Why You Can Trust CNET How to share your custom Alexa skills with friends
Not only can you make your own Alexa skills without coding, you can now share them with your friends and family too.
Back in April, Amazon cashed in on one of its most defining features -- skills -- by letting users make their own, no coding required. These user-made skills are very easy to make (and very reminiscent of building IFTTT applets) with a tool called Skill Blueprints.
Even better, Amazon recently made it so you can now share those custom skills with other people. Here's how.
Share your custom Alexa skills with anyone
For starters, you have to first build your own skill using the tool. For help on how to build your own Alexa skills, check out our guide. Some examples of what you can do with Blueprints are:
- Create your own story skill where your child is the hero
- Make a skill with your own dad jokes
- Create your own trivia game
- Build a skill that compliments your family members
- Make flash cards for studying.
- Build a guide for house guests, babysitters or pet sitters
Currently, there are 28 options for building your own skill, but Amazon is adding more to the mix over time.
Once you've chosen a skill to make and have gone through the creation process, wait a few minutes for the skill to finish processing. Then:
- Go to blueprints.amazon.com.
- Click the hamburger button (three horizontal lines) in the top-right corner of the window.
- Click Skills You've Made.
- Select the skill you want to share from the list.
- On the right side of the page, under Your Skill Actions, click Share With Others.
- You will be asked whether the skill is intended for people under 13 years old. Click Yes or No.
- Choose how you want to share the skill: Email, Facebook, Twitter, Pinterest or Copy Link.
No matter how you choose to share the skill, anyone who clicks the link you share will be taken to the landing page for that skill and will be able to enable the skill on their Amazon account.
If you shared a skill by accident, go back to the Skills You've Made menu and select the skill again. This time, on the left side of the page, look for Access.
If the skill hasn't been shared, it will say Just Me. If it has, it will say Shared with an icon of two people next to it. To the right of that, there is a Revoke link. Click that, then confirm by clicking Revoke Access on the next screen. The skill will revert back to being private and anyone who had enabled it will no longer have access to the skill.
Want to learn more about what Alexa can do? Check out these 7 Alexa commands you should be using.
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