Amazon is rebranding its FreeTime and FreeTime Unlimited kids-focused software experiences with a new, easier to understand name.
The names will now be Amazon Kids and Amazon Kids+. Both of these names will make more sense to the parents that may want to use them for their own children.
And although it surely wasn’t exceedingly difficult to figure out what FreeTime and FreeTime Unlimited were, neither name really did a great job at describing to parents what the software was for.
Amazon Kids and Amazon Kids+ makes things much more clear, so there’s a lot less confusion on what the software experiences offer and why parents should want to check them out.
Amazon Kids software will have a new home screen experience
The new names aren’t the only thing coming. Amazon says there will be a new home screen experience that gets added to the software.
Specifically this will include a new theme which Amazon says will look and feel more like a tablet UI that was designed for grown ups. Presumably this is so kids feel like they get to use a more grown-up device.
Amazon says it recommends the new experience for kids that are ages 8 and up. It also confirms that the new theme will begin to hit tablet devices over the next few weeks. Though the Amazon Kids and Kids+ branding will take a bit longer and start rolling out over the coming months.
The new theme will not necessarily be on by default though. Parents that want to enable it will need to go into the Amazon Parent Dashboard and turn it on. Once in the dashboard, the new theme is located un the profile settings which can be found under the menu for adjusting age filters and themes.
Kids will now be able to broadcast their voice to Alexa devices
Amazon is adding a fun and functional new feature to the services. Broadcasting.
Once the software is update, kids will be able to broadcast their voices to any connected Alexa devices within the home. So if you have an Echo speaker, your kids will be able to get your attention no matter where they are in the home in relation to the speaker.
This feature is called Announcements, and parents do have to enable it. This will also be rolling out in the next few weeks along with the new home screen theme.
Amazon Kids will be a free service. However if parents want to go with the Amazon+ option, it’ll be $4.99 a month. You can save a little bit if you subscribe to Amazon Prime. As the cost will go down to $2.99 a month.