Amazon Alexa’s Flash News Briefing can be very helpful, allowing you to catch up on what’s happening in the world while you are doing other things. Like getting ready for work in the morning. But did you know that you can customize that news briefing and pick which sources it uses and in which order? You can, it’s pretty simple.
Alexa now has over 5,000 skills for the Flash Briefing, so there are a ton of great sources to choose from. Everything from politics, to world news, to local news, sports, tech and everything in between. And this is how you customize the Flash Briefing for your Alexa account. When you customize it, the changes will affect all of your Alexa devices, so keep that in mind.
How to customize Alexa’s Flash Briefing
Firstly, you’ll need to download the Amazon Alexa app for your smartphone. you can download it from the Google Play Store.
After you’ve logged into the Alexa app, you will need to swipe in from the left and tap on Settings.
From there, you will need to tap on “Flash Briefing” which is going to be the fourth option down under the “Alexa Preferences” heading.
On this screen, you’ll be able to add content, as well as rearrange the order that Alexa will read these headlines to you. For instance, if you want to hear your local news first, you can move your local news source (TV station, newspaper, etc) to the first position.
You can toggle on and off these news sources as you wish, just tap the slider on the right-hand side.
If you need to add some more news sources, just hit the + sign above the list of activated sources. That will take you into the Amazon Alexa Skills store, where you can find some more news sources to add to your Flash Briefing. As mentioned already, there are over 5,000 news skills available. But you don’t want to add to many, or your “flash” briefing won’t be a flash anymore.
How to Rearrange News Sources
Say you have all of the news sources you want in your Flash Briefing, but you don’t like the order? Well you can rearrange them.
Simply tap on the Edit button at the top of the screen.
This will show you all of the news sources that you have activated. Press and hold the source from the right side, and you can drag and drop these to be in the order that you’d like.
Once you are finished rearranging them, simply press Done, and you’re all set.
Wrap Up
Many of these news skills are updated twice a day. Usually early in the morning (around 4-5AM EST) and again in the afternoon. So you can get updated news in the morning and again at dinner time. Having Alexa read you the latest headlines is a pretty cool feature to have. Instead of having the TV on during dinner, you can ask Alexa to read you the news.
A number of these news skills have also added video capability, so that you are able to watch the news on your Echo Show, Echo Spot or even a Fire TV device. It makes things even easier. The best part about Alexa’s Flash Briefing is just that, it’s quick, so you aren’t wasting a half hour learning about two or three things that happened today.