It’s all too easy to lose your phone around the house, especially if you’re prone to losing things in general. However, your Amazon Echo can help you find it using a neat third-party service.
You can accomplish this with IFTTT. If you haven’t used IFTTT before.
For your convenience, we’ve created the recipe in its entirety and embedded it here–so if you’re already well versed in IFTTT, just click the “Add” button below. You’ll need to connect the Alexa channel, as well as the Phone Call channel if they aren’t already. Keep in mind that this will only work if your phone isn’t on vibrate or silent mode.
If you want to customize the recipe, here’s how we created it. Start by heading to IFTTT’s home page and click “My Recipes” at the top of the page.
Next, click on “Create a Recipe”.
Click on “this” highlighted in blue.
Type “Alexa” in the search box or find it in the grid of products and services below that (it will be in the top row anyway). Click on it when you find it.
Next, click on “Say a specific phrase”.
Under “What phrase?”, type in the phrase that you’ll say whenever you need your Amazon Echo to locate your lost phone. This can be whatever you want, but keep in mind that you’ll have to say “trigger” and then the phrase. For instance, if you make the phrase “locate phone”, you’ll need to say “Alexa, trigger locate phone.” Click on “Create Trigger” when you’re done.
Next, click on “that” highlighted in blue.
Type in “phone call” in the search box or find the Phone Call channel in the list below. Click on it when you find it.
Under “Choose an Action”, click on “Call my phone”.
On the next screen, you’ll be asked to enter in the message that you want to hear when you answer the phone. You can’t leave it blank, so you’ll need to type something here. It doesn’t matter what.
When you’re done, click on “Create Action”.
On the next screen, give the recipe a custom title if you want, and then click on “Create Recipe”.
After that, you can go up to your Amazon Echo and say “Alexa, trigger locate phone” (or whatever phrase you picked out) and Alexa will call your phone so that you’ll be able to hear the ringtone and hopefully locate it in your house.
This will work even if you left your phone in another location entirely, but obviously you won’t be able to hear it if it isn’t nearby. Instead, it will likely annoy whoever did end up finding your phone. But hey, that’s still something.