Alexa+ has been rolling out to users across the board (well, users with Prime, that is) as its Early Access becomes more widely available. Now, there's a new feature to explore if you're also a Kindle Scribe user: Send to Alexa. This lets you send your Kindle Scribe notes to the AI-powered assistant so you can ask questions about them without having to refer back to your Kindle.
It won't automatically do this with all your notes. You'll need to manually share either the entire notebook or a specific page with Alexa, using the share tool. You'll also need to have the third-generation Kindle Scribe or Kindle Scribe Colorsoft, though Amazon says this feature should eventually come to older Kindle Scribe models, and to the Kindle Scribe Without Front Light due out this year. If you're looking for an exact breakdown of how to use this feature, keep reading.
I took the new feature for a spin, and it does work. Alexa+ did a good job analyzing my notebook full of my notes and plans for a week-long family trip to Disney World, and was able to decipher some of the quick codes I used to refer to the parks or specific Disney terms, and was able to add alerts based on notes I made after I asked. It could not, however, fully decipher another note I sent that was entirely in cursive.
Will it change your life? Probably not, especially since you need to manually send any notebooks or pages to your Alexa+ powered device in order to ask your smart speaker about them. Alexa also won't know if you changed something in your notes unless you resend it and have the assistant analyze the note again. But as an avid digital notetaker, this is one of the only features I find myself excited to use.
How Send to Alexa Works
Photograph: Nena Farrell
To use Share with Alexa on one of the new Kindle Scribes, you'll need to have Alexa+ active on your account. Your Kindle and Alexa devices must share the same Amazon account. If one family member manages the Kindle account and another manages the smart speakers with different email addresses, you'll run into issues.