Amazon's Alexa Can Help You Locate Misplaced Items

Amazon’s Alexa voice recognition device might be the closest we’ve yet come to practical artificial intelligence in the home. While it has a variety of skills, there’s one lesser-known feature that could help cement that reputation: According to Lifehacker, users can solicit Alexa’s help when their car keys, wallet, or eyeglasses go missing. All it takes is a little premeditation.

If you are prone to misplacing items, it helps to announce to Alexa where you're leaving something important. Putting your car keys on a table near the back door, for example, might slip your mind hours later. But if you tell Alexa you're putting them there as you’re doing it, the device can remind you of that the next time you go searching for them. Just ask, "Alexa, where did I put my car keys?"

Of course, the act of saying where you’ve placed an item out loud will probably aid in your memory and you might not need to ask Alexa at all. The trick is likely to be more useful for items in long-term storage as opposed to things you pick up and put down daily. Telling Alexa that your tape measure is in the top drawer will help you out if you wind up not reaching for it for weeks at a time. The same holds true for reading glasses, light bulbs, or other things that you’ll need to locate eventually.

Maybe it’s not quite the future we were promised, but it might come in handy. Here are 11 other products that work with Alexa to obey your commands, faulty memory or not.