Sonos now works with Alexa’s useful ‘Announcements’ intercom feature like Echo

Zac Hall | Aug 9 2018 - 10:26 am PT

Sonos One and Beam both have the Alexa voice assistant built-in, but there are occasionally new features from Amazon that are limited to Echo speakers. Echo’s Announcements intercom feature has been one those, but that’s changing for Sonos.

Starting today, Alexa-enabled Sonos speakers include Sonos One and Sonos Beam will work with Amazon Announcements. The new feature comes to Sonos speakers through an automatic update and supports English in the United States, United Kingdom, and Canada.

Announcements lets you send an audio message from one Alexa-enabled speaker to all Alexa-enabled speakers throughout your home. The other Alexa-enabled speakers immediately receive the message and play a chime followed by the audio recording without any user interaction required.

Announcements is especially useful if you have lots of Alexa-enabled speakers throughout your home, and deploying Echo Dots for features like this can be affordable and practical.

In some instances, the Announcements feature will even include a clever sound effect before your message — like a classic dinner bell ringing if you announce that dinner is ready.

Before today, Announcements could only be created and received by Amazon Echo speakers and not Alexa-enabled Sonos speakers. After receiving today’s automatic update, Announcements should work exactly the same way on both Amazon Echo and Sonos speakers that work with Alexa.