playing a specific movie or TV show on your Fire TV, instead of saying “Alexa, play [title]” get in the habit of saying “Alexa, watch [title].” By using a sight-based command, it’s clear that you want to see something on your TV and not hear something on the Alexa device, so you’re leaving less room for misinterpretation.

You can use an Alexa device to search for content on the Fire TV by saying “Alexa, search for [movie/show/genre/app] on Fire TV” or “Alexa, find [movie/show/genre/app] on Fire TV.” Instead, you’re better off saying “Alexa, show me [movie/show/genre/app]” because it’s clear you want to see something on the TV and not just hear a response from the Alexa device you’re talking to.

Since the Amazon Echo Show has a screen, using sight-based Fire TV commands doesn’t mitigate the confusion on that device, so you’ll still need to specify “…on Fire TV” with the Echo show. That said, it’s still best to use sight-based commands when making Fire TV requests, since odds are you’re usually going to be making requests to an Alexa device without a screen.

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