New Skill Filter Available

Super quick post today, just calling out a change that a lot of people had been asking for on Reddit and on the developer forums.  We finally have the ability to click a check box in the companion app to show only the skills you currently have enabled.  Screenshots after the break.

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Previously, you had three options for managing the list of skills you could see - sort by newest arrival, sort alphabetically, or sort by average rating.  As of last night, there's now an additional option - which can work in conjunction with any of the other three - which lets you filter by "Your Skills".

This should be pretty straightforward, but a couple quick things to note:

• The previous "Sort by" menu is now nested inside of this new, broader "Refine" menu.
• "Filter by" is its own category.  The implication here seems to be that there may be more potential filters coming.  Maybe filter by skill category?
• The default value for this is unchecked.  Amazon still wants people to browse the various skills.

As a developer, one thing that bugs me about this implementation is the text of the filter - "Your Skills".  This is ambiguous in that it could also apply to any skills that you have created, especially since skills that are in development and unreleased also show up in the normal skill list alongside everything else. Admittedly, only a small subset of Alexa users are developers, but it still seems like "Enabled Skills" is a more descriptive way of defining that feature.

The only other reasoning I could conceive of is that Amazon treats all skills as entitlements, and in a future world where paid skills exist, the set of "Your Skills" may not always overlap the set of "Enabled Skills" at any given time.  A hint of something soon to come?...

Either way, here's what happens when you check the box.

No surprise.  Still sorted by newest, but filtered down to just the skills you have enabled (from any developer).  Neat.

It seemed like there was a pretty quick turnaround on this request from when people started advocating for it on the forums.  It's no surprise, really, as it was sort of low-hanging fruit.  David Isbitski implied in his most recent weekly dev chat that more changes were coming to the companion apps.  Looking forward to those, as well!