Amazon on Monday said it's starting to roll out a totally redesigned Alexa app for Apple's iPhone, tablets and phones running Google's Android platform, and its own Fire tablets.
While Alexa is most commonly associated with Amazon's own living room devices, like the Echo and Fire TV, the digital assistant is also available on other platforms, offering many of the same functionality as Apple's Siri and the Google Assistant.
But the current Alexa app is often hard to use, offering random irrelevant prompts from the home screen and forcing users to dig through menus to find different settings.
That should be fixed in the update, which Amazon says will put your most-used features front and center. In the new app, you might see your reminders, a Spotify playlist you've been listening to, your shopping list, an upcoming alarm and an Audible book you've started, for example. That means your Alexa home screen will look different from someone else's.
Amazon is also moving the Alexa button from the bottom of the app to the top, where it says it's easier to find. Reminders, routines, skills, settings and other options are being moved from the menu, where they were harder to find, to a new "More" button at the bottom of the screen.
The changes might drive Amazon loyalists to stick with the app across devices.
Amazon said it expects it will be available to all existing users by late August.
