How to Enable Whisper Mode on Amazon Alexa Devices

The Amazon Alexa voice assistant on your Amazon Echo can whisper. And you can also limit how much it says when you talk to it.

I find it useful at home with a baby in the house, if I don’t want to say ‘OK’ to Alexa every time I turn off the light, or if I need Alexa to be quieter when I ask for nighttime again.

There are two modes you will need to enable, short mode and whisper mode, and they are very easy to do.

To turn on short mode, which makes Alexa talk less and delete things like confirmations for when you ask him something, just say ‘Alexa, turn on short mode’.

Or you can do this if you are not near your ultrasound:

• Open the Alexa app on your iPhone or Android phone.
• Tap ‘More’ at the bottom right of the page.
• Choose ‘Settings’.
• Select ‘Speech words’.
• Enable ‘Short mode’.

While you’re at it, you may want to turn off Alexa’s suggestions for buying things. It just did while I was writing this guide asking if I wanted suggestions for funny gifts. No thanks.

To turn it off, do the following:

• Open the Alexa app on your iPhone or Android phone.
• Choose settings.
• Tap Notifications.
• Select Amazon Shopping.
• Uncheck the option to ‘receive personalized recommendations and deals based on your shopping activity’.
• Also, turn off ‘requests to rate products you’ve bought’ if you don’t want those posts either.
• Uncheck the option to receive notifications for “Order Updates (Inc. Subscribe and Save.)” If you don’t want messages about saving money by subscribing to monthly deliveries.

Finally there is the Whisper mode. The easiest way to turn that on is to just whisper to Alexa. Say something like “What the weather is like” but whisper instead of speaking. Alexa will respond in a whisper.

That is it!