Alexa Presentation Language Known Issues

Refer to the following list of known issues, bugs, and breaking changes for Alexa Presentation Language (APL).

Known issues

  • [Tooling] The AlexaIcon component includes an iconStyle property you can assign to use a custom style with the icon. When used with an icon in the Alexa Icon Library, your custom style can change the opacity of the icon. The style doesn't affect the other properties (fill color and stroke).

  • On the Echo Show 5 (3rd Gen, 2023 release) device, the environment.aplVersion property reports 2023.1 even when the device has 2023.2.
    • The features released with 2023.2 work on the device.
    • However, an expression such as ${environment.aplVersion == '2023.2'} returns false on these devices. Therefore, if you use when to provide different experiences for different versions of APL, these devices behave as a 2023.1 device until this issue is addressed.

  • [Tooling] The Smart Motion Simulator in the developer console isn't properly loading the APL Smart-Motion Extension and APL Entity-Sensing Extension. These extensions do continue to work with supported physical devices.

  • The widget visual context doesn't populate when the user invokes the skill by voice.

  • User interface issue in the Multimodal Response Builder: After you navigate to the Integrate response into skill page, clicking the Multimodal Responses item in the developer console sidebar doesn't navigate you to the Multimodal Responses page. To work around this issue, click Interfaces in the sidebar first, and then click Multimodal Responses.

  • VectorGraphic linear gradient looks different between the authoring tool and physical devices.

  • [Tablets] AlexaImageList: Disabled List Item behavior is broken on Portrait 10 inches devices.

  • On physical devices, when a Frame contains an Image component, the borderRadius property for the Frame doesn't properly adjust the Frame corners.

  • [Fire TV Editions TVs] Recipe video doesn't revert to the original volume after dismissing the volume panel.

  • Word break opportunity before <nobr> tag not breaking correctly.

  • Text with <nobr> incorrectly wrapping at the end of a container.

  • [APL Simulator] [Large Hub/Extra Large TV Hub] Videos aren't playing for both autoplay false and true scenarios.

  • APL documents that use the Video component to play audio by setting thewidth and height properties to 0 don't work. To work around this issue set the width/height to 1.

Breaking changes

  • [APL 2024.2] APL now uses a screenLock Boolean property on the Video component to determine whether to time out the document during the video playback. This property defaults to true. Video playback automatically disables the interaction timer and therefore prevents the document from timing out during playback.

    Previous versions of APL used the audioTrack property for this purpose on some devices, and would allow the document to time out when audioTrack was either background or none. If your document relied on the audioTrack property to time out the document, set the new screenLock property to false.

  • [APL 2023.2] APL-generated JSON now serializes numeric values as integers when appropriate. Previously APL serialized all numeric values as floating point. For example, a SendEvent command that passes the value 5 serializes this value as "5" instead of "5.0". This affects all JSON structures serialized by the APL core library, including user events, dynamic data requests, visual context and extension messages.

  • [APL 1.6] Echo Show 8 is now a Hub Landscape Medium device. Customer feedback on the Echo Show 8 indicated that the font size was too small on many Alexa experiences. To address this, Amazon updated how the device reports it's screen size, which results in the device being classified as a Hub Landscape Medium device instead of a Hub Landscape Large. To account for this change, review the Interfaces page in the Alexa developer console and make sure that you have Hub Landscape Medium checked, as well as all the boxes for any other viewports that you support. Existing skills aren't impacted. Existing skills continue to see Echo Show 8 as a Hub Landscape Large device until you check the box to opt in to Hub Landscape Medium as a supported viewport profile.

  • [APL 1.6] On FireTV directional keys no longer cause Pagers to animate in APL documents with version <1.6. To mitigate, change the APL document version to 1.6.

  • [APL 1.6] On an Alexa-enabled device with a screen, the viewport is the area of the screen that the user can see. A viewport has a shape, orientation, size, and density. In that, size and density are defined as ranges so that the profile can represent multiple physical devices. When you manually provide fixed/legacy viewport dimension values instead of the currently supported viewport ranges in the skill manifest for Hub Round Small, Hub Landscape Small, Hub Landscape Medium, and Hub Landscape Large devices, the corresponding viewport profile checkboxes aren't checked in the developer console. The current best practice is to verify whether your APL content renders correctly on the required viewport profiles, and then select the corresponding viewport profiles in the console or provide the corresponding supported viewport ranges manually in the skill manifest.

  • [APL 1.7] Alexa Vector Graphic (AVG) radial gradients no longer render with incorrect radius, positioning, or scaling on Android devices

For support and help, visit Stack Overflow. To report an issue, Contact Alexa Developer Support.

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Last updated: Jun 18, 2024

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