How to Automate Household Tasks With Alexa Hunches

You normally need to tell Alexa when you want to run certain tasks on your Amazon Echo device. When it’s time to go to sleep, you tell Alexa to turn off the lights. When you come home, tell Alexa to adjust the thermostat. If you leave the house, tell Alexa to lock the door behind you.

But with Alexa Hunches, your Echo can proactively run specific tasks based on your past behaviors and activities—if you have a smart light, lock, plug, or switch connected via the Alexa app. (Robot vacuums and additional smart home devices will be supported in the future, according to Amazon.)

You can set up Hunches to turn lights on and off at a certain time, change the thermostat, check the door lock, and adjust your water heater. As one example, if one of your smart lights is on when you say “Good night,” Alexa may attempt to turn it off.

Hunches are enabled by default, but you can further control the feature by turning on an option called “automatic actions.” With this option, Alexa will proactively try to act on a hunch and automatically take care of a specific task for you. Here’s how Hunches works.

Adjust Hunches Settings

Open the Alexa app and tap More > Settings > Hunches to see which Hunches Alexa has recently run. Tap the gear icon in the upper-right corner and confirm that the Hunches suggestions option is turned on. If you turn on the option for Mobile notifications, you will receive a notification on your phone anytime Alexa has a hunch. 

Tap Home location to add your home address to the app, if it isn’t already in there. Doing so will let Alexa know when you’re home or out of the house to help with location-related hunches. When done, tap the left arrow at the top to return to the previous screen.

Set Up Automatic Actions

Back at the main Hunches screen, tap the option called Set up automatic actions at the top of the screen. The suggested actions listed will vary based on how many Alexa-enabled devices you have set up. Tap any action you want to enable, such as Turn off lights if you’re asleep.

Read the description and play the video clip for this action and tap Next. Follow any steps to set up the action. The app will tell you this specific hunch is ready, then tap Done. 

Go through the same process for any other actions you wish to establish. You’re then returned to the main Hunches screen, where the app will tell you when Alexa acts on a hunch.

Alexa Hunches

Now, you can test Alexa’s hunches. Say “Alexa, do you have any hunches?” Alexa checks for hunches and will announce them if any are available. If not, then you’ll have to say or do something to trigger a hunch. 

For example, say “Alexa, good night.” If Alexa detects that any smart lights are still turned on, it may attempt to automatically turn them off. If so, the light will blink or dim before going off, and you can say “Alexa, stop” to cancel the automatic action.

When you do receive a Hunches suggestion, you can improve Alexa’s ability in this area. Go to the Hunches screen in the Alexa app where you’ll see the suggestion listed. You can then select Yes or No to tell Alexa whether the suggestion was valid and helpful.

If Alexa fails to come up with any hunches right off the bat, be patient. After hunches are enabled, Alexa may need extra time to learn your routines and schedules so it knows when and where to act on a hunch.

Turn Off Hunches

You can turn off Hunches completely if you don’t find the feature useful. At the Hunches screen, tap the Settings icon in the upper right and turn off the switch next to Hunches suggestions.