Skip to main content
  1. Home
  2. Audio / Video
  3. News

Amazon’s Fire TV Cube gets even more hands-off with enhanced voice control

Kris Wouk
By
Amazon Fire TV Cube
Bill Roberson/Digital Trends

If there’s one thing voice-powered artificial assistants like Amazon Alexa have proved, it’s that everything is better when you can control it using just your voice. That’s why using an old-fashioned method of navigation like a plain old remote control to navigate through Netflix feels like you might as well be living in a cave. Thankfully, if you’re an Amazon Fire TV Cube owner, you don’t have to as the device now supports voice navigation in third-party apps.

This functionality has actually been in the wild for a while, as it was first spotted by AFTVnews last week. In the meantime, the functionality has slowly been rolling out to Fire TV Cube devices everywhere. The new commands essentially replicated the buttons on your remote control, letting you navigate through complex menus by using phrases like “Alexa, go up” or “Alexa, move left” to move, and then “Alexa, select this” or simply “Alexa, select” to press a virtual Select button.

Recommended Videos

As you might imagine, this can be somewhat cumbersome if you’re trying to move any sort of distance. To help solve this problem, the “scroll” command lets you move several menu items at a time, so you don’t need to repeat “Alexa, go left” over and over. Despite how it sounds, this can actually be faster than using the remote, so it’s not simply something to help you out in a pinch if you don’t feel like pressing buttons on a remote.

Related

There are a total of 17 apps supported, including mainstays like Netflix and Hulu, with the rest of the list filled out by ABC, Boomerang, Cartoon Network, The CW, CW Seed, DramaFever, ESPN, FilmStruck, Fox Now, FXNow, Hallmark Movies Now, HBO Go, HBO Now, Red Bull TV, and Tubi TV. This appears to be just the beginning as Amazon says it will add support for even more third-party apps and services in the future. Unfortunately, how this functionality is handled differs slightly from app to app, so you may find the behavior to be unpredictable in some apps.

Since this has been rolling out for some time, your Fire TV Cube should already have the functionality.

Editors' Recommendations

Topics
Kris Wouk
Kris Wouk
Former Digital Trends Contributor
Kris Wouk is a tech writer, gadget reviewer, blogger, and whatever it's called when someone makes videos for the web. In his…
Amazon Echo Show 15 is getting the full Fire TV update today
Amazon Fire TV on Echo Show 15.

The line between the Amazon Echo Show 15 and a Fire TV is blurring, with the former getting the experience of the latter starting today with a software update.

It won't quite turn your Echo Show 15 into a Fire TV 15, per se. But it'll give it full access to the Amazon Appstore, and that means you should have all the apps available to essentially turn it into a wall-mounted streaming powerhouse (provided that everything's square when it comes to APIs and app updates, but we have a feeling Amazon and the developers will have that figured out in short order, if things aren't already working as expected).

Read more
Fire TV Stick vs. Fire TV Stick 4K Max vs. Fire TV Cube: Which to buy?
Amazon Fire TV Cube

If you've been looking for a fast, cheap, and user-friendly way to experience the growing world of streaming media, an Amazon Fire TV product is an excellent option for all your Netflix-adjacent needs. With most of Amazon's hardware requiring nothing more than a Wi-Fi connection and a TV to plug into, you'll be able to get connected to all that content in no time at all.

Some Fire TV devices even give you the ability to interact with Alexa, making voice control over your TV as easy as saying, "Alexa, open Netflix." But there are several kinds of Fire TV devices, each with a different price, design, and features. Which Amazon Fire TV product is right for you? We'll take an in-depth look at the five current Amazon Fire TV models -- the Fire TV Stick Lite, Fire TV Stick, Fire TV Stick 4K, Fire TV Stick 4K Max, and the Fire TV Cube -- so you can get a feel for what each one offers.
Fire TV Stick and Fire TV Stick Lite
Alexa Voice Remote with TV controls Digital Trends

Read more
Why Amazon went with slower Ethernet on the Fire TV Cube
Ethernet on the 2022 Amazon Fire TV Cube.

The latest Amazon Fire TV Cube is good. Really good, even, with the addition of HDMI-in that allows for even better control of things like cable and satellite set-top boxes. Same, too, goes for the addition of USB-A and a full-blown Ethernet port.

But it's that latter feature that many a reader of our Fire TV Cube review (and our Fire TV Omni QLED review, too) has had stuck in their craw.

Read more